You pick the game contest! Its been too long!!!

[WhiteNoise]

For those that remember. I have been known to do the "you pick the game" giveaway. It's been a few years but I think the time is right for another giveaway.

So, I will use https://www.random.org/ to pick the winner. all names will be entered this Sunday (Nov. 14th) at 11pm PST. The winner will get any STEAM, or ORIGIN game of their choice up to the value of $59.99. YOU pick the game you want. That is how my contests go. I never pick the game, YOU pick the game you want to play!!

So to enter you have to be a member of this site for 30 days. That's it!

You have to tell me and all of TPU how you became a fan of computers.
Tell us something personal that lead you to the choice of PC vs console. What brought you to the elite PC side? Let us hear about that one game that pulled you to PC or any story you want to provide. I love all game systems, consoles, and PC but let us focus on what brought you to PC. Tell TPU something we might not already know about you!!

All stories gain an extra bonus for the contest. All that say they are " in" get a point towards winning, if you tell a story, you get two points towards winning! Your name will be entered twice!!
So let's hear some stories!!!!
I normally only gift from Steam but I will include Origin this time as well.

I really hope to read some awesome stories from you peops!!

After your post or story, name the game you want!
If you WIN I will ask you then what game you want up to the 59.99 value on steam or Origin. One game only. The value can be anywhere from .99 cents to $59.99.
If we aren't already friends on Steam or Origin, we will have to become friends so I can gift you.

REMEMBER TO NAME THE GAME YOU WANT AT THE END OF YOUR STORY!!!!!


/edit I updated the end date to Sunday instead of Friday to give everyone a chance to see this giveaway and partake.
/edit I just found out I cannot gift a game in Epic so Epic is out. Sorry, but I didn't know it until now.

 

[EzioAs]

I remember you doing this a couple years back. Not entering but good luck to those who do participate.

 

[WhiteNoise]

Yeah, it's been a while but I am back to giving a good game to those in need! and let's face it, we are all in need...of a good game!!


ALL ARE WELCOME!!!.



REMEMBER TO NAME THE GAME YOU WANT AT THE END OF YOUR STORY!!!!!

 

[Space Lynx]

I started off with Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis/Nintendo 64/PS1 console

Game I want is the pre-order for God of War on Steam if I win.

 

[oobymach]

In high school I held the first manufactured piece of titanium in my hands. Back in the 90's a friend of mine's dad worked for a company here in Canada (not sure exactly where, I never asked) and he brought the piece home to show his son and his son, my friend Cory brought it to school.

He told me his dad's team made it in a lab and they were trying to deform it by hitting it with a sledge hammer which didn't deform it at all. I tried with my pocket knife to cut into it, assuming the weaker steel in my knife wouldn't cut the titanium and I was right, all it did was slide around on it refusing to mark it.

It was about the size of a pencil around 2 inches long, 6 sided but not sharp edges, it was all rounded and smooth, similar to the drawing below.


It was this friend who traded to me his pc for my nintendo 64 for a couple weeks while he played Zelda and I played Final Fantasy 7 and I got to see what a gaming computer could do including burning cd's which at the time was revolutionary and 60fps gaming with what he said was a hacked version of directx which made the game play extremely smooth and at higher resolution than I was used to with console gaming.

If you pick me I would like Far Cry 6

 

[LifeOnMars]

I'm in for the win. Thank you White Noise.

It was early 1994 and I was 15 years old when it happened. DOOM.

I was already a veteran gamer. A privilege of having a much older brother who would constantly bring the latest tech into our household in the 80s. An Atari 2600, an Acorn Electron, a Spectrum 48k. I was fixated by the moving images on the screen that I could control. The first game I remember completing in its entirety was "Citadel" on the Electron. I was 5 years old and the game was massive for the time but many hours were spent learning the layout of the game with my sister, which keys and items to use and which order to do it all in. Stan Ridgways"Camouflage" was on constant loop in the background and even now if I hear that song I am immediately transported back to that time.

Fast forward to 1994, my brother had long since moved out of the family home and was married. I had his old Amiga 500, a Sega Megadrive and a Spectrum 128k, all systems I loved. A rich friend at senior school then started feeding me information about a shareware game his Dad had got on their Gateway PC. In all honesty, I didn't believe him when he said the game had "mind blowing graphics" PCs back then, certainly to schoolkids, were looked at as niche and business like. Anyway, he agreed that I could go to his house one lunchtime and he would show me. He booted up the game.....

