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What was everyone's first computer and first computer game?

Packard Bell Legend. I think I was 10 when the family got it.

300px-Legend_18CD.jpg


First game I actually owned for it I think was Warcraft 2.

The first that I can remember playing though is word munchers on an old macintosh.
 

Zambayoshi

Member
IBM JX

IBMJX.jpg


I found it (at the time) really frustrating, because it didn't seem to be compatible with any of the games we were playing on PCs at school, like Solomon's Key. I thought there might have been some problem with the operating system, but I couldn't seem to install DOS on it.

Adventures in Math
Adventures%20in%20Math_2.png

1777907-197_adventures_in_math_dos_screenshot_answer_the_problem_to_open.gif


It was ace!
 

Hasemo

(;・∀・)ハッ?
I was either 3 or 5 by the time my dad brought a 386 from work.

My first game was either Joust or this:
6sUxflQ.jpg


At least those are the first 2 that I remember playing.
 

Jams775

Member
I don't remember much about the first computer my family had but I remember it having win 3.1 and playing TMNT, Metal Gear (I'm pretty sure it was a dos port?), X-Men Madness in Murderworld, Alone in the Dark and some others I don't remember.

The second PC we had was a 486 I think? (What processor would have been 33 mhz with a 75 mhz turbo button with an led in the front to let you know?). It might have been custom built I'm not sure. Played tons of games on it from ski free and chip's challenge to duke3d and hell cab (shareware). My sister put a beach boys CD into the 5 1/4 floppy drive where it remained jammed for years. I ended up messing with it right before high school. I put one of the cables that goes to the power switch in the front (or whatever it when to) in the wrong place and when I turned it on it made a loud pop noise and started smoking.

My first officially mine PC was this Dell Dimension T500 I got in highschool. It's where my real introduction to pc gaming took place. This is where I discovered games like Half-Life, Counter-Strike, EverQuest, Quake,
A Night with Troi
and so many other games. I butchered it for parts years ago but I still have enough of it to put it back together. I still need to get it a stick of ram.
 

Spyware

Member
Family's first computer was some laptop that my father had. I remember being really fascinated by the fact that you could slot the laptop into a box under a huge CRT screen and use it with a "normal" mouse and keyboard. It was a "home computer" and laptop at the same time. My tiny mind was blown :)
It had Windows 3.1 and I played and loved Chip's Challenge, SkiFree, JezzBall, Rodent's Revenge, Commander Keen: Goodbye Galaxy and Wolfenstein 3D on it.
I don't know exactly when this was but I must have been around 6 when I started playing on it. So maybe something like 1994-1995.
 
My first computer was a ZX Spectrum 48K. Damn awesome machine. Small little bugger and they did so much with the software. I'm still impressed with Heavy on the Magick on it.


The first game I played on it was Jetpac. Great shoot 'em up!
 

kyser73

Member
My first ever videogame was a Space Invaders knock off on one of these:

280px-Commodore_2001_Series-IMG_0448b.jpg


My first computer owned was one of these (with the RAM pack:

ZX81-left.jpg


...and all the games I played were BASIC games copied from magazine listings...

My first game on this:

zx_spectrum-300x203.png
was
hobbit06.gif


First on this
images
was
dropzone_03.gif
.

First game on the Amiga was probably Defender of the Crown or Starglider.
 
I was pretty late to the computer scene. My family bought a Dell Pentium II desktop, their main line. It was loaded (for the time, of course), but it was also pretty expensive... about $2500 in 1998 dollars.

My first computer game was Assassin's Creed IV, since that's the game that my GTX 760 came with last year.
 

Fou-Lu

Member
Dark_Sun_-_Shattered_Lands_Coverart.png

I don't remember much about my first computer, but I remember the first game I played on it was Dark Sun: Shattered Lands.
 

Shoebox

Member
The year was 1986. The computer was a Tandy (Radio Shack). The game was a game called Ninja, I believe. It seemed impossible at the time.

http://youtu.be/QyvanOLYY8I

I also had a text based game that basically allowed you to experience "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe" through a series of prompts that you had to answer correctly to progress.
 

-MD-

Member
I can't remember if it was Runescape, Starcraft or RCT2. Was one of those.

And my first PC was some really shitty walmart PC back in like 2001-2002, it ran WoW at like 15fps and Morrowind at like 2fps.
 
When I was 4 or 5 my parents got a 386 extremely similiar to something like this.

desk09_01.jpg

Computer was pretty top of the line for its time and had a hard drive, graphics, and sound. I can't exactly remember the specs, but it could play everything except DOOM. The first games I remember we Test Drive 1 and Test Drive 2. Including some game for young kids where you could learn letters/shapes/colors/etc. When I got a little older I played many hours of Mechwarrior 1. Good times.

We had that computer till 1999, and I'll tell you those last few years dragged and I was pretty much stuck with playing SNES or PC/Mac games at friends' houses.
 

Draxal

Member
Commodore 64 ... Battle of Guadalcanal (well my dad bought it) ... and some aerial combat game but i forgot which.
 

