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What were the first games you ever played?
poshniallo
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
This was inspired by a bit of nostalgia in the D&D chat thread.
I'm 39 years old. When I was a kid, my Dad worked for Taito. Although he wasn't a salesman, he sold a machine to his local pub, and took it out of the stores a few months before he delivered it (dodgy, yes I am fully aware).
But for a few glorious months I was the most popular kid on my estate, and had to lock everything very carefully at night because this was in my living room:
I got good at Invaders. Really really good in a way I've never matched in any game since. I'm not sure if you could play it indefinitely, and I was a kid before the internet was invented, so I didn't know about any of the technical exploits (counting your shots etc), but I could play a single game until the sun went down and my Mum made me go and eat my dinner (casserole? again?).
A few years later, I got my first home machine, a ZX Spectrum. I remember a lot of wonderful games for it, my favourite being Laser Squad, the prototype for the X-Com games:
I checked the release schedule, and realised that my first game must have been an adventure game, a genre which I never play anymore. It was frustrating, as they all are, but being able to go into my favourite book and explore that world was mindblowing:
Gaming was very different before the internet. You didn't know anything about a game other than the manual and the game itself. If you had a problem, you had to just bang your head against it until you sorted it. And because I was 12 years old, I didn't have any money for other games.
Good times, good times.
So what were the first games you played? The real first games you played, not the cool ones you bought later. Like your first album, it might not be great, but it was your first.
Reveal to the group your gaming cherry, please.
I'm 39 years old. When I was a kid, my Dad worked for Taito. Although he wasn't a salesman, he sold a machine to his local pub, and took it out of the stores a few months before he delivered it (dodgy, yes I am fully aware).
But for a few glorious months I was the most popular kid on my estate, and had to lock everything very carefully at night because this was in my living room:
I got good at Invaders. Really really good in a way I've never matched in any game since. I'm not sure if you could play it indefinitely, and I was a kid before the internet was invented, so I didn't know about any of the technical exploits (counting your shots etc), but I could play a single game until the sun went down and my Mum made me go and eat my dinner (casserole? again?).
A few years later, I got my first home machine, a ZX Spectrum. I remember a lot of wonderful games for it, my favourite being Laser Squad, the prototype for the X-Com games:
I checked the release schedule, and realised that my first game must have been an adventure game, a genre which I never play anymore. It was frustrating, as they all are, but being able to go into my favourite book and explore that world was mindblowing:
Gaming was very different before the internet. You didn't know anything about a game other than the manual and the game itself. If you had a problem, you had to just bang your head against it until you sorted it. And because I was 12 years old, I didn't have any money for other games.
Good times, good times.
So what were the first games you played? The real first games you played, not the cool ones you bought later. Like your first album, it might not be great, but it was your first.
Reveal to the group your gaming cherry, please.
I figure I could take a bear.
poshniallo on
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Pretty good time to start gaming. Got to follow a lot of the classic Nintendo franchises from the beginning.
Gave me a solid foundation to appreciate good gameplay.
Also, get off my lawn.
You get off my lawn.
I'll set the dogs on you.
I'm not even kidding, I lost so many hours to this game
To this day I still have never beaten the second level.
First and third I can piss, but that second one just fucked me around FAR too much.
The first game I remember playing was Space Invaders on a Sinclair Spectrum ZX81. Swiftly followed by all the usual suspects - Knightlore, Head over Heels, Jet Set Willy, and so on. Good times. I loved that creepy old dead-flesh rubber keyboard.
Read my book. (It has a robot in it.)
Archon
Bubble Bobble
Lode Runner
"Baseball"!
"Boxing"!
Fuck yeah Frog Bog.
Seriously though, it was pretty fun at the time.
Pitfall. Oh yeah.
The boyfriend of one of my mom's friends let me play it.
Holy shit I used to play that too.
That one was embedded deep into my subconscious.
I grew up in a very technology focused house, so I'm sure I played a lot of stuff I don't remember because it was so early. (I learned how to read with DOS commands)
first games i really got quality time with were FF4 (as FF2, of course) and super mario world.
there was also a bunch of PC shareware stuff, and some of the learning company games like treasure mountain
Milestone 2000. Which I'm looking for, by the way, if anyone has the rules.
