What was the first computer game you ever owned?

[Wat_Tyler]

The earliest I can remember the name of was the unfortunately titled
'Penetrator' for the ZX Spectrum 48k - it was 1982.

[qnr]

1. Star Raiders, Atari 400, 1979

[Khephra]

35. I bought 4 at once for my Atari 800

Star Raiders, Pac Man and Eastern Front. The other was Temple of Ashki or something like that from Enix, I do believe. Scott Adam's Adventure was probably number 4.

[qnr]

38. Yeah, Eastern Front - what a classic game :) n/t

[Khephra]

43. That was one of the BEST wargames I've ever played

simple and done on a simple system. I'd die for a remake. Keep it the same damn turn-based game, though. No real-time for me.

[qnr]

44. Funny thing is, I still rember the author. Chris Crawford...

Eastern Front, 1941 I think the whole title was.

[Khephra]

50. Man, your memory is better than mine.

Zork came soon after, iirc. (Not by him, just time-wise)

[qnr]

52. Yeah... followed by many other Infocom titles n/t

[Worst Username Ever]

91. RIP khephra...

you are missed

[regnaD kciN]

100. Not to sound like too much of a Luddite...

...but does it seem to anyone else that, the better they make the graphics and "real-time experience" of computer games, the less interesting the games themselves become?

And I spent sixteen years of my life programming computer games -- twenty-five of them, in all. Over those years, the games went from being crude-looking but engrossing (like the early EA games -- anyone remember M.U.L.E., Archon, or Seven Cities of Gold?) to an unbroken stream of graphically-amazing but mind-numbing "first-person shooters." It's getting so I not only don't want to program another computer game, I don't even want to play any...

[regnaD kciN]

99. Same here, although it was 1982...

I'd just sold off my Atari VCS and game collection to buy a 400. (I planned to use it for word processing -- yeah, brilliant thinking, with that flat-panel "keyboard.") Anyway, they sold an introductory "game pack" for the 400/800 (Star Raiders, Missle Command, and two joysticks). Although it was out of stock at the store where I bought the 400 -- as were all the other intro packs, meaning that the entire first day was spent by my then-wife and I typing messages back and forth on the "memo pad" feature -- we made the drive to from the Valley to Glendale the next day to pick it up.

(ON EDIT: Actually, the above is wrong. I was working on the assumption that "computer game" meant a game played on my own computer. Actually, the first game I played on any computer was a very simple text-based basketball game played on my school's teletype, hooked up to the computer system at Dartmouth -- the very same computer on which the BASIC language was developed not that much earlier. The year? Late '72 or early '73...)

[MergeLeft]

2. Don't remember the name -- a "pong" type for the trash-80

[democracyindanger]

3. Castle Wolfenstein for the Apple II+

[kohodog]

4. Hate to admit it, but we had pong

First "computer" game was the text game, forget the name, but, "You are standing in a field. in front of you is a gate."

[qnr]

9. Why hate to admit it? I still have original pong machines (well,

super-pong, actually). But I think it was meant more as actual computer games, with keyboards, monitors, etc.

[name not needed]

90. Zork?

I think that's it.

[TroubleMan]

5. I had a bunch of old TRS-80 games I typed in myself

Then you saved them on a cassette tape.

The ones I remember the most are:

Space Lifeboat
Star Trek
Eliza
BlackBox
Maze

I was only 5 or 6, so I don't remember them all, but I knew Basic real damn well when I was little.

[Hillary08]

51. You date yourself, Troubleman!

TRS-80 - make that "carbon date" yourself, you crazy old fossil!

:headbang:

[TroubleMan]

53. I'm only 32....LOL

I just started on computers at an early age.

[Pithlet]

67. Nothing dates you faster than this subject.

:) I'm 32 as well, though not nearly as knowledgeable as yourself.

[pbartch]

82. I love the NINTENDO games.......zelda......Mr Do.

[OffWithTheirHeads]

6. pong

it was the first and last computer game I ever played. Sorry, don't have time for this shit

[Jokerman]

102. Damn. you took my answer.

Pong was my first and only video game.

I still have it, although I haven't hooked it up in years.

[Xipe Totec]

7. Adventure.

I played others before then, but that's the first one I ever bought for My IBM PC System 1.

[davidlynch]

33. PLUGH

[Xipe Totec]

70. XYZZY

[jeff30997]

8. I would say Donkey Kong.

Around 1983.