Macheezmo

Member
Tandy 1000 and my first game was either:

Shamus:
598371-shamus-pc-booter-screenshot-level-twos.png


or

Cave Walker:
cavewalker.jpg


I remember playing both, just not which one I played first
 

Mentok

Banned
A Vic20 with frogger. And for parties we'd play pong on a Telstar machine (which I think I still have lol).
 

BajiBoxer

Banned

Nice! We had one too though I'm not entirely sure witch game was first. Probably Hunt the Wumpus which always scared me as a little kid :p I was less than a year old when that came out, so we had a few games already by the time I was old enough to actually play.

One of my favorites was Bigfoot:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttY6n0C1Myc

There was also a game I played a LOT of that had two ships shooting at each other (one from bottom, one from top), sheilds you could hide behind, and an asteroid field in he middle. I forget the name though.

Edit: First PC I actually bought myself was some Compaq PC in '98. First game for it was Unreal
 

Omadahl

Banned
My dad bought us an Acer back around 1995 or so. The first thing I fired up was Descent which I fell in love with. I did the church lady dance around the Christmas tree that year.

Edit: Bought a compaq in the late 90s to Heroes of Might and Magic 3. So worth it.
 

RexNovis

Banned
Mine was an Apple II plus

apple_II_01_full1.jpg


My parents purchased it before I was born and despite having more advanced machines in the house it was the only computer I was allowed to use as my parents weren't fussed about me possibly breaking it.

My first game was this:

AOexaDs.jpg


My favorite events were the diving and the pole vault. I played it for hours and hours trying to get a perfect score.
 

Doomedfool

Member
Commodore 128 that spent almost all it's time in C-64 mode :p The first game I got for it was a Transformers game that I barely remember, but I do remember being very disappointed by it.
 
Karateka on the green-screened Apple II computer. I played it again two years ago and this game still rocks.

I also have fond memories of the first computer I built; a 486. First game I played was the amazing Lemmings.
 
Couple of people questioning whether or not the TI-99/4A was a computer -- definitely! In fact, I had a C=64 but was jealous of my friend's TI since the sprite generation capability was soooo much easier. With the TI you'd "draw" the sprite like an array definition and then could easily move it (warning, pseudo-code ahead!):

Code:
tiefighter = "X.....X,
              X..X..X,
              XXX XXX,
              X..X..X,
              X.....X"

sprite_move_right(tiefighter, 20)

And the 64 was all poke and crap, ugh. I never progressed beyond ASCII-based games programming on the 64 as a result.
 
Computer - Packard Bell Legend 300CD (Pentium 60Mhz, 8MB RAM, 420MB HD, 2x CD-ROM) though we upgraded the drive to a Reveal 4x CD-ROM, and put in additional RAM, HD, and graphics if I remember correctly.

Computer game - Reader Rabbit 1, Reader Rabbit 2, Loom, Monkey Island 1, Sherlock Holmes, Minesweeper or Solitaire on Windows 3.11.
 

Krejlooc

Banned
Couple of people questioning whether or not the TI-99/4A was a computer -- definitely! In fact, I had a C=64 but was jealous of my friend's TI since the sprite generation capability was soooo much easier. With the TI you'd "draw" the sprite like an array definition and then could easily move it (warning, pseudo-code ahead!):

Code:
tiefighter = "X.....X,
              X..X..X,
              XXX XXX,
              X..X..X,
              X.....X"

sprite_move_right(tiefighter, 20)

And the 64 was all poke and crap, ugh. I never progressed beyond ASCII-based games programming on the 64 as a result.

Honestly, however, using pokes and peeks, you should be able to come up with a subroutine on the C64 that does just that.

Where C64 programming becomes amazing (to me at least) and absolute fascinating is when you start learning how to do sprite multiplexing. Complicated, yes, but essential if you want to make awesome software for the machine.
 

Evenball

Jack Flack always escapes!
I also had a TI99/4A as my first computer. we had 2 games, Alpiner and Q*Bert:



Q*Bert in particular was very close to arcade perfect.
 
So many TI99 peeps! When I grew up so few people knew of it.
I did many BASIC games, typed/copied from books and magazines. JUST when my young brain was starting to get to grips with "coding" and making art on the TI99 it died, like properly died. A little puff of acrid gray smoke suddenly appeared from the grill on the back and that was that.

After that we got all PC. I used to draw cartoons in CAD, which my dad used for work (CAD, not my cartoons). But the first PC game that really got to me, like, hard:

boot_021.png


It was all downhill to a misspent youth after that.
 
This is really hard to remember... I just remember it was Windows 95, and at least one of my first games was Warcraft: Orcs and Humans and Warcraft II.
 
C-64, and Zork

It was a surprisingly great platform for sports games. I played a ton of Hardball and Epix's World's Greatest Baseball Game, as well as Dr. J vs Larry Bird and Summer Games. Who would have thought you could do a cool version of Olympic Diving and Gymnastics?
 
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