I had a completely different experience. The moment we played Monkey Island for the first time after installing our brand new SoundBlaster-compatible cheap soundcard, bought with the money a couple of early teenagers can have, well, it was GLORIOUS. I still remember it vividly 30+ years later.
For me it was Epic Pinball on a Sound Blaster 16. Playing Duke Nukem 1 was awesome and all(wish I could go back) but when I heard the intro to Epic Pinball come out of these speakers:
https://assets.superhivemarket.com/store/product/190602/imag...
It was one of those moments where computers blew my 8 year old mind, I was never the same.
Same here. The first sound card (also bought with my own scarce money) was a huge improvement. I don't miss the PC speaker one bit. Pinball Dreams (Edit: seems like it was Pinball Fantasies} and a few other games could play somewhat scratchy sounding PCM music on it, that was cool.