f13.net

I started playing games on a TSR-80 at the local Radio Shack with Pyramid, then on up to Ultima at the local Apple store, but it was the introduction of a C64 into the house that brought gaming to new heights.  I enjoyed the DnD Gold box, but the game that I remember fondest for the RPG experience was Wizards Crown (http://www.retro-experience.co.uk/atarist/wizcrown.html).  The combat was excellent and the character advancement was extremely interesting, another little feature was the ability to take your magic weapon and buy upgrades on it, so soon your group ended up with artifact weapons.  It was damn fun at the time, and have yet to run into a game that had as much fun packaged into it, though Dark Lands was a close second.

I got into computers pretty early on and actually wrote a decent number of text adventures in Basic.  I would have to say that the game that turned me into a diehard computer game freak would be Star Raiders for the Atari 800 (http://www.sonic.net/~nbs/star-raiders/).  I had played a number of games prior to this (no small feat as Star Raiders was like 1979) but this is the title that really got me hooked into computer gaming.  Since this title there have been many other games that have fueled my interest, but I'd say that this was my first real computer game infatuation.

My first PC infatuation was Civs. I didn't have a computer prior to my sophomore year in college, but one of my friends did.  We spent many hours planning the downfall of the evil Indian and Aztec empires.   If you want to include console games, then it had to be Tank! for my old 2600, or Contra after that.

A lot of the games I played on the PC early were either stuff I got from my mom, who was the first teacher in our school district to teach computers to Middle schoolers in 8th grade, which was a lot of arcade game rip offs and freeware stuff. I think the first commercial computer game I played heavily was King's Quest 1, then Leisure Suit Larry 1 and Police Quest 1. They were the bomb. I think the first game I bought for the PC was either Wasteland or some volleyball game.

The original Sim City and the gold box DnD games (Pool of Radiance maybe?  Eye of the Beholder?) were the first PC games I remember being hooked on.  After getting access to BBS's in the early 90's, I recall playing quite a bit of Captain Keen and other similar shareware titles.

Edit:  Oohh!!!  Does anyone remember Darkseed!?!?  It was a horror adventure game based on H. R. Giger artwork.  There was a Darkseed 2 as well, both were friggin amazing games for their time.

Good God- I can't remember the first PC game that got me hooked. When we first got our C64 back in the day, I had Omega Race and Moon Landing. Soon after, I started buying games like crazy- Summer Games, One on One (Dr. J v Bird), Mail Order Monsters, Adventure Construction Set ( :heart:). I stumbled onto the joy of renting and pirating games (I was a dumb kid..sue me), and acquired many more, including Racing Destruction Set and Wizard's Crown (which I actually tried to play recently, but couldn't get the emulator running).

My first gold D&D game was Pool of Radiance (not the malware sequel). I played all of them until I went to college and left the computer at home with my brother. In college, a friend had an Amiga and we played the living shit out of Earl Weaver Baseball. One guy even took the time to create enough real MLB players for us to have a draft and play a league. That game was eons ahead of its time.

To answer this question would put me in an age catagory I am no longer comfortable with.  So I won't.

Answer it, I mean.

And whatnot.

I started out with a flight sim-ish game, called Aces of the Pacific (http://www.mobygames.com/game/aces-of-the-pacific/reviews/platformId,2/reviewerId,246/).

I still have it in a box somewhere. (Xwing quickly followed Aces of the Pacific in the list of games that got me hooked).

I answered it.  I doubt you're older than me.

Be brave!!!

Edit: Summer Games and One on One brought back some fond memories. 

Signe, a slide ruler isn't a game  :-P

My start was with the Vic20.  The games came on cassette or I typed it all in.  The Ram was 8k and I loved it.  I developed a bunch of games using basic and that kept me busy for years.  My best creation was based off of Indiana Jones and the Lost Arc (that should date it well.)

Then my dad got me a Apple 2c and my programming days were pretty much over.  :x

Oh, yeah, I started my collection of gold boxes with Pools of Radiance.  I eventually grew the collection to something like 13 boxes.  My wife made me sell them in a garage sale about 2 years ago.

Where did you hide her body?

Heh, I held out for ... *counting* ... 10 years.  She would ask to sell them every damn year.  Finally I caved because I knew I'd never mess with emulators to get the stuff to play right again.  Plus, I looked at the graphics on the back and it made me shudder.  Nostagia is best left to my own memory and imagination.  I use that same theory with UO.

my first ever computer game was on a DEC-10 workstation (http://www.columbia.edu/acis/history/pdp10.html)... "Adventure"!!  ("pick up key", "I don't understand what you are trying to say", "pick up the key", "I don't understand...", "pick up the fucking key", etc.)

had a VIC-20 (space invaders, moon lander), C-64 (DigDug?), Apple2 (wolfenstein, Wizardry!!), 2+, 2C...

Best original and gold box D&D moment was also for me "Pool of Radiance" (also, not the schlock version).  I also had fun for awhile griping over Douglas Adams' HHGTTG adventure game ("pick up pocket fluff", "take analgesic", etc.)

