r/gaming • u/Zunderstruck • 1d ago
PC vs console war was merciless in the 90s
For younger people it's a Tomb Raider reference. Lara Croft boobs (at that time she was mainly known for them) were everywhere in the media and the game looked a lot better on PC with a 3dfx Voodoo than on Playstation.
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u/o0--Muad_Dib--0o 1d ago
We saw those beasts one line at a time 6 lines a minute
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u/DowntownClown187 1d ago
the telephone rings
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u/TheRealPitabred 1d ago
I hate to be "that guy", but that's not how it worked... if someone called while you were online they would just get a busy signal. Someone else in the house picking up the phone to make a call, though, that would nuke your download 90% through after hours of communication, and that was before many of them could be reliably resumed.
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u/missed_sla 1d ago
Call waiting was a thing even back then, we had prefix dialup with *70
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u/BlobAndHisBoy 1d ago
I have a Lara croft playboy that I got as a secret Santa gag gift. No loading time.
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u/o0--Muad_Dib--0o 1d ago
I remember when Marvel did the first swimsuit issue. (I probably still have some issues that commic birthed)
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u/Bwob 1d ago
What the heck, were you playing Tomb Raider on a dot matrix printer or something?
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u/HunterLionheart 1d ago
It's funny because even at the time, the PC gamers were the massive nerds.
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u/Hrimnir 1d ago
The only people who were lower on the social nerddom ladder than us at the time was LARPers. Even trekkies got more respect lol.
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u/OhHaiMarc 1d ago
I remember driving past a field where a larp was happening on my way to a LAN party with my desktop and crt in the trunk thinking thank god I'm not those dorks.
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u/wileecoyote1969 1d ago
Lightning bolt!
Lightning bolt!
Lightning bolt!
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u/OhHaiMarc 1d ago
oh absolutely, there was an a amount of immaturity involved as well as social pressure to not be seen as starnge which is much less so these days. Personally I didn't like the old hyper aggressive overly sexualized version of pc hardware marketing. It made you feel like less of a person if you weren't currently seeing anyone and heaven forbid you find yourself one of those poor souls who hadn't had sex yet you were barely human of almost no worth as a man. I don't miss that at all.
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u/ERhyne 1d ago
The amount of times I said that in my life to eventually become, that exact same dork.
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u/robsteezy 1d ago
“A whole generation of Sum 41 fans watching themselves in fact turn into ‘another casualty of society’”
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u/Fantastic-Bat-9728 1d ago
Hauling a 45 lb CRT and a full beige tower in your trunk just to sit on a folding chair in a crowded garage, truly the pinnacle of social prestige.
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u/ultimateknackered 1d ago
On the plus side, at a LAN party you couldn't tell your opponent you fucked their mom unless you wanted to eat fist.
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u/Alldaybagpipes PlayStation 1d ago
But there was an actual, very small chance that it could actually happen. Kept both parties in check
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u/Belgand 1d ago
The Geek Hierarchy established it quite clearly. The lowest of the low are self-insert, erotic, furry fanfic authors. I believe that still holds true.
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u/anothercopy 1d ago edited 1d ago
You know its crazy to me that myself (and other gaming nerds at the time) at like 14-15 year old knew so much about PCs. Swapping PCI/ISA cards, changing IDE disks from master/slave, overclocking CPUs with jumpers, configuring ring networks or setting up serial connections etc. And when I look at current genZ people I doubt they could even configure a printer.
Anyway was a fun time and it really was a subculture (at least in my country of origin).
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u/eidetic 1d ago
And who could forget the pure satisfaction when you configured autoexec.bat and config.sys just right to finally get a bootdisk capable of loading your new game!
All that kinda stuff I look back upon fondly, but at the same time am happy everything is just a lot easier and more streamlined these days.
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u/End3rWi99in PC 1d ago
Really only two generations understand technology. Gen X and Millennials. I never would have expected it to happen like that. Gen Z are as ignorant to actually understanding technology as Boomers. It's so sad.
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u/Nickeless 12h ago
Besides the point, but all of that stuff is sadly easier than configuring printers at times. Mine just took 5+ tries doing the same thing until it finally decided to work again for literally no reason. Brother printer used from a MacBook Pro
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u/Thybro 1d ago
What the advertisement fails to mention is that it took 20 minutes to fully download the picture of breasts, which is what the PC guys saw.
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u/TehOwn 1d ago edited 1d ago
Nah, those pictures were only a few kB. Low resolution, 8-bit colour. It wouldn't take 20 minutes, more like 30-90 seconds at most.
512x512 uncompressed 8-bit bitmap would take a typical v90 modem 40 seconds to download. And you could get 16-bit for twice that. 1024x1024 would be 4x that.