[rockedthevoteinMA]

10. Donkey Kong early 80's n/t

[tridim]

11. "Choplifter" for the Vic-20

Then "Beachhead" and "Temple of Apshi" for the commodore 64, on cassette. Yes, I remember the olden days when it took 20 minutes to load a game.

[Taverner]

12. Atari Combat

It came with the Atari 2600

The first one I truly loved, however, was Breakout.

[regnaD kciN]

101. If you like Breakout...

...here's a Windows version I wrote a few years ago as an early DirectX demo:

http://www.eskimo.com/~jwalley/superb.exe

(BTW, the 2600 doesn't count...it was a game machine, not a real computer! ;-) )

[FormerDittoHead]

13. Blackjack came with Intellivision but "Astrosmash" was 1st I bought..

[metisnation]

14. line programmed

bought it at Radio Shack, line program for pong on my Apple II. Forgot a line or two and the dman ball didn't show up.

[UCLA02]

15. "Combat"

Came with my Atari 2600 in '82 or so.

2 tanks, some walls and 1 shot at a time. Gee, life was so simple...

[ZenLefty]

56. Yeah, but the tank's shots fired off walls.

Name one game today where you can ricochet your tank's fire off a wall to hit something around a corner.

[ThoughtCriminal]

16. A crude text based space combat game

That I wrote for a University mainframe. Saved on punched paper tape (~1977).

[davidlynch]

22. STRTRK

. . . . E . . . . STARDATE 2004
. . . . . . . . . CONDITION RED
. . . * . . . . . PHOTON TORPEDOES 3
. . . . . . . K . PHASERS 1002
. . . . . . . . . DAMAGE NONE
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . .

[ThoughtCriminal]

24. Shields up! nt

[davidlynch]

27. Obviously an Old Time Hacker--Ever See A PDP-10?

[qnr]

29. I used to program PDP-11s and HP 9825s n/t

[davidlynch]

31. RSTS/E or RSX-11?

[qnr]

37. RSX-11/D n/t

[davidlynch]

39. That's The OS On Which I First Ran Zork--an LSI-11

[qnr]

41. No games for me on that one, it was military, helping to control

the MedSea LORAN-C chain heheh

[davidlynch]

47. Ahh Cost Guard Man!

[qnr]

48. Yup

[TroubleMan]

34. That's the game I was talking about

You had to use photons to really kill them. Also, I must have messed up when I typed it, because I could never dock with the Star base. It would always blow me up.

[davidlynch]

36. One Time I Shot A Starbase with a Photon

TORPEDO TRACK: (1,2) (2,2), (3,2), (3,4)
*** STARBASE DESTROYED *** CONGRATULATIONS!

[Lone_Star_Dem]

17. First computer game was battle chess

First video game is a whole different story. Grew up with the old Atari console. Tank may have been the first one. I don't remember. :shrug:

[SideshowScott]

18. Zork!!! And Ulitima IV: Quest for virtues

Zork was great..Ahhh Ye Ol' Text adventures..Hard to belive how much fun the were..Zork II was great as well.
East
East West
Look
Push Button

[Pithlet]

23. Kids today will never know

how much fun those were, and probably won't understand why we thought they were fun. It will be their version of a hoop and a stick, or marbles.

[qnr]

26. And the packaging... buttons, ziploc bags of belly button lint, security

cards, those games were fun.

[davidlynch]

25. Return to the Hydroelectric Dam n/t

[Taxloss]

49. I played Ultima V obsessively.

It almost killed me. I could not crack it.

[MonkeyFunk]

77. It is dark. You may be eaten by a grue.

I loved Zork!

[Tyrone Slothrop]

105. Ultima IV was, IMHO, the best computer game made to date

That game was simply amazing as far as the gameplay was concerned.

I still remember going around giving money to beggars so that my character was virtuous enough to enter the final dungeon.

[HuskiesHowls]

19. Zork, for the Commodore 64

I'd played it at work on an IBM, and that was the reason I bought the Commodore (couldn't afford an IBM PC)

[yellowdogintexas]

73. zork , and its predecessor, Adventure are based on real

caving adventures and the maps of a section of Mammoth Cave.

The maps were cartographed by the same man who wrote the program for Adventure.

The actual map looks like someone dumped a plate of spaghetti on the floor.

