I started gaming on a Commodore 32k computer. I think that Zaxon was my first game! I sucked at it. I think that I threw my first controller in anger for the first time! If that had been my only experience, it might have been my last. Fortunately, I had a great friend who let me shadow him, as he played video game arcade machines during the 1980's. Thanks to him, I held on to the hope that I, too, might play video games in the future.
In 1996, with the purchase of a my first PC. It was one of those you could buy cheap from plenty of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ companies that you would find in PC magazines during that time. I think that it was "Cybertronic" or another name that has Cyber at the beginning of the name. My first born son was just 18 months old, at the time. It came bundled with some semi-educational multimedia CD's. I found Zoo Explorer's and Ocean Explorer's, which I used for my son. They were great. All of my sons, played those. They loved it. I happened to play a demo of Doom in that Bundle, I think.
That demo of the game Doom, changed my world. I didn't even finish it, for Doom II, from ID Software, had been out for almost a year, and I found a copy at Walmart. That was the first game that I ever purchased.
For two years, I bought, or pirated (I purchased copies of the ones I had pirated), every ID game that they made. Then, in 1998, the greatest game ever made, up to that point, was created. It was Half-Life...
That's the story of my beginning with PC Gaming. I will add more another time.