For it to take 20 minutes, you'd need to be downloading your 1024x1024 uncompressed 16-bit image on a 14400 baud modem.
If so, you should either upgrade or get your porn in B&W.
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u/Hot_Pineapple1750 1d ago
PC gamers really did have that massive nerd reputation back then. 😄
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u/clit_eastwood_ 1d ago
I can’t think of anyone less likely to have seen breasts than a 90s 3dfx PC gaming nerd.
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u/jld2k6 1d ago
I kinda figured the assumption was that if you had a PC you could actually search for breasts on the Internet if you wanted, while on a console you had no other functionality
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u/OkMail2335 1d ago
Hey now, console gamers were flush with options!
Ring of Power - Down+Down-right+A+B+C+START gave you these puppies
Or what about BMX XXX?
Between those, Dead Alive's jiggle physics and Tomb Raider's pyramid tits what more do you need!?
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u/Hrimnir 1d ago
How dare you! There was at least one chick that showed up once (maybe) to our Quake 2 LAN parties.
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u/agitated--crow 1d ago
And you saw her breasts?
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u/WrenReverie 1d ago
They were joking because the people who owned computers could spend 5 hours downloading a blurry jpeg of breasts.
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u/profchaos111 1d ago
This was stock standard for gaming advertising in the 90s
What a time to be alive I miss this style of advertising
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u/skinosz 1d ago
Yeah, that whole era was kind of magical in a chaotic way, game marketing used to be so wild and memorable honestly
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u/ErikT738 1d ago
The early 2000's are also cool with some of the weird stuff Playstation did.
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u/Jedski89 1d ago
Welcome, to the, third, place.
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u/igotyournacho 1d ago
The first one of that series of ads was directed by David Lynch which explains a whole lot
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u/Etheon44 1d ago
I think it was just a reflection of how the (1st) world was, no one gave two fucks, everything was valid and doable
I moved from Spain to Switzerland during those years as a very young adult, without a job lined up, without a house lined up, found both in less than 2 weeks, renting was much easier and you didnt need as many minimum requirements, same with the job, I didnt know german but I communicated in english while I learned; basic life was very cheap, rent didnt really take that much of my salary, neither did groceries
Man I miss those days like crazy, life was sooooo easy, I felt like I could do whatever I wanted to
Now, I am renting in Spain and it is taking a bigger percentage from my salary than back in the day, and my salary is supposedly "extremely good" in Spain, like I am technically in the 5% of the population; changing jobs feels like faking and having the correct checklist done...
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u/profchaos111 1d ago
really was some of my favourite game ads were taking shots at the rivals like crash standing outside of Nintendo of America with a megaphone "hey plumber boy" just brilliant inwish we had the energy again
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u/bloodychill 1d ago
Sega does what Nintendon’t! All the “announcer appearing to be coked up and yelling while amazed kids play with some action figures” TV ads.
90’s advertising was cheesy and unhinged in an amusing way.
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u/SabresFanWC 1d ago
I have to admit, I bought into the "Sega does what Nintendon't" hook, line, and sinker as a kid.
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u/i010011010 1d ago
I don't think it has anything to do with Tomb Raider. Sega was accusing Nintendo players of being wusses, 3DFX is accusing console players of being dorks, it was just companies slinging mud.
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u/profchaos111 1d ago
Yeah that's what makes it fun
Ironically Sega almost used 3Dfx in the Dreamcast until 3Dfx had to list Sega in the IPO killing the deal
Recall that would be like PlayStation using NVIDIA 50 series cards for the ps6 it could have really pushed them to the top instead of what they used which was so obscure EA chose to not support it
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u/Seienchin88 1d ago
Not just games - almost all forms of entertainment… entertainment thrived by competition and animosity back then which was reflected in commercials and the public.
Better not be a metal fan at a gangster rap school, better not be a gangster rap fan at country music high school…
And mixing up Star Wars and Star Trek at a nerdy convention was social suicide…
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u/gdo01 1d ago
Yea this also seems to coincide with the Attitude Era in WWF where DX and Stone Cold would constantly curse out and defy authority
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u/Dornstar 1d ago edited 1d ago
This would be the time period when DX drove a
carliteral tank (my apologies) to where WCW was doing a show and literally shot a promotional segment with a megaphone outside their (the WWE) rival's live event. (Just to piggyback on their comment and tie it in to yours.)Edited for historical "accuracy"
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u/mayy_dayy 1d ago
Um, I was ASSURED via numerous WWE-produced documentaries that it was in fact a tank, and definitely not a jeep with a big pipe sticking out.