[Pithlet]

20. It was a text based game for kids

It was an underwater adventure theme. I don't remember the name of it. This was back in the 80's, for those little 128k Macs, when they first came out. I wish I still had it so I could show it to my kids when they're video game age, for that classic "I Walked Uphill Both Ways..." moments.

[davidlynch]

30. You Are Standing in a Small Building, A Wellhouse for A Small Spring

[Pithlet]

54. It was actually pretty complicated

It came with a book, and charts, and a little wheel. And the descriptions and commands were complex. I wish I could remember the name of it. Damn, now I'm going to go on a google run.

I remember giving the command "Give Chip (the protagonist) a Kiss". Hey, I was 11. Chip actually blushed!

[Pithlet]

60. Ack! If anyone remembers a game

text based from the 80's on mac, where you piloted a little submarine trying to find an underwater sea monster, please let me know. It's killing me that I can't remember it. Google is getting me nowhere.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

103. Infocom's Seastalker?

I think that was the name of it...

[LeftyMom]

21. Frogger for the Commedore 64

I still have the C64 but I don't have the floppy for Frogger anymore. :(

[UCLA02]

28. Anyone remember Turtle Graphics?

I thought it was so cool to program the thing to make designs. I was about 10, plotted the pattern on the graphing paper, then programmed it.

Anyone else know what I'm talking about or am I not thinking of the right thing?

[qnr]

32. Yup, LOGO, PILOT. I never used them much, was more into

6502 assembly, but they were fun.

[outraged2]

40. Zork

Played it on a Compaq 'lug-along' computer. :)

[davidlynch]

42. Give the Troll The Pepper Sandwich n/t

[seriousstan]

87. dust bunnies

[fluffernutter]

45. Frogger and Scrabble.

[Taxloss]

46. "Horace Goes Skiing" for the ZX81

Great game.

[Wat_Tyler]

55. I had that - follow up to Horace and the Spiders and Hungry Horace, right?

[Taxloss]

57. Yup! That and "Frogger" and "Ant Attack"

In HGS, you guided Horace down a ski slope, as I remember. Great game.

[Wat_Tyler]

58. Yeah - IIRC there were only a couple of companies doing games

at the time for the Spectrum - they all seemed to be from Melbourne House.

[Taxloss]

63. I couldn't say.

What I remember from the ZX81 is the little rubber buttons ... the "graphics keys" ... the fact that Ant Attack was considered mega-amazing because it was isometric. And te fact that I had a cassette drive, and then got a cartridge drive and was knocked backwards by the fact a game could load in 30 seconds!

[davidlynch]

59. Anyone Every Work with IMSAI-8080 or ALTAIR-8080?

I remember those things back when BYTE magazine was all the rage. They typically had 4K - 8K of RAM MEMORY. WOW!

[qnr]

61. No, but I still own a KIM-1

8 digit 7-segment LED display, hex keypad, 256 bytes of RAM, paper tape storage...

In storage back in Maine right now.

[davidlynch]

62. Man That's A POWERFUL machine! 256 BYTES!

[qnr]

64. Yeah, not good for much, but I occassionally put it under the

couch and have it beep at random times. Scares the bejabbers out of the dogs.

[ThoughtCriminal]

65. Ah, I had one of those too

By the time I had really figured out assembly coding, I replaced with an Ohio Scientific C1-P. Thats the machine I really learned to write video games on.

[qnr]

66. wow, I had an OS Challenger small world n/t

[ThoughtCriminal]

69. It was certainly small then.

About the only thing I could afford at the time. Coding 6502 was like juggling with one hand.

[vixengrl]

68. I grew up with a ColecoVision in the house--

It played a rudimentary Pong and tennis and a couple other things. It sat under the t.v. in my parents' bedroom through the 70's without my barely knowing what it was- (it was a Grown-up Toy--Not to Touch). But when Atari came out, they let me play with it (after brushing off a coat of dust--it was not incomparable to Breakout. Coleco was really as good as some of the more "bleah, I paid for it" Atari games)...but it was restricted to whatwas already there--no cartridges. So my parents were early gamers (if there were game *systems* earlier than their Coleco--well, they had a crank or something). I had Atari when I was ten or eleven. I played "Video Pinball" and "Centipede" until my t.v. set had burn-in, almost, and then we got the Nintendo, and I discovered Tetris. But my brother (six yrs younger) really had the Nintendo, and I gave up games for boys about then. Except for when I was playing Tetris. (But, honest...I don't Tetris like I used to..." And I fer sure played it on my friends' Radio Shack and Sears computers. (Addict, I was...)

