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How did you find FS2?

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Firesteel:
I think I had a friend introduce FS1 to me around 2003 and i learned how to play it on an IBM thinkpad and the keyboard nub. Pretty much since then i've been playing the series at least once a year and it took shockingly long for me to find the SCP or start talking on here.

Like herkie I just use a mouse and keyboard and, apparently to a friend's horror, default controls.

Mongoose:
Most of the specifics of how I first came across FS have been lost to the mists of time. What I do remember is that my neighbor across the street had a crazy LAN setup in his basement (his dad did some sort of IT work), and he introduced me to Descent 2 and then 3. On the one shelf in their basement there was a game called Descent: FreeSpace, and I remember being incredibly confused. "Wait...is that another Descent game? Or an expansion pack? Or what?" For whatever reason I don't think I ever asked my friend about it, so it remained a mystery. Fast-forward a bit, and I stumbled across a trailer for FS2 on...I think it was Descent 3's disks. I didn't have any context for it but it looked really cool. At some point I guess I figured out enough about it to pick up a copy of FS1 in a store, and obviously I fell in love with it and played the hell out of it. I even bought a second copy because it came with Silent Threat...not the wisest investment in retrospect, but on the plus side it introduced me to The Destiny of Peace, which was great.

As for FS2, that was a tricky prospect back then. As we all know its sales didn't exactly set the world on fire, and it was largely unavailable outside of overpriced eBay listings (I didn't even have home Internet access when I started playing FS1). Eventually I heard about the Home of the Underdogs cracked version, but it seemed like a daunting prospect to an online n00blet, so I never followed it up. All I could do is play and replay the demo, and marvel at the fantastic graphics and the spectacular nebula. Then one day my lucky break came, as Interplay announced a special re-release of the game for their 20th anniversary. I remember getting my mom to mail in a check to pay for it, as this was when online shopping was relatively new, and I certainly didn't have my own card at the time. When I finally held the full version of the game in my hands, it was a dream come true, and it more than lived up to every bit of the hype I'd poured into it. Fast-forward almost two decades, and even though I don't play nearly as much as I used to, every so often the bug bites me once again. It's well past time, come to think of it...

(Oh man, I had that same Wingman Force 3D that Rhys linked in the OP, and yes, it was absolutely a piece of junk. The twist sensors were completely borked within a year or two.)

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