In recent times, however, I think the game that gave me the most WOW factor and the most personally important (I spent several weeks recovering from surgery while starting/finishing it) was "Baldur's Gate" (the original).  I loved how I could wander the entire countryside in the framset and kill random spawing mobs, like I was levelling up as a D&D PC.  Wonderful story line too and was very innovative in UI and some graphics IMO back then.  /peace

Sim City with the god-forsaken red copy protection handout.
I spent many an hour playing Railroad Tycoon in ugly CGA.

Champions of Krynn Gold Box was so beautiful. Man, I loved that game. I can still hum the opening theme to this day.

Death Knights of Krynn was great, too.

Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny on Commodore 64 owned all.

Wasteland and Wizardry Bane Of The Cosmic Forge both in CGA. Paragraph book for the win.

The first Civ, the first SimCity and the first Populous for pc.  The first Zelda for console.

I can pick 4, can't I?

The first zelda. That's a clever twist on the topic of this thred.

Honestly, I didn't really like any of the old TSR gold box games. The first RPG I truly liked was Final Fantasy IV, but for some reason I kept playing the TSR stuff. Ah, and Ultima. Played them too. But didn't like them. I guess I've been gaming with a grudge since I was 5.

I think it was Kings Quest 3 that did it for me. The one where you started as the wizards apprentice, and you had to put him to sleep, and go out and gather ingrediants for potions to get your freedom from him. After that it was Space Quest and Police quest series. I also played all the Kings quests up to 5.

I also loved the TSR gold box games. Pools of Radiance was REALLY hard, but the one that totally sucked me in was Champions of Krynn, as I had just got finished reading the Heros of the Lance trilogy. I think I was around 11 at the time.

The first PC games I actually owned were Warcraft 2 and Baldur's Gate.

BG is what did it for me. Also, Tribes and TFC once I got my own PC.


EDIT: My console love got started at age 4 with an NES. SMB gave me what the local doctors called, "Nintendo Back."

All the kids were wrenching their backs to "make" Mario jump, hehe.

I also loved the Zelda games, a little-known title called Jackal, and a bunch of others.

Conan on our high school's cutting edge Apple IIe. Huzzah!

Oh the hours I spent playing Zork, Planetfall, Starcross, Scott Adam's adventure games. Starflight and Wasteland are probably the two where I knew I would never stop gaming.

Same with me - the text adventures were what really fired my imagination.  But then I played Adventure on the Atari nonstop - that game was made for mushrooms that turn purple when bent.

<------- Monkey Island 2.

Granted, there were tons of games before that. But that one was my first true love. :heart:

I lost a lot of sleep to Civ.  Course, the first damn game I catassed was Diablo.  Group of four of us got it and moved into their dorm for the next few weekends.  Was a fucking blast.  Drank more soda and ate more pizza in that span than I care to contemplate.

Defender of the Crown on the Amiga. That game seemed to have a little of everything, and before that, my only experiences were my brother's shitty Vic-20, my friend's Colecovision, and the occassional game of Combat or Pitfall on the 2600.

Wow, this thread has brought back a flood of beautiful and nostalgic memories.  Dammit Fargull, why did you do this to me?  lol

Ok, the first PC games I ever played were Panzer General, Tie Fighter, and Hell:A CyberPunk Thriller.

I didn't like panzer so much, not really into RTS.  I loved Tie Fighter, what's not to love?

As for Hell, I'd completely forgotten all about it, until I started trying to remember what my first games were.  I had this old ass junky computer, and I totally got engulfed by this game, Hell, and then *blam*, much to my chagrin, my computer kept choking on.  I never even got to finish playing that game, though maybe I should pick it up and try it again, now that it's like 11 years later and I have an alienware.  Then again, maybe it's best to let sleeping dogs lie.    :cry:

Hell was the last adventure game I think I ever played. Either that or the dark superhero adventure game EA made before EA became a bunch of dogfucking rapists in suits.

Hell was great. 92-95 was probably my favorite period for games (when adventure games were everywhere). Panzer General is my first love for TBS (you said RTS though..Hmm...).

Wing Commander owned Tie Fighter though  :wink:

EDIT: Was that "Dark" superhero game called Necropolis? Because I had that one too.

For computer games for me it was all about the C64 - M.U.L.E., Gateway to Apshai, Archon, Sword of Fargoal

Then came the Amiga Age - Civ 1, Empire, and a shareware Battletech sim I played the hell out of with friends

With the PC, the first game that really hooked me - The Bard's Tale. Then Civ 1 , Eye of the Beholder, Earl Weaver Baseball (with friends) and Ultima 7.

First PC game was a Broderbund version of Defender on the Apple II my grandmother gave us (me and my brothers) in 1980 or so. The next game was some fight game with a Conan-like character that could do a really cool decapitation move. Then a friend gave me his pirated Ultima II and it was all over. Pool of Radiance made me drool.

Oh, Wing Commander, Yes!  I played that after Tie Fighter, though.  *sigh*  Meeee-mo-rieeees......*singing*

Oh yeah, TBS - got my acronym's wrong.  ;)

Commander Keen in all his iterations.  Also The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past was my first console love.  I FINALLY got Houlihan's room for the first time on my emulator the other day.

Alright, I'll give. The game that got my engines running was Tele-Arena.

Well I feel young...

The PC games that made me a PC gamer was a little known Microsoft title named Outwars whose community was hyped as hell about Tribes1.  Once I started playing Tribes1 I knew I'd never go back to console again.

