[Angelus]

( white box with FS1+ST:R+Fs2 )

wat

oops, i meant of course Silent Threat, not Silent Threat: Reborn.

[Nuclear1]

( white box with FS1+ST:R+Fs2 )

wat

NO U

[Timerlane]

Just shows that people are subconsciously retconning the original out of their minds, entirely.

The Descent name. I could tell it wasn't 'really' Descent, but I saw it in a store and gave it a shot, anyway. Feels so long ago, but I still do remember holding that box with the fold-out Lucifer flap on it. Found ST a bit later at another store.

I really don't remember when I got FS2, though; I think I just happened to be browsing through the games section of CompUSA, and lo and behold, there be a sequel!

I found 'here' quite some time ago, thanks to I think either morris or Corsair(114?), who I met on another forum; I lurked and played a campaign or two that was hosted here(the Port, and Technological Superiority are the ones that leap to mind), but was confused about what this 'FSOpen' stuff was about, until, I believe, 3.6.8 or 9. I found one of the offline installers and went from there.

[Aardwolf]

As for myself...

I had gone through D1, 2, and 3. Once, I had seen (on the jacket for a demo CD for Klingon Academy) an ad for FS2... but I had no idea what it was, and it didn't seem related to Descent. Then I saw FS1 and ST in a "Dual Jewel" box on sale at Best Buy for $14, and seeing "Descent" on it made me get it. Obviously it wasn't Descent, but it was fun regardless. Then I discovered the demo for FS2 in the ST extras, played that, and asked (and received) for FS2 my birthday ($68 on amazon... in retrospect, I feel like my parents got gypped, paying for that).

I discovered FS2_Open either in my junior or senior year of high school (2005-6), and HLP.

[Colonol Dekker]

Played the freespace one  demo, I still own the CD it's on. Fell in love with the Apollos and Orffs design, was keen to see these '2K long' caps mentioned on the blurb. Thought it'd match the colouring scheme of the two aforementioned. Conjured up images of what an Orion might look like.
 
Bought the game week of release, thought the Orion was ugly as sin. A week later and i'm swearing at the Lucifer as the Galatae goes boom so loudly I get told off.
 
 
The rest is history, also Squadwar, VBB and HLP.
 

[Droid803]

TrashMan posted some screenshots on some other forum from the Celebration of FS thread (shiny). Read the wikipedia article. I heard it was free. I downloaded it from the FSO installer when it still gave the whole game.

[Nuclear1]

Oh also, FS1 multi with Hurricane and shockwave.

[NeoKnight]

My older brother purchased a Logitech joystick that came with a CD called FreeSpace 2: Colossus. It spanned the entire first act of the game, minus the SOC loop and the cutscenes. So my brother thought this all looked very interesting and installed the game on his computer. He was halfway through the first training mission when I happened to walk by (I was probably six or seven yrs old at the time), and for the first time in my life I laid my eyes on the greatest PC game ever. I had no idea what it was, but something about it just drew me like a magnet; I promptly proceeded to kick my older brother off the computer and take the controls. I played the game like a madman for the next few months, but after the completion of the first act and heavy use of the multiplayer, I began using my parentally-allotted PC gaming time for other purposes. Eventually though I came back to the game and decided that I needed the full saga. So I strategically purchased both games for another brother as a Christmas gift (which was a wonderful excuse to basically obtain them for myself), and was soon once again immersed in the wonders of FreeSpace. I don't remember how I found HLP (I probably have Google to thank for that), but a few years ago I stumbled across it and was exhilarated to find a healthy fan-base for a then 9-year old game. Then came FSO, which blew my mind. I'm still recovering from that. And now here I am, all because of a CD that happened to be in an old joystick box.

Oh and I broke the joystick a while back: too many times when I hit the burners and DIVED.

[Blue Lion]

Played the demo, bought the game in '99.

Still have the demo and all the boxes/disks/manuals

[Kolgena]

Back when I was around 8, my dad bought a computer that came with the "half" version of FS2. It had all the missions up to Feint! Parry! Riposte! excluding all SOC missions. Was my favorite game back then, and bought a joystick for it exclusively too. I think I got all the way to Lieutenant twice on Very Easy (lots of play throughs, I know).

Then, one day like 2 years ago, I got bored and started googling images of FS2 ships, because that's how cool people spend their free time. Came across a gorgeous Perseus (the HTL one in the current MVPs), which I thought was a really cool render. Browsed a little more into this search result, and found HLP.

From here, I downloaded all the game files, mediavps, and a couple select campaigns. Although my joystick is no longer supported (it's analog), FS2 is once again one of my top-played games.

[IronBeer]

FS1 came with a joystick my dad bought a long time ago.... I wanna say around '98-ish? I didn't immediately play FreeSpace- the first game that got me on flight/space sims was Rogue Squadron (and the first real workout for that joystick, which I still have, by the way). One day, my dad and I were digging through some CDs we had apparently forgotten about and found FreeSpace. Once I figured out how to play, I thought it was pretty much the coolest game ever made. My formative years are quite shaped by FreeSpace- the intro movie still sends chills down my spine.

