Your Gold Box game. What was it and why?

[Lum]

Universe.

(Yep, that dates me pretty well.)

[Furiously]

I loved universe 2.

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

[Arnold]

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.  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.

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.

[Arnold]

and a shareware Battletech sim I played the hell out of with friends

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.

[Tale]

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.

[WayAbvPar]

Universe.

(Yep, that dates me pretty well.)

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.

(from the link)The first thing you want to do is hire a crew and buy lots of provisions. Each hyperspace jump takes 6 days no matter the distance of the jump, and if you don't have enough provisions, you starve and your player disk gets formatted. This was a big problem, so it was important to back it up a lot.

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.

[Furiously]

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...

[penfold]

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.

[Stormwaltz]

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.

[Runnyb]

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

[Rasix]

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.

[Mr_PeaCH]

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.

[Dren]

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.

[Bunk]

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.

[penfold]

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

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.

[Tale]

How about the 1982 version of the Nintendo DS? I had several Game & Watch including one reviewed on Usenet in 1981. Us schoolkids were crazy for them.

[Xilren's Twin]

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.

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

[Furiously]

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

[Jain Zar]

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.

[Samprimary]

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

First game I played ever? Earthworm Jim. 1990.

[Margalis]

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.

[schild]

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.

[Trippy]

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

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.

[Margalis]

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

[Runnyb]

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.

[Trippy]

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

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

[Murgos]

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 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.

[Toast]

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.

[WayAbvPar]

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.

[Signe]

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

[WayAbvPar]

But what I was borrowing a chair from a hers?

[Sky]

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.

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.

[Hanzii]

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

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 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...

[Jain Zar]

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.

[Trippy]

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. 

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