Those usually only recognized the first three letters of a word. Therefore you could make some very nasty combinations that actually progressed the game.

Good times ....

I'm still quite fond of mid-late 80's PC gaming (RPG & adventure games especially), but my interest actually wanes with the awkward mid 90's games with early 3D graphics, and the glut of crummy FMV. Although it might be because I got frustrated because I couldn't run half the games at the time because of those things.

Now that I'm playing Heavy Gear, I almost feel it would be a better game without the FMV parts, ie. a ripped version (but I like the CD audio music during missions, hence I don't want to play an actual pirated rip).

To me, the HG FMV don't really add anything to the game, they don't really feel to be even part of the game. Possibly because they all seem to be situated indoors where the C-grade soap opera actors are arguing with each other ("You killed my son, private!", "No, you did! Sir!"), not much CGI FMV about the gears in action etc.

For some reason, the FMV in e.g. Starcraft didn't have the same problem, they didn't mostly feel just been thrown in, just for the sake of having something to see between missions, and give a job for a couple of homeless actors.

Back then (CGA/EGA era) I felt almost all PC games were just poor cousins of the games' Amiga, or even Commodore 64, versions. Same game, but with silly looking cyan/purple graphics, and beeper sounds tearing your ears. Who would want to play them when there were vastly superior versions available for cheaper home computers?

Falcon AT (with sharp EGA graphics running on a powerful 286 AT machine) was probably the first PC game where I felt "Daaamn, the PC gaming might have something after all...". Wing Commander 1 & 2 were the eye-openers: PC will have the most impressive games.

For me it varies from genre to genre, but mostly it's around 1995 and above.

No kidding. I grew up with a C64 and then an Amiga 600. PC games weren't all that appealing at that point. It was a good thing that my first real experience with IBM PC-likes happened to be just about the time VGA and soundcards were taking off in the gaming sphere. Speaking of the latter, it's quite amusing to see how they've become just teeny chips on motherboards these days.

As long as I enjoy the gameplay it's never 'too old'.

Depends on the genre, but most games I still love to play are from mid 90s. A good example is Wing Commander. I can't play WC I or II for a long time, even if I want to... The graphics and controls totally suck. But graphics and controls of WC III are perfect and I'm replaying it two or three times every year oO

I would argue that this isn't true with Doom itself. At least, not if you're running a sourceport (I don't know that I've ever played vanilla Doom, to be honest). The mouse and keyboard controls are perfectly fine, and you can even enable mouselook on some, if you really want to (although I can't imagine why you'd need it. I find mouse turning to be perfectly acceptable, since the game was built around it. Build games, on the other hand... full mouselook or GTFO. None of that "look up and down with the keyboard" crap).

But yes... I really can't deal with an FPS if it the mouse or keyboard feels off, or if there's no mouse support at all. Same reason I dislike gamepad FPSs, as a matter of fact.

For me, it's my generation that is relevant.
I can play the games from ~era when I first got a PC, but I cannot really hack the stuff before that...

The biggest thing for me is user friendliness. Controls that are fixed into awkward positions makes it really hard for me to get into the game - which means that I won't play at all. The actual age of my games varies, but the oldest are generally from the early 90's. I guess the oldest would by my Super Mario All-Stars+World cartridge, which contains a remake of the original Super Mario Brothers. While a remake, the stages and gameplay is essentially the same, so I consider it the oldest in my collection.

Now, there are old games that I have played but don't possess. That would be Dig Dug, Shadowgate, and Dangerous Dave for the Apple II GS.