The PC game that made me realize just how damn cool the interweb could be was Diablo, the first game I played on my dad's computer was the original CnC.

RPG's have always been consoles, I loved FFVII, Chrono Cross and FFIII, I also always really enjoyed Ogre Battle as well as of course every Zelda ever made up to the SNES never owned a n64 or a cube.

Absolutely Ultima III.  I had played a lot of games previous to that for the 2600 but Ultima III really blew my mind as to what could be possible in a computer game.  I played PoR gold box on an Apple II, it was a lot of fun (I distinctly remember fireballing hordes of gnolls in there somewhere) but no Ultima.

The first Ultima I played alone (I played II and III at a buddy's house), was Ultima IV. That may still be my favorite game ever. I had pages and pages of notes, and I loved every painstaking minute of it.

Fireball in that game was the shitznit.  Watching all of those kobolds turn into X's and hearing those death cries over and over was pure joy.  The other was when my warriors would get 3 strikes per turn and would just mow them down when they were surrounded.  I can still see that image to this day.

Wow, I didn't think anyone else had ever heard of the Darkseed games.  I loved 'em.  Not really any replay to them though, as once you've figured out all the horror-endous puzzles that's it.  I wish someone would do an updated Darkseed game.  I think that license would do very well as a Zelda-style modern adventure game, albeit with Lovecraftian imagery instead of cutesy fairies and that damn Navi.

My first goldbox game that I can recall was an SSI battleship/naval combat game for my Commodore 64.  The title escapes me at the moment.  And yeah, I was into all the DnD stuff .... I miss the Pool of Radiance days.

EDIT: Oh and of course, all the Ultima games.  I even still have all my original boxes, from Ultima I on.  Once my UO addiction kicked in, I stopped keeping up with the single-player games.  So, I don't know if there even were any Ultima games past 1995 or so.

Darkseed. God love abandonware. (http://www.abandonia.com/games/420/download/Darkseed.htm)

Woot, thanks.  Time for a trip down memory lane ...

I just recalled the hours I spent trying to "SINK THE BISMARK!" on my TRS-80 also.

Thanks man! 

Yes, I would be all over an updated version of this game. 

Dark Queen of Krynn.  Because my friend had it too, and because meteor swarm was FUN.

Racing Destruction Set was the first game I got for my C-64. I spent so many hours designing race tracks for that damn game. I used to get these big sheets of graph paper and had a system where I could draw out the shape and elevation of each track piece. I severely dorked out on that game. Nothing more fun than racing on a track with moon gravity and dropping a land mine right in front of a friend. They'd would be airborne for over 10 seconds.

First D&D Gold Box was the original Pool of Radiance. Stayed up way late way too many nights playing that game. I ran into some bug when firing a spell/arrow diagonally across the screen. The spell graphic would fire at the target but then sorta miss. It wasn't like I missed the tohit roll. The spell graphic would barely miss where it was supposed to go, travel to the far side of the screen,  and wrap around making a new path just slightly to the side of the original. It would keep wrapping around, slowly moving across the screen until finally it comes back to the target from the other side and then hits or misses. It would take like 10 minutes for the damn thing to finish wrapping around. Still played the hell out of the game.

Ive always loved videogames, but it wasn't till Ultima 1 that I became a hardcore gamer.  The rerelease from the late 80s.
Ultima is still my first gaming love, though I spent about as much time with Microprose combat sims and the AD&D Gold Box series
as I did with Ultimas.

No console RPG series has ever come near Ultima for my rabid love, though I have a serious crush on all the Phantasy Star games, even the third one.

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord was my first game, though I too dearly loved the gold box games when they came out. 

I'm feeling very sorry for myselft that I never got to play any of the sequals to Champions of Krynn....  I remember DREADING the 2 hitpoint snakes with poison in the noob dungeon.  They used to mow down more of my characters than the fricking dragons at the end of the game.

My first multiplayer game was Marathon.  We had a leaked beta of the game that only had one multiplayer level ("Mars Needs Women!") and no single player levels.  4 on 4,  using the campus lines to conference call to everyone on our team.  We played HOURS of Marathon,  on the one level.  Damn was that game ahead of its time.

Holy fuck, was that ever a terrible game.

Ah yes, the first and last Mac game ever. Oh, wait there was Mist and Journeyman Project also. The latter of which I always thought was superior and could have been direct inspiration for many of the games we hold dear today, including (albeit a stretch) Deus Ex. God I loved Journeyman Project, it made my Mac LCII so much more badass than the IIGS we had when I was 5.

Please, Bob. PLEASE. Tell me something, one thing, that you DO like.

Please?

I could have sworn that Fallout came out after Marathon (at least I purchased them in that order).

[EDIT] Oh yeah, there was Myth too. I generally hate RTS's, but that was one of the exceptions.

Played both Myth and Fallout on my PC.

Hrmm, too many games to mention. The one that comes to mind would have to be Iron Seed, the game noone but me seems to remember.

I just meant that they were Mac only at release. Like Myst. Until the PC world realized that that whole "No good games on the Mac" thing was all bullshit.  :-)

Someone else remembers (http://free-game-downloads.mosw.com/abandonware/pc/strategy_games/games_h_i/iron_seed.html).

