Dirty jokes on a kid game AND false information (there were no twins in Sims 1) on one picture! That's the Sims franchise we all know and love!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3iddmpQE0Y

Actually I am sure I remember the reason I got all the TS2 expansion packs as well and why I got each of them :D

University was of course the first expansion. If you didn't know, the first expansion for the Sims 1 was called Livin' it Up, and it was quite different from the expansions that we have today which are quite often themed. I didn't play enough computer games at the time to know but I wonder if the entire concept of an expansion pack was a new thing? Anyway, Livin' it Up contained a lot of improvements to gameplay and general things which were so useful that it was basically considered THE essential expansion pack. So I assumed that the first TS2 expansion would be the same, and made sure to get it as soon as it released.

It wasn't really as general as Livin' it Up, and it turned out that over time, it didn't matter if you had Uni or not because the more general features it added, like Lifetime Wants, would be added with any subsequent expansion. But I didn't mind, I like Uni as an expansion pack.

I didn't get any more expansions for a while. I was worried about my computer not being able to run the game. But at some point we got a new computer, and I was very very excited about the new expansion, Seasons. I really really really wanted Seasons, because it looked so pretty, I really wanted weather, I loved the idea of the seasons changing as well. I am pretty sure that was my second expansion, and the last one I bought while living at home.

In 2007, I moved out of home and I had a much beefier computer, so I upgraded with OFB and Pets. I can't remember if I got Nightlife at the same time, or whether I got this later. I just know that I bought all three of these titles second hand. I remember that Bon Voyage had just released, but I wasn't particularly interested in it.

By the time Freetime came out, I was pregnant with my first child and I remember getting that one new and installing it. I also got Apartment Life straight away when it released, I was very excited for that. I didn't have any of the stuff packs at this point.

I have a copy of BV on disk, and a few different stuff packs, but honestly, I do not remember ever installing these via disk. I have a feeling that the first time I ever installed Bon Voyage was when I upgraded to a Windows 10 computer, and my discs would no longer install. I know now that there are ways around this, but at the time, the prevailing knowledge was "disks broken on later OSes. Use UC." So I did, and I have ever since.

Interesting that they released this under different names. I knew Vacation/On Holiday had different names, and that made sense, but not that Livin' Large did as well.

It is interesting what simsfreq says about his concern that the computer could not handle the expansions... At that time, getting a computer with decent RAM and video card was something within the reach of few, I remember that my game had a lot of lag and I was never able to activate the camera of special events.

I've spent many hours playing various games, but TS2 was the first game I've played for several years, across several computers, and always want to come back to, even if it sometimes takes a while for me to do so.

I could almost hear my first laptop creaking under the weight of the EPs after installing FT (which is why I waited with the rest until I got a new computer). But then again, with 512 mb RAM and no dedicated graphics it probably wasn't meant to handle extreme gaming (although someone I knew who had a bit more knowledge about computers than I did at the time did tell me the thing was surprisingly decent for a laptop).

For being a somewhat average laptop for its time, it held up amazingly, though. I did throw about 10 GB of CC at it, and I did have to endure 3 hours of loading time every single time I wanted to play. And for a good long while I played almost every day. The last time I opened the game I had a feeling it would be the last, because for a while it had black-screened at random while playing, to the point i had to restart if it happened, generally was slower than usual, and that particular time I tried to build something, and it spent at least 5 minutes laying down floor tiles (from clicking to anything happening on the screen). I think I tried using the laptop a couple times after that, and the last time it didn't turn on, even with the power cord connected. So long, and thanks for all the fi... uhm... simming.

I have so far exhausted 3 computers on this game

I'm a "her" BTW And yes, I was living at home with my mum so I didn't have a lot of power in my computer. I think we had a graphics card, but I have no idea what it was. Maybe there are some ancient threads by me here. I don't think I used to post anywhere else, apart from MATY and Simbology. Someone had told my mum that computers weren't really designed to play games, and she shouldn't let us play games on the computer since we had a games console to play them on, but there weren't any Sims console games at the time. She compromised by letting us have two games installed at a time. This is hilarious looking back - the fact that we genuinely used to think that having games just installed would somehow overload the computer. We used to diligently uninstall one of our five games in order to install a different one, and we'd rotate them like this.

I only just had the minimum amount of RAM to run the game IIRC so I used to carefully open task manager and cancel as many unnecessary processes as I could, like print spoolers. And definitely antivirus. Trying to run antivirus at the same time as the game was just a total fail.

Or you're really a sim and managed to get alien pregnant lol.

Yeah, computers used to come with all sorts of free stuff. That computer came with Sims 1 and Zoo tycoon if I recall correctly.