"Holy shit!" it looked real. From the digitized hand holding the gun to the lifelike mountains in the background I was transfixed. We played for the entire lunchtime and I didn't want to go back to school. The feeling of "one more go" was so strong with this game. For weeks and weeks all I kept thinking about was "that" game and "that" PC. My systems all seemed so shit now, redundant. Nothing compared to that experience. I started buying PC magazines and would read them cover to cover until the pages started curling too much from all the abuse I put them through. I pleaded with my parents but in reality the price was just too much to even entertain the idea of having a family PC.

It wasn't until 2008 that I finally built my own gaming PC, also the same year I joined TPU. A combination of girls, bad choices and life changes meant that I still hadn't been able to get my hands on the funds to build or purchase a gaming PC. I'd visited my brother in Memphis (He was now a US citizen, married to an American woman who he met playing Command and Conquer online in '98 ) He had a brand new gaming PC, Q9650, SLI 9800 GTX and for the three months I was there we would play Unreal Tournament 3, STALKER, Hellgate etc and I was just blown away all over again. I specced out my first system whilst I was there and built it when I got back home to the UK.

An AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor @3Ghz
2 x 2GB DD2 Ram
An HD 4850
2 x 250Gb Western Digital Black RAID 0

I've been on PC ever since and always smile when I hear or see DOOM mentioned anywhere. It takes me back to that moment I first played it on my mate's PC, the hours I spent reading the PC magazines on the school bus even though I didn't own one. I knew that one day I would fulfil that destiny, I just didn't realise it would take so long

GAME - Life Is Strange Remastered Collection (Steam)

​

 

[WhiteNoise]

For the record, please name the game you want after each story!

I'm in for the win. Thank you White Noise.

It was early 1994 and I was 15 years old when it happened. DOOM.

I was already a veteran gamer. A privilege of having a much older brother who would constantly bring the latest tech into our household in the 80s. An Atari 2600, an Acorn Electron, a Spectrum 48k. I was fixated by the moving images on the screen that I could control. The first game I remember completing in its entirety was "Citadel" on the Electron. I was 5 years old and the game was massive for the time but many hours were spent learning the layout of the game with my sister, which keys and items to use and which order to do it all in. Stan Ridgways"Camouflage" was on constant loop in the background and even now if I hear that song I am immediately transported back to that time.

Fast forward to 1994, my brother had long since moved out of the family home and was married. I had his old Amiga 500, a Sega Megadrive and a Spectrum 128k, all systems I loved. A rich friend at senior school then started feeding me information about a shareware game his Dad had got on their Gateway PC. In all honesty, I didn't believe him when he said the game had "mind blowing graphics" PCs back then, certainly to schoolkids, were looked at as niche and business like. Anyway, he agreed that I could go to his house one lunchtime and he would show me. He booted up the game.....

"Holy shit!" it looked real. From the digitized hand holding the gun to the lifelike mountains in the background I was transfixed. We played for the entire lunchtime and I didn't want to go back to school. The feeling of "one more go" was so strong with this game. For weeks and weeks all I kept thinking about was "that" game and "that" PC. My systems all seemed so shit now, redundant. Nothing compared to that experience. I started buying PC magazines and would read them cover to cover until the pages started curling too much from all the abuse I put them through. I pleaded with my parents but in reality the price was just too much to even entertain the idea of having a family PC.

It wasn't until 2008 that I finally built my own gaming PC, also the same year I joined TPU. A combination of girls, bad choices and life changes meant that I still hadn't been able to get my hands on the funds to build or purchase a gaming PC. I'd visited my brother in Memphis (He was now a US citizen, married to an American woman who he met playing Command and Conquer online in '98 ) He had a brand new gaming PC, Q9650, SLI 9800 GTX and for the three months I was there we would play Unreal Tournament 3, STALKER, Hellgate etc and I was just blown away all over again. I specced out my first system whilst I was there and built it when I got back home to the UK.

An AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor @3Ghz
2 x 2GB DD2 Ram
An HD 4850
2 x 250Gb Western Digital Black RAID 0

I've been on PC ever since and always smile when I hear or see DOOM mentioned anywhere. It takes me back to that moment I first played it on my mate's PC, the hours I spent reading the PC magazines on the school bus even though I didn't own one. I knew that one day I would fulfil that destiny, I just didn't realise it would take so long

​

awesome story!!

I started off with Super Nintendo/Sega Genesis/Nintendo 64/PS1 console, but my Dad who quit drinking alcohol about 30 years ago got a lot of money in a settlement when he fell down a set of stairs about 25 years ago, because a lot of alcoholics had been spilling their drinks over the stairs by accident, and the stairs were pure smooth concrete (those same stairs have now been redone with grips because of my Dad which possibly saved a life since then, no one will ever know), anyways my Dad tore up his body bad, shoulder was tore all to hell, etc. Anyways he got some money from all of that from that establishment and he bought a $3000 Intel Pentium (the very first one I believe on the market) it came with Windows 95 and a few games. This racing game called POD came with it for free and I remember playing that and how the atmosphere of it sparked my imagination (in retrospect it wasn't that great of a game, but it was neat at the time). The rest is history, that was my transition from console to PC.

Game I want is the pre-order for God of War on Steam if I win.

DUDE, That has to be one of the best stories period. shit...

Keep 'em coming!! You guys are rocking it!

 

[Outback Bronze]

I'm in for the stories : )

So I was brought up playing video games. Commodore 64, Sega, Nintendo, Sony, Arcade games at Timezone and the list goes on.

I remember when I played on my first PC. It was my friend parents PC. Not sure what the OS was, even if there was any OS but we had to type /dir xxx to play games. I was too young to even give a crap about what CPU it had etc. We played a lot of Bubble Bobble on it and Golden Axe : )

Now, I was a mostly a console bandit until my mate got me into AVP2 which was a PC exclusive. I loved it.

So on my parents PC which was a PIII that I used to play Diablo 2 on, he gave me his GeForce 2 which we installed (first ever installed GPU) so I could play AVP2 with it. We also installed some extra RAM. Pretty sure it was PC 133.

That was back in 2021, soon after I moved out of home and bought my first PC which was a P4 533FSB with GeForce 4 128mb. Think the board was an i845??

So I started reading my mates PC mags when I used to visit him and say Gday, they had these ATI 9800 Pro's making piss in all the benchmarks. I was reading the magazines for like 6 months and said to him one day "these 9800 Pro's are still making piss. I'm going to get one". And so I did : )

So I popped it in and loved it. Then upgraded the board (i865) so it was 8x AGP because my old board was only 4x. Upgraded the CPU to a P4 HT 800FSB Northwood. I was hooked..

The CPU used to get hot so this was when I purchased my very first custom water cooling kit form Asetek. Came with a 478 CPU Block, Pump, Res and Tubing. Still have all the parts to this day.

I used to read all of W1zzards OC's, mods and bios flashes to unlock X800 Pro's etc on this site and wasn't until I got the internet about (2009) that I signed up to this site just a little while later. Should have done it sooner.

So, here we are

 

[velko-live]

Hello from Bulgaria.
I'm in to win a game of high price, according to my modest budget.
I apologize for my English, but for the most part I use Google Translate.
My first contact with computers was 20-25 years ago. It all started when a friend of mine, who was several years older, took me to a basement in a bar. There were only 2 computers and 2 Sony Playstations. If memory serves me right, we played a little at the Grand Tourismo of the Playstation, but more importantly, we sat at the computer and my friend played Heroes of Might and Magic. Ever since then, I've been very engrossed in the game and so to this day with all the games in the series. These are games in the first place for me. That's how I became interested in computer games in general, and I continue to do so until now. Then just when I was 17, supposedly 20 years ago I started working in a computer room to use computers on an hourly basis and then when the boss was doing something on them I always watched and it was very interesting, but then I did not dare to tinker with them. It wasn't until a few years ago that I was afraid to change parts and the like. I'm definitely not a computer expert, but I can generally build a computer without a problem. At the moment I'm only a fan of PC, because I've never owned a console, but not in the near future I can buy and gain experience with them. My story may not be the best, but it's mine in the beginning and it was exceptional for me. Along with computers, while working in the PC hall, I was lucky to find my first and best female love at the moment, along with my passion for computers. It was definitely my best years.