I knew about FreeSpace 2 pretty much from its beginnings (thank you, PC Gamer), but never actually got it until finding HLP (GoG download). Don't remember much how I ran across HLP- before this, I'd poke around on Volition Watch and play the good missions and campaigns there. Somewhere along the line, I had heard about FreeSpace going open source- some investigation led me here.

So, basically, I'm like a 10-year veteran with the GTA.  

[Ninja edit]: Almost forgot to mention, I still own those original FS1 disks... so, yeah...

[Grizzly]

My favorite gaming magazine (PC Gameplay) had an article on space sims. Freespace was obviously included.`

[TrashMan]

Avoided FS like the plague, since it was stealing the thunder of my beloved X-Wing series.

But got REALLY bored one day, popped in a CD with game demos and decided to try FS.

The rest is history.

[karajorma]

One of my friends had just got a PC and invited me around to try it with him. No games so all he had to play was a PC Gamer demo of Freespace.

Played it, liked it, had no PC of my own. A couple of years later when I got one I was looking for games to play to test it out and I came across the big box FS2. I remembered how good the demo was and since it was only a tenner I decided to take a risk and buy a game I'd never read a review of previously.

And I'm still here.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Was looking for some game demos when I ran into an FTP site download of something (can't remember what) so I loaded up FTP since HTTP download kept dropping (dial up).  Put in the sites FTP and saw a really big file (it was in German so I had no idea what it was except that it was a demo).  Grabbed that while I was there.  Turned out to be the FS2 demo which I had never heard of FS2.  Played it, went online and played the multi demo and got hooked.  Had to order and send the CD's back twice before I got a working set (talk about torture).  Been playing it ever since. 

[Fury]

Back in 1998 I read a short review of FreeSpace in a magazine called MikroBitti. The review piqued my curiosity but it took me months to actually get around getting the game. Mostly because I was unsure I'd like it, despite it scoring 90/100 in the review. Well, it was probably late '98 or early '99 when I finally got FS1. Later I got Silent Threat expansion which was a mild disappointment.

When I learned that there will be sequel, I pre-ordered it and visited the shop almost every day asking "is it here yet?".

[Herra Tohtori]

I got the White Label package of Conflict: FreeSpace The Great War and FreeSpace 2 in one box, in what must have been some time in the early 2000's. 2002 most likely.

Played both games as their original versions, then left them for a while. Some years later, I found some random site with a few mods and tossed them into the retail directory (which, of course, was necessary with Retail anyways but left me wondering why I kept seeing Bosch Beer containers in the original campaign).

Then I discovered The Babylon Project and played through it. However, when I moved out of home and got my own PC in 2005, my beloved TBP didn't work, and the troubleshooting I did for it lead me to discover FS2_Open in greater depth. For a long time, I simply played what I could get my hands on, then I started to slowly get into making content, learning about GIMP and different texture formats as I went.

Been a pretty interesting pastime so far.

[Spoon]

Then, one day like 2 years ago, I got bored and started googling images of FS2 ships, because that's how cool people spend their free time.

Hear Hear 

[Black Wolf]

My brother got the FS1 demo on a compilation disk he scored from hos work at the time I believe, but s much as I begged him to try installing it (I loved descent), we didn't have a computer capable of playing it at the time. So I basically forgot about it until My parents bought a new computer with the FS2 OEM on it, which both he and I loved, so he bought FS1, ST and FS2 online (I think), and promptly refused to let me play the full version of FS2.

So I installed FS1 and ST on my own computer (no 3d accelerator, so my options were limited) and got hooked on FRED, before finally convincing him to put FRED2 on my parents computer (he still wouldn't let me install the full FS2 at this point BTW). I was part of the community, and FREDding with FRED 2 for literally years before I ever played the full FS2 campaign, so I was well and truly spoiled for things like "DIVE DIVE DIVE" and the like. Actually, come to think of it, I've only ever played all the way through the main FS2 campaign once in my entire life. Must have been half a dozen of the first act though.

[Wobble73]

I got FS2:Colossus bundled with some other games when I bought a second hand Righteous Orchid Voodoo 2 Accelerator card (yes my pitiful PC at that time only had a 2mb 2d VGA card  ). I didn't really play it through back then as I only had keyboard and mouse, no gamepad/joystick.

Then about three to four years ago, I was looking through some old demo discs I had looking for something new and different to my usual type of game to play (I was heavily into FPS's), found the FS2 demo, played it through and enjoyed how it played with a gamepad, then I moved heaven and earth to obtain the full game, while looking for patches for the game, I came across Kara's FAQ which in turn directed me here.

Believe it or not I had never heard of game mods before finding this site, so this opened up a whole new world for me. I can now go through my back catalogue of games and look for mods for them.