[Polpolion]

When and how did you guys first experience freespace and come to enjoy it to the extent of joining this board?


It happened to me like this:

One day when I was in third grade or something, my older brother brought home some games he borrowed from his friends. IIRC, he brought HL:OP4, Fallout 1,2, Roller coaster tycoon, and Freespace 2. I played OP4 all the way through and spent a little while on Tycoon, but then I tried freespace. It was the best. I had it on two computers, and was playing it at different spots on both. Eventually on my computer that I have in my room, I got to the second to last mission, of course, I didn't know it was the second to last at the time, but then my brother had to give it back, so I was Freespaceless. Then my HD broke and had to get it formatted. Up until a bit over a year ago, I would off and on spend a few hours on the internet looking for it every few weeks. Then, one humble day, I stumbled across this place called 'The Freespace Oracle'. It pointed me to the HOTU, so I got that version. But then I had to format my HD again because it got a virus : . When I got the computer set up again, I got the HOTU again, but the FTP was down. It was then that I signed on to this forum for the first time, because I wanted to learn more about and join the modern FS community. So I finally decided a more ambitious method of procuring the game. This great person, Zman, had an FTP or something with the ISOs on it, but at the time I didn't know exactly how ISOs worked. I got it anyway, had some trouble mounting them and stuff, but eventually, with you're help, I finally got retail working. At my next birthday, after many failed expeditions into the SCP, I got a computer upgrade. I immediately got the SCP, and finally played with good graphics.

[Turey]

Descent: Freespace came with my IBM Thinkcentre computer with Win98 on it. I got addicted to it, and a few years later re-installed on my new comp, then went looking for FreeSpace 2. I found the SCP site, then wandered over here and signed up.

[wtf_cl0vvn]

Let me also mention, beforehand, that one of the first FPS i ever played was D2.

My dad got me FreeSpace 2 for my 10th birthday (i believe). I installed it, played it, and fell in love with it almost instantly. i played it all the time until i beat it, and then I played through all of the missions that came with it (the Game of the Year edition), then I played it again, and again, and again, and you get the point. Incidentally, that was the first game that i ever played online, on PXO...

I've had installed on pretty much every computer ive had since then, and ive finished it countless times...still havent been able to survive the supernova 

a little while ago (last semester) I started searching for more answers to the storyline, and [unmentionable] freespace 3 [/unmentionable]...and after some google , i ran into Karajorma's FreeSpace Oracle...

from there i went to the scp site got the upgrade...and im still playing freespace, and bringing initiates into the FS universe.

[/nostalgia]

[NGTM-1R]

I actually read the strategy guide some years before I got the game, about the mission to escort the Plato specifically IIRC.

In this case, though it was several years ago, happened to be at the front counter as one of the bargin-ish things at Fry's Electronics in the form of FS1+Silent Threat CDs in just a case. Had spaceships on the cover. Was suffering from post-Kilrathi Saga withdrawal, so I grabbed it.

Found FS2 while trying to get a somewhat questionable copy of FS1 after my first FS1 CD went MIA. Found HLP two years later while I poked through the links on the offical FS2 site on a whim.

[Trivial Psychic]

A friend of mine showed me FS1 and then FS2 some time later.  Is wasn't until a couple years later when I picked up my old Logitech WingMan Strike Force 3D (for the unimaginably low price of $50, at a Costco in Toronto) which came with the 1st act of FS2, called "Freespace 2: Colossus".  Played that through several times, then went out in search of other FS games, found FS1+ST at a local Future Shop, and bought it.  Played it a couple times before searching out FS2 again.  Eventually, I downloaded it off of KaZaA, but it was mostly the same as the HOTU version, though the original HOTU version had no voicefiles and the last cutscene, and the KaZaA version I had before DID include voicefiles, but no cutscenes.  Eventually, the friend that intro'ed me to FS, let me borrow his game for the purposes of copying, which is how I have my current copy.  That was almost 4 years ago.

[asyikarea51]

Started out with D2, never played D1. At the time I was still running Win95 on a P166 with only 16MB RAM, and I didn't have a graphics card, so by the time D3 was long considered obsolete (and after I had access to a "better" computer), I could finally play it. The D3 I purchased had FS1+ST bundled with it. Some time later I ran across an FS2 strategy guide off PC Gamer (and one LONE advertisement), then heard a fellow schoolmate talk about it.

You could say that, while people racked up kills in multiplayer D3, I was stuck (and still having lame fun) with D2 solo and a demo level editor.  While people either escaped or got blasted apart by the Capella supernova in FS2, I just started participating in the first Great War. And only FS2 appears to have the "proceed without penalty after failing 5 times in a row"...

