[SuperCoolAl]

I bought a joystick, and Freespace 1 came as part of the package. It totally blew me away. Incidentally, I never used the joystick for FS, I find the keyboard much easier. The only game I've ever used that joystick much with was X Wing Alliance (which FS pwns the s0x0rz + b0x0rz offz0rz).

The first system I ever played FS (and FS2) with was:

Pentium 2 233Mhz
64MB RAM
nVidia Riva 128 4MB
8Gb Hard Drive (partitioned into 4 partitions due to FAT16 space limit)
56k modem

In multiplayer games on FS2 I would finish loading (after about 3 minutes) and I would see the comments that everyone thought I was on a 386 (I even saw '086 more like!' once!).

[DIO]

I founded a 20$ package of FS2 in local gameshop in 2002.
Then I found the FS1 in localPCstore where I went to upgrade my PC. A great coincidence.

[Singh]

I played the FS1 demo a long, long time ago. But then I forgot totally about it.

Then i saw 3 cd's labelled Freespace 3 in a *cough* less than legitimate *cough* games store, and remembered playing FS1, so brought it thinking it was a good thing. Turned out to my surprise it wasnt FS3, but FS2 instead. But that didn't dissaud me, and BAM! I'm an addicted HLPer

[Ransom]

I got a gaming magazine which came with a booklet and CD of the 100 greatest games of all time (or something to that effect). The CD had demos of some of the games on it, and one of them happened to be FS2. The screenshot in the mag looked neat and I was a fan of Descent, so I had a look at it. Next thing I know I'm getting the last copy of some bargain games pack (Descent 3 and FS2), even though I already had two copies of Descent 3.

[Marauder]

Back in the day when I was eight and my family got its first computer, FreeSpace came with the computer (Windows 98, Pentium 3).  For my tenth b-day, got FS2 in a nearby game shop.  Unfortunately, I had messed up the colour scheme so that it was 16-bit (and FS2 wouldn't work), then uninstalled the game because mom kept complaining that if I wasn't using it, get rid of it.

Big mistake.  When the PC got fixed the following year, I learned that the installation disk was mortally scratched, and voila, I never ever completed FS2.  So...

[SuperCoolAl]

FS2 was also the first game I had that took over a gig of disk space.

[Arraxis]

I got Freespace for my birthday, and I thought it was Wing Commander meets Descent (I liked Descent and WC then, still do). After playing it, I was hooked.

Freespace 2 came later, as a birthday present for a different year. The first one I got was damaged, and luckily there was a wall of FS2 in the shop, so my Dad exchanged it for another.

[Cabbie]

Discovered it while looking at reviews of space sims on the net

[boewolf]

Me....  I was looking throught a local computer store and saw FS1 and thought it looked good....  Well I never looked back and didn't have to think twice about Silent Threat or FS2

[Unknown Target]

I played the FS1 demo back when I was just a wee lad, and eventually ended up forgetting the name.

Years later in '99, I was looking for a new game, and found Freespace 2 sitting on the shelf. Picked it up and been blasting shivans ever since.

But actually, about a year or two later in '00 or '01, I went to the states and went into a computer shop, looking for another new game. I loved FS2 so much, I found FS1 and bought it almost years after I bought the sequel to the first game!

[Andreas]

First time I played FS ever was when I got the OEM (Darkness Rising) version of Freespace 1 in the cd with some half-ass gaming "magazine". And they told it was full version   That was in '98 I think? Fortunately I finally got the full version (White Label) in November 2003.

FS2 (Gold edition) I got as a christmas present in...99/2000? Oh, those where the days And I still have it, though the box has mysteriously dissappeared over the years...

[T-Man]

Ahh, i remember that day well...

I was in PC world, and saw it on one of the PC's. After a little bit of working out the controls and shooting at something, i ntoiced that the thing i was shooting at (another Apollo, and the only other thing on the map) was the same as my own. Realising i didn't know what was going on, i worked out how to quit the mission, then restarted.

I played through the training that day, and then spent the next year looking all over for it.

When i finally found it, i became addicted, and have been ever since :thepimp:

[Primus]

I downloaded the FS2 demo and played it with my Pentium 166Mhz, 48 MB RAM, Voodoo2 8 MB system (worked pretty well). Later I downloaded the ripped version from somewhere..  And ever since I've been hooked. Now I have the ISOs, although I haven't yet burned them..

[WeatherOp]

Lets see, picked up FS1 and Silent Threat from Wal-Mart in 2001, I then played that game to death. Then I found the FS2 demo on the Silent Threat disk. I blew me and my cpu away. A year or so pasted and the only place I could find FS2 was off ebay fro like $40. Then 2 years ago, I found FS2 in a bargin bin at EB for $8. So I payed more for FS1 than FS2.

[Kie99]

It came free with my PC in '98.
Here's 2 horrible thoughts.  I wasn't gonna buy FS2 because it was £30.  I eventually did, and then I was gonna but silent threat for the same price a few months later

[NGTM-1R]

My copy of FS1 and Silent Threat were purchased at Fry's Electronics, where they were with the bargin stuff up at the counter, in mid-2002. To say I liked it was an understatement; it was a dramatic improvement from the Wing Commander games I'd played until then.
I actually didn't realize there was an FS2 for about another year, at which point I obtained it through means of somewhat questionable legality *coughkazaacough*.  I didn't stumble in here until last September, having been content until then to screw around with single player and FRED2 on my own.

[Nuclear1]

Played FS1 demo. Bought FS1 for birthday. Played FS1. Bought FS2. Played FS2. Played FS1 multiplayer for nearly two years. FREDed for SoA, then temporarily worked for Inferno. Now working on own campaign.

There. My entire history with Freespace in several very short (and choppy) sentences.

[Taristin]

FS1 OEM (Full version, but no patching allowed) came with my parent's PC. To display the awesome power of a P3 500MHz processor.

[Black Wolf]

The very first time? the demo for it came one one of these CDs that my brother had been getting weekly or monthly or something from work which had demos of various recent games on them. One of the ones on the last CD he bought was FS1. He installed it, and tried to play it It looked cool, but was far too slow on the crappy computer of the time, so he deleted it. A couple of years later my parents decided to upgrade their comp and got a whole new one in one of those package deals, and FS2 OEM came with it. Played through that and got utterly hooked - the other games were in the mail within a week of completion, and I'd downloaded several camps off the net before they showed up.

[vyper]

Mate got it from a uni lecturer, I then bought it after seeing it at his house, and thus...