Caution: I don't trust the place I just linked to. The flashy banners scare me. Seems ok though. BUT NO PROMISES.

Neato, gotta give that baby a try after work.

Heh, I downloaded almost every game on that site a few months back.

I remember Iron Seed "the box".  :wink: I never got around to buying it though.

I've been gaming for so long on personal computers I've forgotten about more games than most of you have played :-D

Similar to Soln one of my first computer games I ever played (not including arcade games) was Adventure on a DEC TOPS-20 system though the turn-based Star Trek game was probably my favorite on that system. I grew up playing games on the first generation of "non-hobby" personal computers (the PCs you didn't have to solder the parts together for) with a couple of friends owning Commodore PETs, one friend owning a TRS-80, and a bunch of us with Apple ][s and ][+s.

Of that era, Wizardry I was the game that really got me into CRPG playing (Samurai + Murasama Blade for teh win!). I played Ultima I at around the same time but for various reasons I didn't like it nearly as much as Wizardry. It wasn't until Ultima III that I really got into the Ultima series. It's amazing (or amazingly sad depending on your perspective) how little combat in CRPGs has changed from the conventions developed in Wizardry.

I also played Wizard's Crown which Fargull talked about in his post and enjoyed that game as well. One of the greatest innovations in that game was having humanoid creatures that you killed drop everything they were wearing and wielding. To this day it's still one of the very few CRPGs to do that (the Gold Box games did that as well) and it still bugs me everytime I can't loot the weapon that the monster was trying to bash my head or slice my head off with. Grrr... Another cool thing about the game was you could have 8 people in your party (breaking the party of 6 convention that Wizardry had set) and that coupled with the fact that spears had a range of 2 squares meant you could setup some brutal defensive formations.

There weren't really any notable RPGs on the Mac in its early days (though Ultima II did get ported to it and I played it all the way through again) and my original IBM PC only had a monochrome video card so I didn't do much CRPG playing in college except for Rogue and all the Rogue-clones (Larn was my favorite of that era) on the various mainframes and minis at school. I also had A/UX running on my Mac II so I ported a bunch of those games over so I could play without having to dial in to a school's computers.

After college I bought my first IBM PC-compatible (the original IBM PC was purchased by my parents) and got back into CRPGs. I skipped over Pool of Radiance (that came out before I got my PC) so Curse of the Azure Bonds was my first Gold Box game which I enjoyed though Champions of Krynn was my favorite of that series. The world of Krynn with its interesting history, unique classes and races was more different from the generic Greyhawk D&D setting than the Forgotten Realms campaign setting was which made it more interesting for me.

I never played Dungeon Master since none of my friends had an Amiga or Atari ST so Eye of the Beholder was one of the more memorable CRPGs I've played of that era. Of course the graphics were incredible for a PC RPG at the time (woohoo full VGA graphics!) but what really made the game memorable for me were the sound effects. All the monsters had "footstep" sounds and they would move around in real-time so you could hear them creep up on you before you often could see them. For some reason the soft padding footsteps of the feline monsters would freak me out all the time.

The last really memorable PC RPG of that period (late 80s/early 90s) for me was Ultima Underworld -- a mind blowing game with a full 3D graphics engine far ahead of its competitors at the time (it took John Carmack and id *five* years after the release of UU to come out with their own fully 3D game).

Was that Bilestoad? That was a top-down fighting game where you could hack off body parts. It was kind of tough to control cause your legs and arms were on separate controls.

I would have never guessed that you were that old school, Trippy.

Hmm...Must be the avatar.

My first PC game was actually a gold box game. Pool of Radiance - on the PC emulator on my Atari ST, in all its 4 color glory (the emulator module only emulated CGA).

I then got a PC instead of the Atari because it had more roleplaying games and CGA just doesn't cut it.

Hmm, prior to that my memory gets fuzzy.

First Amiga game was Fairy Tale Adventures, first Atari ST game was Sundog, first Atari 800XL game was Football Manager, the first Atari VC-20 game was River Raid (the only game EVER my mother played with the rest of us, go figure that. My mom blowing up bridges and shit), the first Sinclair Spectrum Game was Manic Miner. Prior to that it was only basic games like Hunt the Wumpus or Tron.

My memory about such things is not so fuzzy after all, I'm scared about my obessions! I think I still can remember every first game I bought after moving to a new location (I know I'm settled in after one all-night session at my new computer table, that was so even as a kid).

Holy crap thanks for that website.  Found a bunch of games I hadn't played in years, Alone in the Dark (damn you uwe bol) (http://www.abandonia.com/games/91/AloneinDark1.htm), The Immortal (just a small fun game) (http://www.abandonia.com/games/399/Immortal.htm), Eric the Unready (http://www.abandonia.com/games/192/EricUnready.htm), Beneath a Steel Sky (damn where are the well written games now) (http://www.abandonia.com/games/58/BeneathaSteelSky.htm). 

Think I got started with the pretty much all the sierra titles, Police Quest 1, Leisure Suit Larry, Kings Quest, Black Cauldron.  But the original (I think) Might & Magic is what really hooked me as a gamer, much graphing paper was sacrificed to mapping that game out.  First sim game that I really loved was Gunship, now that was a great chopper game. 