Forgot about FS2 since then. A few years later when it came back to my head, I tried to find it at retail, no luck as expected. Surprisingly, D3 and FS1+ST were still being sold at the stores (no buyers - everyone had moved on to newer games like maybe Far Cry and so forth). Eventually I forgot about it... again.

Couple of months back, I started thinking of FS2 again (was it the lagginess and crappy combat of X2/X3 that influenced me to go back in time?). Obviously, with FS2 being so old, I couldn't find it in stores, so I scoured the 'Net. (Who appreciates old, hitherto games nowadays in this land of top-notch graphics and trend-following... ) I think I ran across somebody's ISO's (Freespacezone?), then I stumbled across HLP and Shivan's pack (which meguesses was newly released; it was still 367/368 builds).

That's how I got here...

[Dysko]

FreeSpace 2 was a present from the Christmas of 1999 (IIRC). It was my first space sim on the computer I had recently bought. I didn't play with it very much, I finished it six months later, fried by the supernova...
At the time, I didn't surf very much on the Net, so I didn't knew even about the 1.2 patch...
A year later, a friend borrowed me FS1 (without ST), and played it (finished in 1 month).
When, 2 years ago, I bought the PC I am using now, I reinstalled FS2 and downloaded the 1.2 patch. I still used the retail FS. One year ago, when my father bought the ADSL line, I found this forum, and everything changed.

[Kaboodles]

A 10 mission FS1 demo came with this joystick I got sometime around '96-'98 (I don't remember).  Anyways, I liked the game, and wanted to know what happened after capturing the Taranis, so I got the full game.  I loved that too, but eventually forgot about the series.  Some time afterwards while going off to buy some game that I don't remember anymore, I saw Freespace 2 on the shelves.  I didn't have enough money to buy both, so I ended up buying the other game and thinking I'd come back for it later. 

Well I forgot about it again, and when I finally remembered, the game was nowhere to be found, outside of ebay where the bids were going into the 60-70 dollar range.  I gave up all hope of playing this game and moved on.

About a year ago I found this place.  Amazed at the progress you guys made, I downloaded it and have been having a blast with it since.

[Wobble73]

I first played FS2: Colossus, however mine came with a Voodoo2/3 (?) graphics accelerator card I had bought along with Carmageddon 2 and a few other games. I played it through and quite enjoyed it (Although I was a bit disappointed with the ending, thinking this was the full game). Any way I gave that graphics card away to my brother-in-law after I had built my own rig and built him one out of my spare parts. I stupidly gave him the disc with Freespace2 on it as it also had the driver that disc for his graphics card. That was four years ago. Earlier this year I had was a little fed up with the FPS's I had been playing and decided to go through some of my PCG and PCF demo disks I had collected over the years and came across the FS2 demo on one of them. I installed it and played it through. Wow! I thought, this is cool, I want it back. My brother in law had since changed houses and computers a number of times and now only really played football games on his PS2 and therefore lost the disc.

From that point I scoured the net looking for it and came across this site, found an FTP with the iso's on it (possibly Zman's) and had a friend download and burn them to a DVD for me. Once I got the DVD from him, I managed to burn the images to disks and then downloaded all the SCP stuff on to a memory stick (256mb) and slowly built up my FS_open file with various campaigns. 

[666maslo666]

Well, Conflict FreeSpace 1 was my first game. I bought it with game magazine in 1999 when i got my first computer. I was always into sci-fi and enjoyed this game from the beginning. When I got my second comp in 2003, one of the first games i installed was FS1. I always wanted to play FS2 but cant find it because i havent got net and noone of my friends liked scifi games.  . Then we purchased dialup and i found Freespacezone cds, my friend downloaded it for me but they didnt work because of corrupted isos or what.  . When we finally got DSL i downloaded fs2 cds from DC++ network, then found scp and hard-light. I cant stop playing this awesome game from then! 

[Mobius]

About three or four years ago I wanted to buy a cloche for my birthday. I bought the Logitech Wingman with the FreeSpace Demo.

I haven't considered it a lot in the first period but then I started loving it. I wanted the full version and obtained it from another Italian with eBay. Now I'm here.

[Bob-san]

For me...

About 4-5 years ago, I was starting to get into gaming. My uncle gave me an old Thrustmaster joystick that was on MIDI. I used that for a while, and eventually that old thing broke a bit (it works, but the rubber is old and brittle, and it interferes with playing). So, we went out to the local CompUSA to look at a new joystick. I liked the joystick I found; a Logitech Wingman Force 3D (force-feedback all the way, baby! I can't imagine playing WITHOUT force feedback). The stick was bundled with an OEM game... Freespace Colossus. I played it once, about half-way through, and then forgot about it.