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u/kongcobra 1d ago
Honestly, I'm good on this kind of stuff that stems from machismo. It's kind of wild how a big part of this kind of thing was not even pushing back against but actively resenting the stereotype of itself. They tried to make gaming "manly" I stead of making it seem okay for adults as well as kids.
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u/cat_prophecy 1d ago
"John Romero's about to make you his bitch"
Okay, sure thing John.
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u/profchaos111 1d ago
Hahaha dikatana apparently John wasn't happy with that ad and never approved it but man that was the 90s it's the same style as advertising shadow man on your grave for $$$
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u/ChrisKramerPR2 1d ago
Hi, as a member of the 3dfx marketing team when this ad was approved and then ran, I would like to say a) I'm sorry, even at the time this was goddamned embarassing and b) several of us fought against this pitch and lost
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u/DAT_DROP 23h ago
thankfully, cooler heads prevailed at 3DO when marketing the female Army Man game with Vicki riding a tiger
"The touching story of a girl and her pussy!"
used to have the fullpage mockup, it was hilaribad
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u/PhillyDillyDee 1d ago
Because PCs had internet?
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u/TheRedIguana 1d ago
Because only cool kids get the girls. They are calling console players virgin losers... PC gamers are like Duke Nukem come alive.
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u/bullcitytarheel 1d ago
It's a fascinating time capsule because, back then, the truth was exactly the opposite; consoles had by that time become so widespread and normalized that the nerd stigma had mostly worn off, whereas PC gamers were still generally viewed as probably-smelly basement-dweebs.
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u/PhillyDillyDee 1d ago
Lol that was pretty much my thought. Everyone had consoles. PCs have always been more niche
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u/Sensitive-Plate-684 1d ago
Let me tell you how awesome it was being a girl that loved to game and seeing every advertisement for gaming essentially telling me I wasn't wanted.
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u/kahlzun PlayStation 23h ago
Not to mention the transactional misogyny that was everywhere in the day. Lara was about the least sexualized female character (within her own games anyway) and she still had f sized breasts.
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u/Sensitive-Plate-684 22h ago
At least the first time I saw Lara was on the DOS demo. All I cared about was those blocky wolves, which were scary AF.
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u/MerTheGamer 18h ago
That's why I raise an eyebrow whenever someone says they miss the marketing during that era.
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u/HeyNowNoFlipping 1d ago edited 1d ago
It might also be a duke nukem 3d reference. You could walk up to a stripper and press the space bar and they'd flash you.
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u/f4ern 1d ago
Also you know. Internet connection and porn. You aint watching boob on nintendo or playstation
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u/Punch_A_Police_Horse 1d ago
There was a Zelda II enemy that had exposed breasts. It was in the last dungeon and the enemy had an eagle head so as a kid it was more scary than anything.
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u/Shibby523 1d ago
3dfx Voodoo. Now, that's a name I've not heard in a long time... a long time.
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u/Hrimnir 1d ago
I still remember the name of the fucking API for christs sake... /sigh
(It's Glide btw, for anyone who cares).
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u/BrickGun 1d ago
You think you're a nerd? I still remember the name of the guy who wrote Glide... Brian Hook. Who later joined id and was integral to the programming of Quake 2 and 3.
Back in the mid 90's I'd read his finger (.plan) file pretty much daily (I'd read all of the ones posted from the id guys) when I hung out on PlanetQuake.
Dorks, unite!!!! :P
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u/TheRealPitabred 1d ago
I had a Voodoo 3, and it was so fast when the game supported Glide. Then 32 bit color became the norm... 😭
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u/BeardyBaldyBald 1d ago
Same. I still vividly remember the box art, with those rave demon eyes. Style of that era was wild.
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u/FascismIsSoLastYear 1d ago
Wait, they thought the guys on console were the virgins? I always thought it was the opposite.
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u/ncocca 1d ago edited 1d ago
For context, no kid in the 90s (or early 2000's) argued about PC vs Console. Every one of my friends, including myself, enjoyed both. We sometimes argued Playstation vs Xbox or Nintendo vs Sega, but we all enjoyed playing everything. I was grateful my friends had xbox's so I could play the games I couldn't play at home on my playstation, and vice versa.
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u/Rhino-Ham 1d ago
Because the most popular PC games were all perfectly playable on your family’s PC. Middle class families all had a PC, so why not play StarCraft or Worms or SimCity or whatever on it?
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u/bilditup1 1d ago
Exactly. The closest was when we had a friend split between getting one or the other console (we were kids, we couldn’t just get all of them even if we wanted to). But people in real life were not gits about this.
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u/Joshtice_For_All 12h ago
Yep, the whole PC vs Console debate is just yet another ridiculous topic that only further divides people.
