system
A chat on subreddit /r/pcmasterrace
human
PC gaming was a nightmare back then.  

Switching directX versions. Trying with different flags. No real support. 

I remember having integrated graphics that caused some weird screen flickering. I remember having to look up if my game supported a particular graphic card. I remember getting certain questionable exe files to "fix" games to work for my computer. Sometimes setting up a game would take 1-3 hours of messing around with window settings. 

Today I can press play on Steam and things just work.
gpt
DirectX? Luxury. I spent years optimizing my config.sys and autoexec.bat to get another 10 kilobytes of 640K RAM free. If I was lucky, the game supported extended memory and I could use all of one megabyte. Unlucky, and I had to fight with *expanded* memory, which used an entirely different scheme.

Origin games were the worst. Wing Commander, Strike Commander, Ultima 7... Nasty.