I really want Red Dead Redemption 2

 

[silentbogo]

Owyeah! WhiteNoise is back at it )))
I'll throw in my slip in the hat for God of War, ironically the most anticipated PC release of 2021

Now, in regards to computers, it all started many many moons ago, almost a decade before I bought my own first computer.
I used to go to school just across the street from my mom's workplace (townhall), and they were the first ones in my town to "computerize" the workforce with few used 386/486's (it was already mid-90s, so definitely not cutting edge hardware). Before that my only "computer" experience was playing games off cassettes on my neighbor's Soviet Spectrum clone, but these marvels of modern electronics were a completely different experience.
Most of the work-related stuff was for DOS, but it had Windows 3.11 on it. I used to come over after work and practice typing in Lexicon(once popular DOS text editor), play DOOM, Tetris, Xonix, Civilization etc. These PCs were each shared between 4-5 offices on that floor, but since no one except maybe 2 people knew how to use it and most of the work was done on paper or typewriters - I had no issues with timing. Just needed to do my homework and be a good boy )))
I did not have a PC of my own until I went to college, but regardless of that I haven't spent a single day without being around computers at least since I was 8. Even back in middle/high school I had a side-hustle fixing computers for friends and their relatives, along with taking occasional night shifts at the local internet café (it's weird to think that I used to get paid $2-3 per 10 hour night shift along w/ free coffee ).

 

[droopyRO]

I first saw a computer at a friend's house in the early '90s Romania after the '89 Revolution took place. It was quite a thing to have a PC and/or a console at that time. Some people still had black and white TVs Anyway, the first games i remember are Prince Of Persia and some kind of skying game, i sucked at both since i didn't knew how to play them.
In the 3rd grade i got the chance to enroll in a "computer" class at school. They were called "HC" and ran Basic with monochrome green displays. I remember getting in to the Basic programming stuff, and writing simple programs in 3rd and 4th grade. But unfortunately programming is not my thing.

After about 4 years, my father woke me up on a Saturday morning, it was a cold day, foggy and wet. We went to a big commercial area in my city called (Europa/Europe in English) i didn't knew why, cause he didn't tell me. We got to a saleswoman and he pointed out a Ninteno NES clone console. My heart jumped ! he was buying me a "console". It had two controllers, an electronic gun, but no cartriges. It did have a memory with "one million games"( people from Eastern Europe will know what console i am talking about ) Mario, Duck Hunt, Load Runner, Kung Fu etc. I think it was in '96 or '97 but i am not sure. Meanwhile i still yearned for a PC ...

Time passes. I get to 8th grade, and at that time you had to pass an exam to finish 8th grade and another one to get in to whatever high school you chose. The promise was that if i do both i get a PC. So i did, with an average grade of 9/10.
400$ later i got as a present a K6-2-350, 32MB of RAM, a 14'' display and that is all i can remember for sure. It had an ATi GPU wih no 3D acceleration, no sound card or speakers, and i can not remember what mobo, HDD, PSU/case i had. Running Windows 98.
First game i played(i am a fan of simulators of all kind) was a F-18 arcade game, and a lot of demo's from magazine CDs i got from friends but ony if they ran in Software mode. A Riva 128ZX came moths later when i found out what a graphical accelerator was
After that some bad things happened but i still had that PC, and it pulled me thru all that bad stuff that happened to my family. It was a literal cure for depression for a teenager boy and it kept me away from serious drinking or doing any drugs.

Time passed, wounds healed and here i am, more than 20 years later. Trying to upgrade my GPU to a RTX 3060Ti/3070 so i can max out Total War Warhammer II in anticipation for Warhammer III

Not entering. Just wanted to share my bitter-sweet introduction to PC gaming and hardware. Thanks for the contest !

 

[WhiteNoise]

I made a couple of changes in my initial post. Changes below:

/edit I updated the end date to Sunday instead of Friday to give everyone a chance to see this giveaway and partake.
/edit I just found out I cannot gift a game in Epic so Epic is out. Sorry, but I didn't know it until now.

