Favourite Games

[the_randomclown]

Guess most of you are into the hardware side but;

1. What is the first video game you remember playing and on what system?
2. At what point were you introduced to the PC? And its games?
3. What are your fave PC Games from the past 20 or so years? Any that stand out?

The first PC game I ever remember playing was one of the King's Quest games, I thought it was hilarious. Perhaps my fave older game would be The Secret of Monkey Island, from more recent times it would most certainly be Half Life 2.

[tezza]

Guess most of you are into the hardware side but;

1. What is the first video game you remember playing and on what system?
2. At what point were you introduced to the PC? And its games?
3. What are your fave PC Games from the past 20 or so years? Any that stand out?

The first PC game I ever remember playing was one of the King's Quest games, I thought it was hilarious. Perhaps my fave older game would be The Secret of Monkey Island, from more recent times it would most certainly be Half Life 2.

On a microcopmputer it was Blackjack. It was on a TRS-80 Model 1 in 1980. My wife worked in a Psychology department at a University and they had just purchased one for some kind of psychological test. It's the first time I'd ever seen a microcomputer. I was impressed and have remained impressed with micros to this day.

Regarding PC games, hmmm (thinking). No, I can't remember the very FIRST game I played on a PC.

I do remember my favourite PC game though. It was ZORK. Although it was on lots of platforms, my home XT was the computer that I played this game on. In fact, around 1987 I once spent a whole week of my vacation JUST playing Zork!! How crazy is that! I was determine to get through the WHOLE game right from the beginning without ANY cheating. So I drew all the maps, tried to figure out all the clues etc...

You know I got a final score of 98% without help. I was proud of that. By the end of that gaming week I had cracked nearly all of the game, but I just couldn't figure out how to open the damm jewelled egg without breaking it!!! After spending a whole day trying various things I just, reluctantly, had to look at a cheat sheet. Grrr..

Anyway, it was a very satisfying experence to fully immerse myself in this game, even though most other people thought I was weird.

Those games actually inspired me to use the adventure game approach in teaching (I'm a university teacher). The scenario-based paradigm is one the students really enjoy.

[hargle]

my personal favorite PC game was Ultima III. I played that for about a year straight, and had all my stats maxed out on all 4 players-nothing could stand in my way after I'd built them up.

To this day I've had a little dream about writing my own Ultima III based game-I'd do it entirely in x86 assembly (because that's the language I love) and it would be backward compatible to work on an 8088 based machine. I'd even come up with a name: 'Ultima: Ancients' because it's a return to the ages when the game was popular, and it would be based on the same graphics set. (I'd even do it in CGA!)

Aside from U3, I had KQ1 for my PCjr, which was always a treat to show off to people. I played all the infocom games at the time, but never completed a one of them. Then there is Jumpman, which I loved so much I even went ahead and remastered it to work on newer machines:

http://www.oldskool.org/pc/jumpman


I have every intention of sitting down and playing all these games from start to finish some day. Probably won't happen til I retire, but that's ok. It'll keep my mind active.

-jeff!

[tezza]

I have every intention of sitting down and playing all these games from start to finish some day. Probably won't happen til I retire, but that's ok. It'll keep my mind active.

-jeff!

Now there's a thought. I'm about 15 years off that milestone, but I'll make sure I have all my infocom games archived and keep some kind of platform around to do just that. Zork is the only one I have worked through and it was a truely satisfying experience.

Ya gotta have the time though!

[paul.brett]

My first game was called Beast. A DOS/text based game of pushing/pulling blocks to avoid/squash the beasts.

See the screenshot (http://paulbrett.plus.com/tmp/beast.jpg). It's a hoot to play.

Paul.

[Micom 2000]

I have every intention of sitting down and playing all these games from start to finish some day. Probably won't happen til I retire, but that's ok. It'll keep my mind active.
-jeff!

It likely won't happen. I've been retired for almost 7 years now and still can't fathom were all my free time goes. It's kind of like that higher salaried job which your expenses still gobble up when you get it. I'm still juggling time, prevaricating. putting off till tomorrow, making to-do must lists, and have only gone fishing 5 times since I retired here. A good proportion of my must-do home repair jobs remain to be done until I can find the time (or inclination) :^( And since about the last 20 years before retirement I was self-employed, it wasn't because of some boss, except myself, motivating me.
It's like some Black Hole is sucking my time away. I don't have time to be bored; or productive for that matter.

Lawrence

[CP/M User]

1. Hmmm, the first outright Computer the family had was an Amstrad CPC464 and the first game we got (as a freebie) was Haunted Hedges (even though most CPC464 users got Harrier Attack as a Freebie). Haunted Hedges is best described as a Pacman clone with a man replacing the then Pacman icon. Wasn't a bad game and like Pacman it got faster and harder the more you scored. I was familiar with computer games before actually having a computer in the portable video games which were floating around. My brother had some Space Invaders clone which allowed 1 or 2 players and another game where you were a helicopter flying over the missiles - dodge the missiles and also refuel and try not to hit land. I also recall playing some Car Racing game (not sure what system it was - thought it was console based though) where you had a dodge the other cars. There was a game on the CPC which looks almost identical called Grand Prix Driver - I played it though felt the other game I'd played was more playable.

2. Probably in the late 80s on a PC, it was on a friends machine which might have been XT based IBM and had a few games on it. I always remember playing Alley Cat and Digger on their machine. Later on they got another machine (work based) and the only game they had was Bards Tale. It was okay, though had more fun with Alley Cat and Digger - I always remember having the pleasure of dying in Digger and the sound of that PC Speaker doing the death tune - great fun! :-D

3. Probably going out of the relms a bit in terms of Vintage, the games I mentioned under 2 are about as old as you'll get from me for a PC. On my 8bit CPC the games which perhaps stand out are games like Turbo the Tortise, Rainbow Islands, Wizard Willy, Rick Dangerous, The Island of Dr. Destructo, Tankbusters, Roland in Time, Powerdrift and Titus the Fox.

[Mad-Mike]

1. What is the first video game you remember playing and on what system?

The very first VIDEO game was likely Pitfall, Pac-Man, or Adventure for the Atari 2600, I can't honestly remember, I started very early (like around 3-4ish years old). I didn't start dealing with computers until I was 8.

2. At what point were you introduced to the PC? And its games?

1989-1990ish, by my sister, who had a Tandy 1000 SX with 384K RAM, and it had Microsoft Adventure for it. I remember thinking that game was boring as all heck, but I grew to like it more and more as I played it. Also, around that time, school started getting us onto the computers to play Reader Rabbit and Memory Match, and then my other sister got a brand spankin' new 80386 based computer with VGA, and that's where I was introduced to the then popular RPG (Ultima), and Graphical Adventure (Monkey Island, Freddy Pharkas) games, as well as the Internet before it was like how we know it now.

3. What are your fave PC Games from the past 20 or so years? Any that stand out?

- The Secret Of Monkey Island 1 & 2
- Ultima VI: The False Prophet
- Freddy Pharkas Frontier Pharmacist
- Depth Charge (old BASIC game)
- Sharedata Wheel of Fortune
- Ultima VII: The Black Gate/Serpent's Isle
- Tank Wars
- Burger Blaster
- Car Builder
- Legacy Of The Ancients
- Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny
- X-Wing
- Tie Fighter
- The classic end of the DOOM series
- Sim City 2000
- Microsoft Tetris
- Leisure Suit Larry 1-3

Modern-ish Honorable Mentions
- Postal Plus/Raw & Uncut
- Robot Arena 2: Design & Destroy
- Postal II: A Week In Paradise
- Driver
- GTA2
- The Sims 1 & 2