First adventure game I ever played was Raiders of the Lost Ark on the 2600. Took me 5 months to beat it and no, I didn't use the cheat sheets. Then Adventure also on the 2600. Also on the 2600 was a great 3D Pac-Man clone called Tunnel Runner. That game was absolutely amazing for it's time. Go dig up an emulator and that rom and see for yourself. Then came  Star Raiders and Miner 2049er on the Atari 400. Then many years of nothing. Then Blaster Master on the NES. Then Populous and Phantasy Star II and III  on the Genesis. Then Ys 1-3 and Valis 2 and 3 on the TG-16 CD. Then Populous 2, Sorcerian, Thexder, the Kyrandia series, the Eye of the Beholder series, and finally the games that so far are the best I've ever played, the Elder Scrolls series, most notably, Daggerfall. If I have to give up all my MMOG's tomorrow, I'll be happy knowing Daggerfall will always keep me coming back into the best virtual world I've ever been in, bugs and all. I would give my left nut though for a TES MMOG.

Gold Box Games? First one I ever played was Curse of the Azure Bonds. But I'd have to say my favorites in the TSR line were the Dark Sun and Ravenloft games.

I got into gaming very early, both for games and myself. When I was a kid, my grandfather ran a regional road construction firm, and he'd often take me with him to the office. When he was in meetings, he'd plop me down with the sysadmin, who showed me how to navigate the file system and the basic commands (and how to use man pages ;)). So my first game was ADVENT, or Adventure, aka Collosal Cave, which eventually became the hobbled Zork series (no xyzzy or plugh? heresy!). I was only five years old the first time I played it (1975), so it was a bit advanced for me, but I kept plugging away during those meetings, getting an hour every week or so to play, so I'd have to plan my moves afk because my playtime was so limited. It was like a secret magic world only a few of us knew about. I finally beat the game, probably years later, and decided to get clever. I printed it out...the entire thing had been spooling and I dumped it ALL to the workgroup printer...I got in so much trouble for that, but I did get the printout, so I guess it was worth it.

I got into programming on the TRS80 at school and then the C64 at home, but I'll always remember the mainframe adventures I started on. Though I had played a lot of games prior, I think my first favorite 'pc' game was Ultima 4 on the C64, I loved the game world, the npc scheduling. I used to run a BBS back then, and it was half dedicated to Ultima 4 hints, actually made money with it, heh (the other half was a local skateboarding resource, good locations and whatnot). Raid Over Bungling Bay was another favorite on the C64. The game that re-hooked me after my stint in professional music  was Dune2, an RTS, ironically (since I don't like RTS). Playing Dune2 at my ex-girl's dad's house (competing for top score since it wasn't multiplayer) led to me buying my first pc since the C64, a 486/33 which I co-processored to a 100 (zoom!). Then Ultima 7/7.5 became my obsession, which eventually led to UO, and then LtM, forty-three implosions later, here I am.

It's kinda funny to me how many folks are 'into' computers now that they are becoming ubiquitous, the local computer shops are all run by kids who used to mock me for being a geek, a couple jocks and a stoner (the only 'good' shop is run by a guy I know from my old C64 pirating group, heh). So the world turns and now these guys look up to me. Crazy.

I feel old now :)
I bought this one for $80! We only had one pc shop in the area, my supervisor and I still gripe about how expensive he was. And my band HATED this game, I played it while we were on the road, heh. I never realized how loud my disk drives (dual, bitches, dual!) were, but they made me very well aware of it, often. But then, they were playing fucking super mario, which is probably my first known console bias.
I didn't tap into the gold boxes until I was on my 486/33, but my trick was always web/stinking cloud. Take that, Umber Hulks!
I forget when 8 came out, but I really liked it. So many folks panned it, which is too bad. Definitely needed the patch for the targeted jumping, but otherwise I thought it was pretty damned visceral. Ultima 9 was crap in a box imo.
Oh hell, yeah. Forgot about that one! My best friend and skate bud also had a C64 and we were always trading stuff. RDS was an incredible game. We also used to sit around sneaking his older brother's beers when we'd play 4-way multiplayer golf (hot seat style)...I forget which golf game it was, though. "Was that a tree?"
I'm writing this post as I read the thread, so I'm in this group as well. Quoted this for the Star Trek game! This thread is a fun memory trip, character-based graphics ftw!
UU was an incredible game! Wasn't it 2 1/2-d, though? I thought the npcs were sprite-based, though it's been so long I forget. Either way, it was so much more advanced than "find red key...endure mind-numbing generic hordes", it's not funny.

Yes the monsters were sprites but the world was full 3D -- e.g. there were bridges you could fly under and stuff. Doom and Duke Nukem 3D which both came after UU were 2.5D since you couldn't have a piece of geometry "floating" above another piece (i.e. for any given x,y pair there could only be one z value) though Duke sort of faked it with its sprite-based bridges.

Edit: stuff

Played some of this last night.  The sheer number of references to other games gets my nostalgia going.

I have forgotten more games than Trippy forgot.  And I'm still forgetting them.  Today I'll forget Heretic Kingdoms.  I'm almost up to date.