 

[Devon68]

When I was 9-10 years old, my dad used to rent us a Sony playstation 1 for a day or sometimes if we were good 2 days, and we could choose 10 games.
Me and my sister we used to play all sort's of games from need for speed unleashed to twisted metal etc. (I'm very excited to hear that a new twisted metal might be coming out in a year or two)
Later as we got a bit older we rented a Playstation 2 and the games that came with it. (we played mostly worms and Fighting Force)
At the age of 13 I was at a friends birthday. She was lucky enough to have a pc (Pentium 4 I think). Up to this point I've never had a chance to play a game on the PC since most of the other friends that had one refused to let me play on it saying I will break it.
At that birthday I was able to play GTA Vice city for 10-15 minutes. Today that might not be anything special, but back then at that age that experience blew my mind, and I could not stop thinking about the day I will be able to buy my first PC. That happened when I was in the first grade of high school in 2004. It was a prebuilt with a Pentium 4 with 256mb of ram and a ATI 9550 AGP GPU. I've used that Pc till 2012. Since then I have been using my current PC in the system specs. I know it's been almost 10 years since I got it but it still does what I want. From time to time I do get the itch to upgrade, but decided I will wait for this shortage to pass.

If I get picked by the random generator I would like to gat World war Z Aftermath on steam.

 

[stinger608]

It was in the 80's and at that time, most, if not all computers didn't even have hard drives. It was during the Intel 8088 processor days. The few that did where problematic due to many getting damaged because

the drive head would float free and damage the platter if moved or even bumped into hard. Many computers would load the operating system from a 5 1/4" floppy.

I had kind of a rare beast that actually had a hard drive. I was soooooooo careful not to move it or bump it in fear of damaging the hard drive.

So, in DOS I decided to write a head parking utility. Man, that took some time, but in the end, it would park the head just prior to leaving the system and shutting down. Seems like a lifetime ago now.

None the less, I've been hooked on computers every since them days.


I really got into gaming when the original Doom was released! I had an ole Packard Bell computer that had a Intel DX66 (co-processor LOL), 4 megs of ram (yes, 4 megs, not gigs), and a 240 megabyte hard

drive. Wow, it was a beast!!!! Never have to upgrade again!!!!! LOL.

Ended up, I spent $100 to get another 4 meg Ram chip so it would play Doom without lagging.

My first built system I used a super socket 7 motherboard and chose an AMD processor due to the cost compared to the Intel counterpart. I still, to this day, have that motherboard and processor!!!!!

Talk about nostalgic. I keep thinking I should build that system as a killer fond memory.


Later in life I started going to LAN parties during the UT2003 era when XP was freshly released. I was still running Windows 98SE and had one of my LAN buddies talk me into installing XP. What

a time that was!!!! Now, here it is 100 years later (sometimes it seems that), and I'm still gaming, building systems, and rocking PC's!! Not fond of gaming consoles at all. Wife likes the XBox's but I don't care

for any of the consoles.


Well, enough babbling on and lets get to the meat of the post............The wanted game!!!!!!

And a huge thanks and to our awesome community member @WhiteNoise for sponsoring such an amazing giveaway!!!!!


Game wanted is: Back 4 Blood

 

[Deleted member 24505]

First PC i had was a texas ti99/4a, was a piece of crap, but when i was a kid there was no consoles, no pc's basically nothing. after that i had a atari 800xl with a 5.25" floppy drive which cost £70, that was a lot of money then, but what really got me into PC's was a real PC a AST advantage 828, which had pentium166(no mmx was early one) 8mb (yes mb) of ram, which i bought another 8mb stick that was £50 ( a lot) and it had a 2gb hdd, which my mate lee said was worth about £600 at the time, and a proper GPU, though i can't remember the make. The whole machine cost £2100, it was ridiculous amount of money then. but ever since that it's been PC's all the way for me. Hope my story is good enough. I'm in btw.