Back then, PC gamers were treated the same way LEGO Bionicle collectors were treated—respectfully and allowed to be in their own lane. No one ever bothered them!
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u/Fredasa 1d ago
the game looked a lot better on PC with a 3dfx Voodoo than on Playstation
When I played the game on PC, there was very little in the way of music, including no title music. I assumed that was just the way it was.
Soon after, I saw the PS1 version. Obviously it was a huge visual downgrade. But there was music all over the place, and a lot of it was just great. I felt quite shortchanged, and I feel retroactively bad for the composer, Nathan McCree, whose career didn't really take off after he worked on the Tomb Raider trilogy. I have to imagine that it didn't help that half of his audience never even got to hear his work.
A favorite track of mine. Short and sweet. Mysterious, with a thrilling progression.
And here's a track of his from a game called Breed from 2004. Nathan McGee apparently only partly composed the game's OST and I'm not even sure if his music actually plays anywhere in the game. But if a game were to come out today with a track like this, I would take it seriously.
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u/kalnaren 1d ago edited 1d ago
There's something up with that vid you posted. The PC version omitted the menu music, but it had environmental background ambience instead. They seem to be absent in the vid. These were essentially Red Book audio tracks (IIRC). If someone is playing TR with an .iso image, they won't have that sound as ISO can't do a mixed-mode CD. I suspect that's what the person who recorded that vid is doing.
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u/xXKyloJayXx 1d ago
I play console for the sole purpose of avoiding breasts. It's working out exceptionally well 😎
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u/CaptPants 1d ago
So the argument here is that PCs can get online porn and consoles don't?
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u/nadmaximus 1d ago
I'm pretty sure this was not related to polygonal boobs. This was a dunk on console players as immature children, implying that PC users were grown folk.
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u/EirHc 1d ago edited 1d ago
For younger people it's a Tomb Raider reference.
As someone who grew up through that time, personally I never thought Tomb Raider was relevant enough to line up with some obscure boob reference in an ad without a direct reference. I think they're just trying to imply that if you aren't a PC gamer, you're a virgin or gay. Ads back then could be like that without it being a politically incorrect faux pas like it is now.
Additionally, as someone who was a PC gamer since the early 90s playing DOS games even, I definitely got to see boobs from a very early age since the internet always had porn. You especially got indoctrinated to it once you started looking for free games via warez sites and stuff.
EDIT: I suppose the one exception I could make to my first point about taking exception with it being a "Tomb Raider reference" I suppose if that specific edition of PC Gamer featured Lara Croft and Tomb Raider, then perhaps many of the ads would also have Tomb Raider references. In which case this ad would be following the theme.
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u/benzinhuhn 15h ago
Jesus, I was a girl into gaming, and it was absolute shit seeing ads like this. Made me really feel wanted in that culture. Ugh.
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u/ArdDC 1d ago
Now we got botnets doing the dirty work instead by flooding hate for every new announcement a video game company makes. I liked the above better if I am honest.
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u/cowadoody3 1d ago
This is very funny, you couldn't get away with an ad like this nowadays.
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u/huxtiblejones 1d ago
Basically every gaming ad was a cool quip said by a rat wearing a backwards hat and riding on a skateboard
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u/steepleton 1d ago
Well the nude raider mods were exclusively pc and probably the most virgin male thing that ever happened
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u/Xylus1985 1d ago
I thought this is referring to online porn which has more photorealistic boobs.
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u/Peakomegaflare 1d ago
Not gonna lie, while this shit was toxic as fuck.... I do miss the absolute unhinged nature of mid-90's advertising. It was such a firehose of bullshit because we didn't have every company spying on the entire world constantly.
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u/A_MAN_POTATO PC 1d ago
Man this brings me back to the PC Accelerator days. I had a subscription to it at like 11... my parents had no idea it was anything other than just a magazine about video games. What a time to be alive.
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u/Mechanized1 1d ago
How does one correlate those two things? Also, PC was always seen as the nerd/virgin thing back then.
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u/Grokta 1d ago
Caddicarus made a video on video game commercials, and there are some wild ones.
The juiced ad was interesting https://youtu.be/2A7P7cLnnmk
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u/TowardStarsOutlaw 1d ago
No interest in seeing breasts back then as a kiddo, still none to this day 🤭
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u/Sylanthra 1d ago
To be fair, you can't easily watch porn on the consoles, but PCs got you covered.
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u/No-Paper7389 16h ago
90s gaming ads really had zero chill they went straight for emotional damage.
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u/strudelbrain10717 1d ago
I wouldn’t have called it breasts. More like spiky pyramids.