Geez, the Trash-80. My first computer, which was also sort of a console game since it had a cartridge port. Before that, the only game machine we'd had had been some shitty black & white multi-game Pong console with 2 knob controllers and like 6 or 7 games. On the TRS-80, I treid to program things in basic to save to a fucking cassette tape. Ugh, I still remember typing out like 7 or 8 pages of code to get to play some D&D type adventure game, might have been called Dungeon. My first PC type computer was a weird XT hybrid. It would load DOS, but it would also load Applie II programs as well, with some STAR floppy emulation shit or something. That kind of machine would be a heresy now. But I got to play some fun Apple II type RPG's. I still remember playing the shit out of Karateka (or some such) on that PC until I finally beat it. It was the shiznit.

The original Earl Weaver baseball is still one of my favorite baseball games. And yes, I was THAT GUY who programmed in all the stats for all the teams to make a season, and this was before it even had a season feature. Meaning I had to keep track of schedules and shit, and play all the games. I had no job and was in college, so I had nothing better to do.

Gold box games?  Played em all but they weren't the first by quite a bit...Temple of Asphaii indeed..


Wow that's scarily similar to my own gaming genesis.  Wizardry I was the first computer game that hooked me on the apple iie after the old TRS-80 adventrue games.  Hell I still remember the cheat to get a level 249 Bishop in that game.  Ultima 1&2 were ok, but you only controlled the avatar, no party.  For that reason I liked Ultima III  and beyond more. 

Hell, i still have a lot of my old apple II games and their boxes, including Wizard's Crown.  The tactical combat in that game was great, but it also had a quick combat option for those fights you knew you would mop up.  Saw the beginnings of Diablo style loot in that game too (lots of word modifiers to stuff i.e. Great Frost Spear of Doom).  I think I DL'd that somewhere; may need to fire it up again.

Archon and Karateka(sp) were lots of fun too and I can't remember how many hours I spend playing with the Adventure Construction Set.  Made some Norse themed game that I had more fun creating than anyone else ever did playing.

Great, now Im old too.

Xilren

Wow I love the internet.  :heart: :-D

Here's a picture of my first game:


http://www.atariage.com/software_page.html?SoftwareID=935

Combat ruled.

The first adventure game I played was Out of This World (http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/out-of-this-world) It was on my freshman college buddy's PC, and I still haven't finished it.  I found a Flash version I keep on the laptop, but my reflexes suck so much I still haven't gotten past the first animal that tries to eat you. Mis-timing that jump onto the vines = dead, every time. Still, it's fun even if I can't work through it. I miss good, challenging games like that rather than time-fillers for the Strat. Guide generation.

Universe (http://www3.sympatico.ca/maury/games/space/universe.html).

(Yep, that dates me pretty well.)

I loved universe 2.

Great games. Then they made 3 an rpg...

Hehe, I can remember being about 11 and trying to write text adventures with a friend on an Apple IIc.  Our knowledge of BASIC was limited, and we knew nothing of subroutines.  So we'd start with a grand idea, and go off to work, using "if...then" statements.

We never got very far before the whole project spiralled out of control into a mass of sphagetti code.

I didn't get to play it much, but that game was sweet.  Was it "Battleforce", or "Mechforce" or something?

My friends, who were playing it a long time before I saw it had some crazy mech designs.  The one I remeber most was a kamikaze style mech.  I had a huge power plant, armor on the front, little to no weaponry, and an unarmored back.  They would run it in, eating fire on the charge, and then when it got into close quarters with several other mechs, they'd turn it around so it would get hit in an unarmored area, go BOOM, and take out several enemies.

Elite on the C64. I was 14 and sold my small collection of AD&D modules to buy Elite. Never got bored of that game - the first 3D virtual universe where you were free to go wherever and behave however you wanted.

My buddy had this on his Atari 800, IIRC. We figured out a sweet way to dupe cash- sell all your goods, then jerk the save game floppy out of the drive before it could write. The cash remained in your account, and the goods remained in your ship. Rinse, repeat, and buy a dreadnaught.


Ahh good times- punitive games ftw. It WAS a pretty fun game, though. I guess that dates me too, but everyone already knows I have one foot in the grave.

You should probably mention that you only have one leg...

The first games that hooked me were Burger Time, Tron Deadly Discs, B17 Bomber ("BEE SEVEN TEEEEN BAAMORRR"- the speech module rocked) and Tron Solar Sailor on the Intellivision. I had a bunch more, but those really sucked me in for hours on end.

The original for me would be Atari 2600 Adventure.

My first real computer game was Microprose's Silent Service, and I played it for a long time. Before I had my own computer (I was... 11?) I was playing the Epyx "Games" series and Ghostbusters on my friend Max's C64.

Other games I played extensively on the Commodore included Pirates! (Microprose), Stuart Smith's Adventure Construction Set (EA), Earth Orbit Stations (EA), War in the South Pacific (SSI), Halls of Montezuma (SSG), and Reach For The Stars (SSG). There were lots of others, though, and I still have them all up in my closet here. I doubt half of them are bootable anymore.

EDIT: Though I'd dearly love to put Starflight on this list, I never personally owned a copy. I always played on other people's machines. The perils of being a gamer before you can hold a job.

Long time daily lurker here, this thread compelled me to come out and post my list.