Game wanted, Dying light 2 Steam

 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

First pc i used was a 2006 Mac Pro (Snow leopard) it was the first intel mac Core duo with some radeon mobility graphics card
Played a bunch of indies from early humble bundles. on the machine Blocks that matter was an amazing game i remeber playing on the machine.
the first desktop i got was a Pentium D with no cooler My dumbass brain then tried to run it without a cooler
procceded to burn finger on pentium D because i thought toucing it to check it was on was smart
My first REAL pc was the one listed in specs. it was the first time i could play "modern" games and i love it
I'm in as well (Missed this oop)

Game i would like:

Assetto Corsa Competizione​

 

[Good Guru]

What brought me to the pc was the anticipation for Doom 3 and game graphics. My buddy said it was going to have some cool awesome graphics so I bought a video card 9600 pro 256mb, then I bought a Pentium 4 Northwood and 800fsb 865pe mobo, which I later added to it an x800 pro which I modded to xt, and I used to use ATI Tool! At the same time Half Life 2, Far Cry, Need for speed underground 2, Prince of Persia Sands of time (2003), and Painkiller was released. This is back in like 2004. But even before that I had a Celeron 466 mhz and Nvidia TNT 2 which could play Neverwinter Nights boy that was a fun game! The first game system I ever had was an Atari 2600.

Thank you and the game I would like is Battlefield 2042

 

[WhiteNoise]

Very cool to read all of these stories! Keep 'em coming!

 

[HD64G]

Wow! A great and kind move from your side and thanks a lot!

PC is the best all-round machine, the one that can be upgraded easily and the combo keyboard-mouse is the one that made it unique back then when I chose to base my computing life on it since I begun gaming on consoles much earlier since it was much cheaper. In addition to those reasons, strategy games that I liked were unique in PCs.

My game of choice is Red Dead Redemption 2.

 

[stinger608]

bump this up for the last day to enter!

 

[Shrek]

For me computers are an amazing impossibility

• 10 billion transistors running at 4 billion cycles per second (the human brain has about 100 billion neurons running at the Hz level)

near unimaginable and Moore's law is not quite finished yet.

• the way they have made the internet possible and how it allows a person to reach out across the Earth for near free

again an unimaginable impossibility, till now.

The history of how computing began analogue but was overtaken by digital driven by the need for error correction; and then there are quantum computers that may change the paradigm yet again, although I have doubts about quantum error correction and so the possibility of true digital quantum computers.

I started with the 1984 Mac not knowing then that the GUI idea was lifted from Xerox PARC but jumped ship a decade back when Apple started gluing things shut. Repairing machines lead to my no longer purchasing new PCs but just parts to repair abandoned units (all my computers are over a decade old)

Graphics have come a long way, although I am not sure if VR will go the way of 3D TV or not; but not just graphics, games have become so much more interactive that I think they fill a mental need for stimulation. I'd go so far as to say computers have enriched the human experience, but if Hawking is right AI may be the next step in evolution.

I haven't even touched upon how computers and the internet have changed commerce. If a device has a problem, one can look up the fix, then identify the best replacement part, find a supplier and then make an order all without leaving one's chair; even track progress as the part makes its way in.

I need to get the book: Fire in the Valley 3rd edition (I have the second)

I play games when I am burnt out and need a change, and recently enjoyed

• The Uncertain -Last Quiet day-

the story of a robot wondering what became of mankind.


I'd pick Assassin's Creed Valhalla for my Son more than for myself (it should appear on steam at some point).

 

[WhiteNoise]

The last day of the giveaway is here. If anyone else wants to take part, just post up before 11 PM PST today and you will be entered!

I want to give a big thanks to all of you that joined in! I really enjoyed the stories you all provided!

The winner this time around is:


Hachi_Roku256563

Congratz Hachi_Roku!

You're are set to private and I cannot send you a PM. We will have to friend up on Steam so I can send the gift to you.

Thanks again everyone for joining in!

 

[Space Lynx]

@Hachi_Roku256563 congrats!

 

[LifeOnMars]

Congrats to @Hachi_Roku256563 and thanks again to WhiteNoise for a great giveaway. Nice to read some great stories.

 

[Hachi_Roku256563]

The last day of the giveaway is here. If anyone else wants to take part, just post up before 11 PM PST today and you will be entered!

I want to give a big thanks to all of you that joined in! I really enjoyed the stories you all provided!

The winner this time around is:


Hachi_Roku256563

Congratz Hachi_Roku!

You're are set to private and I cannot send you a PM. We will have to friend up on Steam so I can send the gift to you.

Thanks again everyone for joining in!

Hey im sorry for being AFK
Ima try and Dm you to work somthing out
Not quite sure how pms work on this site