Well, my hard drive was reformatted, so I needed the Driver CD for the joystick. I installed Freespace again, but forgot about it once again. I then got a PNY GeForce FX 5200 with my own money, about 3-4 years back. I readily played all games that I could, as graphics were much better (upgrade from ATI Radeon 7000/VE). So, about 2 years ago, I was playing Freespace Colossus on-and-off. I ended a few months ago with downloading SCP, the 3.6.9RC7 build. I still use that build on the same old computer.

[Kie99]

First got FS1 with my computer in 1998, got Freespace 2 about a year later after randomly seeing it in GAME.  Found this place a couple of years ago, discovered my old POS computer wasn't good enoguh to run FSO, got a new computer a couple of months later, downloaded FSO and here I am.

[aldo_14]

FS1 demo borrowed from a friend, just about the time FS2 was released.

[lordfreespace]

I first learned about Freespace when I read the review (in Pcgamer I believe), and saved up to buy it.  Having only my parents computer (an old Parkered Bell [sp?]) a 233 mhz proccessor, no 3d card,64 ram, I beat it several times, played it to death and eventually learned about it's sequel Freespace 2.  Let me say that I still have both Freespace1 and Freespace 2 retail and that I thought freespace 2 died a couple years ago.  Just very recently did I find out that the community was still active when i got the internet finally at my apt.  I decided to go to the official Freespace 2 website only to find that the webpage hasn't been updated in years, all of the links dead or abandoned. 

However when i created a myspace account and searched for freespace 2 movies so I could put on my page (I found one called "Flail SCP") i clicked on a link for something called SCP.  I then found the Freespace 2 source code project and to my delight saw that it was not only active but updated almost daily. That eventually led me here, but unfortunately I'm having trouble getting the fsopen downloaded and working. but that's a different thread. 

I've loved freespace from the very beginning (i've used the handle "lordfreespace" for years now on every game,forum,blog,account I've been a part of) and I hope someday interplay gives up the licence to FS so we can have a proper sequel.  But for now I'll live with the awesome user campaigns and mods (looking forward to playing the Babylon 5 [another great passion] mod).

Love this game and you guys are a great community!

[Dark Hunter]

My father is an avid Descent fan, so he bought FS1 since it had the "Descent" prefix in the title. He got to perhaps the second mission before he got bored. So, I picked it up. That was something like seven years ago... anyway, I was browsing on-line a year or two ago, and saw FS2. I'd never heard of it, but I wanted it the moment I saw the title. Unfortunately, none of the computer stores I called had ever heard of it either. So, I went to eBay, and managed to get the 20th Aniversary Edition. While I'm browsing GameFAQs boards about a year ago, I saw people on them talking about Inferno. I thought at first that it was FS3 ( ), but eventually someone directed me here to check it out. And so... here I am! 

[Freespace Freak]

Wow!  There are of youngies in here.  Anyway, my Dad bought me my first PC as a graduation present from High School.  This was 1999.  The first games I bought were all Space Combat Sims.  First I got the X-Wing 1995 Collectors Edition, which included X-Wing, Tie Fighter, and XWvT.  Next I got X-Wing Alliance, then Freespace sometime around October or November of 1999.  Somewhere around April of 2000 I got FS1.  I didn't even know this site existed until about six months ago.

[Roanoke]

Saw FS2 in PCZone's top5 space shooters. Ranked second, incidentally, but I couldn't find X3 - well Vigin didn't have it but they did have FS1&2 White label. Found the VBB, lurked for a while, went off-line for around 18 months, googled Freespace after the VBB had apparantly died and found HLP. Should have joined Freespace Watch too, but never mind. That was back in, I dunno, early 2001 ?

[Flipside]

A friend of mine had got a Voodoo graphics card, and FreeSpace was touted as one of th best games to run under Glide, so he picked it up, we were both absolutely blown away by it. Oddly enough, I bought a Voodoo 2 a couple of years later and bought FreeSpace 2 thinking it was FreeSpace. Imagine my surprise when I first saw the Beams....

[bizzybody]

I first saw Freespace 1 in a demo video on some PC magazine CD, thought then that it would be perfect for a Battlestar Galactica conversion. Never had FS1 or FS2 until years later when somehow I found the New BSG conversion for SCP, then I got the retail ISO's and after playing that a bit I got a new Athlon 64 comp with a naff Geforce 6500 PCIe videocard and just had to go with SCP on it.