Star Raiders for the Atari 800 (I think that's what it was).
Madness and the Minotaur (text game for my first computer the Trash80 - don't think I ever got past the second room but still remember it as fascinating)
Ultima 3 (Commodore 64)
Ultima 4 (all time favorite hands down)
Aces of the Pacific
X-Wing
Warcraft 2
Diablo

I jumped into the who computer game thing late.  I never really got into computer gaming until, well, Warcraft II on a P75. My family really didn't have a PC until then. Before then it was all Oregon Trail and Otter Pond on the school crap Mac and at home I was a hopeless Nintendo addict.

I don't even remember how I found out about it, but there was a BBS that you could dial into in Phoenix (there was on in San Jose too) called Head 2 Head.  It had great multiplayer Warcraft II that absolutely made Kali look like shit.  That eventually lead me into UO (with people from the BBS that eventually went kaput) beta and then it kinda took off from there.  I didn't fall in love with single player computer games until Diablo and Baldur's Gate.

I feel like an infant.

I think they've all been taken but here's another crotchety, old-fart shoutout for Wizardry and old-old-old-school Ultima on my folk's Apple ][.

Moving toward the present, I think the only actual gold box game I had was Pool of Radiance.

Lots of time sunk into Civ1, Pirates!, SimCity, RR Tycoon.  Then later DooMs 1&2, Diablos 1&2.

As long as you guys are busting the required genre wide open here...

I got hooked all the way back to ... Pong.  Yes, pong.  The console that hooked up to your TV and only had Pong.  Yes, only Pong!  Black and white and only a blip sound when the ball/pixel hit anything.  Oh and the buzzer sound when you let it go by your paddle.  My family had a lot of fun with that one.

Then to Space Invaders (dum, dum, dum, dum...)  First it was in Arcades (remember those? Oh how my mom misses all that money now.)  Then they hit handhelds, then to T.V. systems like Atari 2600.  Yes, Adventure was a big one back then.

I know what you mean Dren. My grandparents bought the Pong console. Two controllers - all it had were spinning dials to move the paddles up and down, no buttons. I think the thing even had 4 different play modes.

I had one of those, a  Binatone TV Game System (http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=3&c=1034)

My one had a lightgun and a shooting game or two as well.

It was rubbish :P It never hooked me like 2600 and intellivision games did a few years later on.

How about the 1982 version of the Nintendo DS (http://www.gameandwatch.com/screen/multiscreen/donkey/index.html)? I had several Game & Watch including one reviewed on Usenet in 1981 (http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Nintendo/Octopus.htm). Us schoolkids were crazy for them.

There was some really old game with crude graphics and and text parser input where you had to escape from a sanitarium.  I clearly remember if you simply typed "look up" you would be crushed by a falling piano no matter where you were in the game.  Just looked like a white square that got bigger and bigger and splat!

I am also convinced the original Bard's Tale series of games seemed designed to sell hint books with there highly annoying spin and teleport points strewn through out dungeons.

Damn, someone start a game show for all this gaming trivia.  Where else would knowing that the K.O.D.s Gauntlets in Wizardry2 could cast Tiltowait be useful...

Xilren

Xilren

Xilren

Oh man - Asylum was a great game.  I never got that far, but man those green halls got to me.

Just as a mention:  I still have my Wizardry Mordor Charge card in my wallet even after 16 years.
Sadly I have yet to find a Boltac's Trading Post to use it at.

E-gads I'm so freaking neophyte it hurts.

First game I played ever? Earthworm Jim. 1990.

When I was young I got a game on tape. Yes, at one point games came on cassette tapes! I think it was Boulderdash.

Temple of Apshai ruled. Especially the housewives with the frying pans.

I also played a lot of a psuedo-educational game called Robot Odyssee. (Only spelled right) You had robots and you could wire them up with AND and NOT gates and such like "when the bumper hits the wall, fire this thruster." You had to program them to solve puzzles, get keys and open doors, etc.

No wonder I'm such a nerd. There's no recovering from spending months of your youth wiring robots with AND gates.

I also programmed some text adventure games in BASIC. I remember the day I thought to myself "wow, it would be great if I could re-use this code" and then I found out that gosub existed.

I owned a couple different Apple and Atari computers but I never owned a PC until much later. Also had Coleco and Atari 2600 and so on.

Raiders of the Lost Ark for the Atari sucked. God it was incomprehensible. I fall into some pit, some Tse-tse flies bite me, I die...wtf. That game made me angry, I had no fricking clue what was going on.

My first programming experience was rewriting the entire few arenas of Telearena on my own computer in Basic so I could grind on my own and have more variety than like a bugbear and an orc and an elf. It was fantastic. When I was young I would grind. Now that I'm old, I just grind my teeth.

Yeah it did but holey moley what a slow game, even on a TRS-80. It wasn't as slow paced as, say, the original BASIC version of Computer Ambush, one of the greatest games of all time and the progenitor of all the turn-based tactical squad games to follow, but waiting for the screen to redraw in Temple of Apshai was just painful.

I had the Atari ST (?) version and it was fine. IIRC the ST was a pretty good computer for it's time.

Was the ST the rival to the Amiga?

Think I remember drooling over the box for Dungeon Master (I think that's the name, although not sure) on the Atari XT, which essentially looked to me like a very pretty version of the Wizardry games back then.

