I was extremely happy to acquire a copy of an old PC Gamer issue from June of 1996? Why? This was the first PC gaming magazine I was exposed to by my friend Girard who was an avid PC guy. I remember him telling me “Mike, it’s great! It covers all the latest games and comes with a CD-ROM loaded with Shareware/Demos!” He started naming off the demos: Strife, Rebel Assault, Afterlife and tons more, this was stuff that you couldn’t download because it was simply just too damn big to download off a 28.8 modem! My friend gave me that issue, shortly after he was finished reading it and I was hooked. I went out to the newsstand and bought the next issue, then spent hours enjoying the demos on the CD! This magazine put the final nail in the coffin for my Nintendo Power subscription as I was already getting sucked into PC Gaming at this point anyway with my shiny Packard Bell, Pentium 100 computer. Yes, PC Gamer magazine was my new found companion into the PC gaming phenomenon.

Browsing through this issue, I’m flooded with a ton of memories of PC games I forgot. The articles in this magazine where well written and the reviews still hold up by today’s standards. Reading this reminds me of what I was doing with my free time in 1996: being a 14 year old teenager. I followed the magazine for the next few years after that, but stopped reading it due to my increasing interest in music production. Sadly, I threw my collection of them away back in 2002 when I moved in with my girlfriend. (now wife.)

Finally, reading this also reminds me that I eventually separated from my friend that gave me the magazine because I didn’t agree with the poor choices that he was making and didn’t want to be associated with them. Hopefully, he’s doing alright today.

This article was originally posted on the Gamer Logic Facebook Page on 9/05/2013.