I never experienced this, as I always built my computers (right from the first PC- I even built a RAM pack for my first ever computer, a ZX80 when I was nine! ) I do remember when you could buy games bundled together though. One of my favourites was The Orange Box, which contained Half life 2, Portal and Team Fortress. Also I had a lot of really old game bundles for computers like Commodore 64 and Acorn Electron, you could also get games on the discs which came with PC magazines. Mostly I used to program my own games, I remember I wrote a really complex adventure game as part of my coursework, but it was a bit tedious to play!
This was an early game that I remember buying for a Commodore I had:
https://archive.org/details/Big_Mac...85_Mastertronic

Sims 1 Deluxe edition. It was from second hand store and there were newer sims at the time also. After couple of moths I asked TS3 for Christmas but got TS2. It was nice also.

Well, I was like 9 years old and had never used a computer before, it was also our first family computer, so at that time I wasn't in a position to build my own. Though, I've come a long way since then and do indeed build my computers and such these days.

Oh, I wasn't implying I was better or anything- just that I was older and remember the time before PCs!

I can clearly remember a time before home computers of any kind. I was nearly thirty when I first messed around with a computer, a ZX81 that I borrowed from a teenage friend for a few days. I didn't play games on it but I did try to program it, though I had no way of saving my programs. By the time I gave it back. I had a "graphics program" of sorts running on it, randomly turning pixels black or white.

My first computer of my own was a Commodore Vic-20 that my sister's children had grown out of. (They had moved on to an Amstrad 464!) The Vic-20 didn't seem to be good for anything except playing games, and none of them held my interest for long. I messed about writing simple BASIC programs for it too.

The Sims 2, which I didn't get until 2012, is the only computer game which has really held my interest. It's ability to create believable -- even inspiring -- characters, and participate in their lives simply blew me away. My best friend is a Sim, and I think I'd find it hard to live without him.

Build my own computer?? I've forgotten how to!!!

The graphic card I bought for my second computer came with a game (but I can't remember which - I don't think I ever played it. I think it was a popular one, though). I got an install code for Fortnite with my current laptop/Nvidia card (also never played - I think I tried, but had some trouble with the installing, and ended up abandoning the try, putting effort into Sims instead).

I connected up my mono cassette recorder to mine, oh my goodness it took so long to save a 1K program! And even longer to load it again...

Edit: found a pic of someone doing the same- for anyone who wonders what the heck I'm talking about!

All these fricking technological geniuses lol. I wouldn't have a clue where to start building a computer.

I think I probably could have built a desktop computer some 20-25 years ago, when it was mainly a matter of putting cards into slots. I wouldn't know where to start today -- especially not with laptops. And I'm pretty sure that the putative computer that I might have built at the turn of the century wouldn't have been good enough to play The Sims; certainly not to play them well.

There are things in modern PCs that I really don't understand at all. Things like multicore processors that can do several things at once. When I learned what I know about computing in a conversion course in 1991-1992, all computers processed one instruction at a time; the good ones doing it very very fast. So-called multitasking was achieved by quickly switching between tasks.

Either SimCity 2000 or 3000 was first for me since we already had that and I obviously had no idea what I was doing. Shortly after it was The Sims and later with Vacation and Superstar (also had no idea what I was doing the first few years) and at some point had Hot Date but the computer said no. A few years later I was my friend showed me The Sims 2 and it was mindblowing! Nearly 2 years later I got my own copy with Family Fun Stuff because mum said Double Deluxe was inappropriate Played that for several years with more expansions (and super dodgy ancient cc) and played a bit on console with other people, and on nintendo ds and the gba version on the ds. Eventually I got TS3 a few years after that came out and I stuck to it for a solid year and got me 3 expansions and 1 stuff pack (the computer sturggled soooooo much). At some point I went like "eh" and went back to TS2 and got better cc. As I got busier over the years I'd switch between TS2 and TS3 and even go a while without playing. A few years ago I tried TS4 and it was awful so I went right back to my usual.

Wait until quantum computers are affordable for home users- that's when things get really complicated to understand!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_computing


Honestly, I think if you were interested in doing it, you would soon be able to figure it out. It really is just slotting components together, the most tricky bits are knowing which mainboard is compatible with which components, and how much power you need. I used to build rigs often for family and friends, and I worked as an IT tech for many years in schools and colleges, doing everything from turning it off and on again (the solution to most problems) to maintaining and designing servers, infrastructure and software. I had no formal training in computing (apart from O-Level computing, which was mostly BASIC programming, and some stuff I did in my engineering electronics courses, which was mainly making 8080 processors do fun things- nothing relevant to today's PCs or Macs!). I was completely self-taught at all the skills which landed me those jobs, so it must be easy for me to understand it! I just always loved taking things apart and figuring out how they worked, and making them work better- I used to read magazines to figure things out, but now it's easier because you just ask the internet. My advantage was that I loved all that stuff, whereas many people would not be at all interested, and that's good because those people do all the stuff I can't!

Computers coming with free games still sort of happens. I got three months of xbox ultimate with my computer. Think netflix, but for games.