Pffft, that's cheating. The original ran on Z-80s and 6502s. The Atari ST had like a 8 MHz 68000 CPU.

I had Telengard on cassette.  This is when I learned that it can be a good idea to leave a computer on when not in use.  20 minutes to load the game every time you wanted to play!  Whoa.

I also had Dungeons of Daggorath on carttridge (Atari 800XL) that was fun but I don't think I ever made it to the third level.

A <space> L <enter> (Attack with left hand) - your timing had to be perfect to win a fight.  My brother and I would play this and chant A <space> L <enter> over and over again while fighting.  3-d first person dungeon crawl in COLOR in what 1982 or '83?

Then there was Eastern Front (front level WWII TBS) and some chess game that totally kicked my ass.  Oh and Temple of Apshai also.

GI Joe for Commodore 64 owned as well.

It was totally awesome. You could pick from a bunch of different real characters to play. I think i remember there being vehicles.

I totally forgot one of my early favorites- Escape from Castle Wolfenstein. When the SS guys came storming into a room, screaming in German, it was nearly enough to make one soil his or her favorite computer chair. I did like bluffing them though- if you timed it right, you could hold them at gunpoint with an empty gun, strip their bulletproof vest and all their ammo off of them, then load your gun with your new ammo and shoot them in the face. Now THAT is gaming goodness.

I always just assumed you were a his.  I never even considered you were a hers. 

But what I was borrowing a chair from a hers?

Oh hell yeah. ACHTUNG!!! *cleans up drawers* WAS IST LOS!?!? Arg! Playing late at night in a quiet house only intensified the effect.

You could barely understand what they were saying, too.

Heh, I was so adept with the C64 tapedeck, that I could hear on the sound the game made while loading, whether the azimuth needed adjusting...

Very first game? Pong in a pub. Then Duel (I think - two stickmen cowboys going up and down) and a very very early version of GTA - one "car" and loads of pedestrian stickmen.

First game I owned was a "fly through the cave" game I typed in myself on the ZX80. Had no way of saving, so I left the thing on through the night only to find it with the top all gooey with melted plastic.

Old favourites:
Spy vs. Spy on the C64 - best multiplayer ever.

Warhead (http://www.mobygames.com/game/amiga/warhead) on the Amiga - forget Wing Commander, this ruled. A friend had the Amiga. I would visit him, converse politely with him and his boring gf, who always went early to bed and demanded he did too, then I'd play Warhead all night.

And of course Elite. Played it on the BBC Micro. Then my parents gave it to me for the c64 - I remember playing all night christmas night. Playing the Strauss tune for my bewildred parents and trying to make them see how great an accomplishment buying that first docking computer was...

I had one of the Aphsai games on C64 CARTRIDGE.  The best version of Activision's H.E.R.O. on cart too.

Speaking of oldies though, does anyone remember War of the Lance?  For my teenaged self being able to pretty much fight the Dragonlance Chronicles was completely bad ass. Even if I couldn't ever get the fucking Minotaurs to join me. 

And don't forget Gods on the Amiga.  Beautiful game, awesome music, extremely long.

Got a lot of love for the Eye of the Beholder games too.

Yeah I played that and DragonStrike the dragon "flight sim" also set in the Dragonlance world.

Syndicate.

I was pretty young when I first got into games so alot of them are just a blur of king's quests, ultimas, zorks, wizardries, leisure suits, and various arcade games. I wouldn't begin to know what the first game I played was because I was easily too young to remember much of anything, and I was very casual about them for the longest time so most left little impression. It was Syndicate that got be completely hooked onto the genre. I just couldn't put that sucker down and it was playing that on a friends computer that finally got me the drive to bitch and moan enough for my parents to buy me a PC (before it was all friends and relatives hooking me up when I went to their places, though we did have an Attari).

How could I have forgotten the original Warlords!

I must have saved and reloaded a million times because my hero died to a ruin. Horse Lords for the win!

Warlords was great, although I much preferred Reach for the Stars from the same people (ssg?).

3d Monster Maze on the ZX81 was the thing that sucked me into computers. Elite and Civ1 took up months of my life up as did Football Manager.

Anything put out by Ultimate Play the Game was guaranteed to be superb (jetpac, Sabre Wulf, Knight Lore)

The best game I ever played though was Lords of Midnight. Armies, leader, strategies, annoying child sidekicks (cmon, who didnt kill Morkin asap?), dragons. There is blood on the plains of Blood........

Ah Syndicate. There are few video gaming experiences more satisfying than equipping your Syndicate party with chainguns and hearing their sweet firing sound while watching your enemies get blown backwards.

First PC game I bought and played was MegaTraveller 1: The Zhodani Conspiracy.

Before that it was all C64, too many games to remember....this was back when piracy was too easy and everyone had a copy of every game their friends had.

Oh Megatraveller. I think I spent many hours rolling up characters and looking how they will develop over the years, but I think I never played the actual games more than one hour. Next time I had that much fun in character creation was Darklands.

Warlords, now that was my first multiplayer experience on a computer. 7 regulars and the owner of the computer shop I frequented had a game going right there in the shop for almost a year (everyone doing his turn when he went there shopping, and we all did that quite frequently. A clever marketing ploy now that I think about it).