[Left Is Write]

71. Trinity. 1985 or '86.

Edited to add: this does not include the Coleco and Atari video games we had in the early 80s. Trinity was the first game I had that was specifically for use with a personal computer.

[yellowdogintexas]

72. Adventure

then Zork


first animated one???

probably some types of card games and some little kiddo games for my kid who was 5 or 6 at the time.

first one I fell in love with? Heroes of Might and Magic II.

first arcade game I fell in love with? PacMan of course

[lpbk2713]

74. I don't recall. I got three or four games when I got my TI-99/4A

about 25 years ago. I've gone through several others (games & computers) since then.

[WritersBlock]

75. "Impossible Mission" for the C-64.

I loved the puzzles at the end.

[ikojo]

76. Read it wrong....

The first computer game I owned was Donkey Kong on the Commodore 64....

My sister had Pong when I was a kid and I loved it. I can't believe we sat around for hours watching a ball go from one side of the screen to the other.

[lgw1]

78. Pong

We got an Atari 2600 at Sears in 1977. It was $200 for the console and $20 for the game I think. I wish I still had that 2600.

[Kellanved]

79. Elite for the PC

That was, AFAIR, in 1987.

[Wat_Tyler]

85. Yeah, I had Elite - in fact I've got a reworking of Frontier on my PC now.

[miss_kitty]

80. I have never owed a computer game

[RetroLounge]

81. Deja Vu for the Mac SE

Early graphics, fun too.

RL

[jpgray]

83. You had a speccy? Did you have Laser Squad?

That game kicked ass. My first was Ultimate Track and Field for the NES. The idea behind the Power Pad I suppose was to scare off the bad PR about fat lazy kids fermenting in front of the Nintendo, and instead have fat lazy kids slamming their hands down on the pads that were ostensibly meant for feet. I beat the fucking Cheetah though.

[Wat_Tyler]

84. Which one was Laser Squad - it does ring a bell.

[u4ic]

86. Lol, do I feel out of place!

Solitaire...2001. Came with my computer.

[njdemocrat106]

88. If we're talking electronic games in general

Then Coleco's Head-to-Head Baseball. If we're talking actual computer games, then it's the "Apple at Play" disk that came with my Apple IIc. It had "Apple 21", "Lemonade Stand", some trivia game about computers in general, and a "Musical Recital" (Mozart's "Sonata Facile" No. 16 played pretty well for a computer of its time). The Introduction disk also had a maze where you led a rabbit to his carrot or a gnome to his gold.

[leftofthedial]

89. Pong

or maybe Tank

[Connie_Corleone]

92. Werewolf

[RaleighNCDem]

93. Jeopardy...

...for the Apple IIe. I ended up memorizing all the answers, so it wasn't fun anymore.

:shrug:

[RebelOne]

94. Zork, a text game for my old Apple IIe.

You had to really use your imagination with that one.

[dean_dem]

95. Space Quest I.

Came out in 1986 for the IBM Tandy 1000. It kicked major ass.

[6th Borough]

96. Hrmm...probably "Turtle" for the TRS-80. Maybe Visicalc...that kicked ass

[6th Borough]

97. Oh....game...

Rogue, maybe?

[Worst Username Ever]

98. Pong

and "pong olympics" for the atari.

[KitchenWitch]

104. Ohio Scientific

Circa late 70s early 80s. I think it had 2k of RAM and a 200 baud modem

[dr.strangelove]

106. Zork or Pong

About the same period in the mid 70s. I had both. Lots of hours spent on that shit instead of living free during the sexual revolution. Boy did I fuck up on that choice.

[Reverend_Smitty]

107. Super Mario Brothers...

it came with my Nintendo, I got it Christmas 1988. I was almost 5 years old, needless to say I was a spoiled child who grew up with video games

[last_texas_dem]

108. Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?

That one, and "Battle Chess." I played a few games when I was a kid but got out of the habit around the age of nine or ten and never really got back into it again.

[Kire]

109. PacMan and Indiana Jones for Atari

that brings back memories

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

110. "Downland" cartridge for some sort of Tandy system. n/t