Explorer GS
Some RPG I'm trying to recall the name of
Xenocide
The early King's Quest / Space Quest games.
Plenty of shareware games; I really don't recall all of them.
I'm young; sue me.
It has to be said that I wasn't particularly good at either of them. I only ever beat that chess program once and my attempts to become an ace pilot in Elite were drastically hindered by my total inability to dock at space stations.
Holy shit this was about mine. I remember my uncle had one hooked up to a big ass FRONT PROJECTION big-screen TV at their huge 4 story condo. The thing had like motors on it that drew the front of the TV out and had three big ass green/red/blue bulbs that went up on the screen.
I would get terrifed when he'd play Dungeons and Dragons and he'd get to the actual dragons lair. The sound was horrific.
Mr. Do, Mr. Do's Castle, Sinistar, Zaxxon, Black Knight pinball, Jungle Jim, Battle Zone, Tron and more
Then we moved and his new arcade had:
Double Dragon, APB, Ikari Warrior, Black Tiger and more
We had a TI 99/4a:
Parasec, bunch of games you had to type in from the computer magazines
Atari 2600: (Which got stolen with over 40 games):
Pinball, Warlords!, Stampeed, Indy 500, Laser Blast
Then IBM PCjr:
GHOSTBUSTERS! (So many hours lost), Pitfall 2 on cartridge... for a pc... it was so cool, King's Quest (The original version!), Police Quest, Thexder (About to be re-released on the PSP or the DS I saw) and on and on.... For christmas the first year I got Jet (From Microsoft), Flight Simulator (Ver 1 I believe), King's Quest and Seven Cities of Gold which I played a ton.
I never had a NES but I think I more than had a great gaming childhood.
Of course now I have two of most systems... maybe I am trying to make up for lost time.
My brother and I would play it for hours. We had a ton of other games on atari but that is the first one I can remember.
There were a few game-ish related computer programs related to this sublime television program back in the day. While a far cry from what we'd call a game today, they were my first introduction to the idea.
PSN:TheRockingM
PSN: Corbius
I'm not sure on the timeline, but I actually have a non-working TI-99/4A; as it came out long before the Apple IIGS, I may have used it (at least a little).
Such exciting titles as Exceltec Extended Basic, Number Magic, Video Graphs, Household Budget Management, Touch Typing Tutor, and BuckRogers are sitting in storage.
Still need to find out what's wrong with the silly thing and get it running again.
The more I think about it, the more I'm pretty sure it also functioned as a primer on how computers work. I remember diagrams of some sort, and, if I'm not mistaken, it taught little 7-year-old me what RAM, a ROM, and a CPU all were.
It's interesting to see that a Google search for "Tandy Town" and "Tandy 1000" together turn up nothing. The title may very well be lost to time.
PSN:RevDrGalactus/NN:RevDrGalactus/Steam
Even if we never quite learned what dysentery actually is, we all learned it was something you really didn't want to catch.
PSN:RevDrGalactus/NN:RevDrGalactus/Steam
i had Number Magic! I had the whole series too... like gator something (grammer?) and algablaster
I actually played Chopper Command for hours and hours. I would practice "landing" on the little convoy trucks on the bottom of the screen and everything. Heh, I even came up with little stories each time I played. Ah, to be young again. :P
I only really remember Pitfall because it is so famous now and because it completely infuriated me way back when. I don't think I ever beat it.
I also remember playing a fair bit of Defender as well. I can still hear the sound my ship's lasers made.
Missile Command was another game I remember fondly.
I've always had some kind of video game system growing up, but it wasn't until much later that gaming actually became a big part of my life. That is thanks to two games, Command & Conquer and Baldur's Gate. Later on Everquest would also play a huge role in my gaming life.
I don't know I never beat it :P.
According to Wikipedia you had 20 minutes to get 32 treasures. So I guess maybe you could "win", but it doesn't sound like it had an actual ending.