What were the earliest video games you played?

Started by Greybriar, August 18, 2018, 12:11:44 AM

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Greybriar

I was reading in another thread about this and that old game having been played by several of us who frequent this forum. Since I did not wish to derail the thread any more than it already had been, I decided to start this new thread about the oldest video games played by our forum members. Here were a few of mine:

1978 - Space Invaders


1980 - Pac-Man


1981 - Donkey Kong


I missed out on getting a Commodore and didn't get a computer until I got a DOS clone in 1989. I can't remember all the early PC games I played. In the beginning there were many text adventures, but I grew tired of them rather quickly.  My first favorite game was an RPG, SSI's Pool of Radiance


It wasn't long before I was shopping at Babbage's and Software ETC for more games. One title I played a LOT during those early years was Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon


Gary Grigsby's Pacific War occupied my time for awhile


Strategic Studies Group (SSG) soon got my attention with Warlords


There were several sub sims. My favorite of them was Silent Service II


It remained my favorite sub sim until the debut of Aces of the Deep by Dynamix

As you can see, Dynamix set a new standard for graphics in computer games.

I could go on and on. There were so many games I enjoyed playing during what some have called "The Golden Age of PC Gaming" in the 1990s.

What were some of your favorite early games?
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Destraex

A selection of the ones I remember most I guess from the earliest; A couple are defo not the earliest but pretty close.

Probably My Favourite - Ancient Art of War


Ancient Art of War at Sea


Centurion Defender of Rome


Arctic Fox


Steel Thunder


Digdug


Test Drive


Xenon2


Double Dragon


Falcon


Airborne Ranger


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#2














MikeGER

#4
my very first video games was on a fresh bought Tektronix 4051, we were happy to get at our school

everybody who had enlisted to a voluntary Computer science class got one or two 45 min slots access a week to test his home work ;-) at the machine
 


i remember 3 popular games:
- a ballistic game, 2players  (enter angle and speed of projectile to hit the opponent behind a hill)
- weather war, 2players and you send an animated disaster cloud against a random windforce, disasters also had a random hit probability on the ground to destroy the opponent
- "Flugzeugkrieg",  i don't remember the original game

That was the most popular one! it was written in machine code which just produced a bigger and a smaller arrow tip which could shoot projectile from the tip of the "spaceships". 2 players could chase each others. spaceship kept its momentum, the thrust was perpendicular. so you had to turn to decelerate, and the screen was wrap around.

think of it as the grandfather of Asteroids, without the asteroids and 2 players instead
 
Gorgeous :)

 


Hot lead and dirty talk!

#6
Pong, on a black&white TV at a friends house 1982ish

Atari 2600-My parents bought this and the only game I liked at the time was Space Invaders, 1983ish

Arcade game-Punch Out at Showbizz Pizza around 1983/84? and APB (A police car chase game). One of the first things I purchased for my new home was the arcade game APB. ( I was single)

IBM- My Uncle owned a computer and lived across the street. I used to go over there and always played Ancient Art of War and XOR NFL Challenge, 1985ish

Commodore-My buddy got one around 1985 with a state of the art color monitor (instead of the green one) and sound! He had the greatest game we ever played at the time, Castle Wolfenstein.

Good thread, this has brought back many memories
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Destraex

I forgot to add doom1. But that was a lot later than the earliest games I guess.
"They only asked the Light Brigade to do it once"

trailrunner

I remember playing Pong around 1974 or 1975.  My friend was a member of the yacht club, so one day after we had been sailing, he took me inside to show me this new-fangled game, which was Pong.

Space Invaders came out sometime after that.  I graduated HS in 1979, and I think SI was popular my last two years in HS or so.  The Pretenders came out with a song that had some SI soundtrack to it around that time.


bayonetbrant

Arcade games?  The early classics - Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Defender, Missile Command, etc.  My favorite was always Battlezone, which probably helps explain why I became a tanker.

I had an Atari 2600 with all the expected classics, too.

On a desktop computer, we had a Mac forever, so I was necessarily constrained, but a lot of Strategic Command and the first Wizardry, Balance of Power, and MacCasino, which is how I learned how to play Baccarat (the card game James Bond is always playing)
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trailrunner

#10
Oh yeah - I forgot about this one, although I'm not sure it's a true video game.

I was an undergrad from 1979-1983.  My best friend in school was the sysadmin for the VAX machines in the astrophysics department.  The last two years of school, we would go to his computer lab to work on his projects because they had some small conference rooms we could use, and because we could use the VT editor on his VAX as a crude word processor to type up our projects.

We'd work there until 1 or 2am.  I'd do the sensible thing and try to get a couple of hours of sleep before our morning class, but my friend would stay and play D&D, which had an ASCII implementation on the VAX.  The next morning in class, I'd see my friend in class, and he would be excited about the new level of his game that he had reached the night before and how he had quaffed some potion or something.


jamus34

Not sure my absolute first - probably something on the Atari 2600 or Pac-Man in the arcade.

I have fond memories of these though:





Insert witty comment here.

Phantom

The early games I played were all in pubs (pong/space invaders, the brick stacking game, Missile Command, the one where aliens wheeled around & attacked your spaceship plus the game where you were centre screen & destroyed incoming asteroids - Asteroids maybe?).
After that it was the spectrum ZX for me - stonkers, manic miner, F15 Eagle & a great undersea platform type game where you were a diver going into caves. Great fun all of them, but I must admit I have little love for the graphics now we've all been spoiled.
That said I think developers could learn a lot from the gameplay & longevity of some of the later efforts (Age of Rifles, Tanks, V for Victory series for example) which seemed by comparison to modern games to give a lot more bang for your buck.

bob48

The good old C64;

Elite (wireframe)
Paradroid
Dropzone
Moon Lander
M1 Platoon (Microprose)
Silent Service
Gunship
F16 Pilot

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Rayfer

SDR already posted a screen shot....Pong....it was in a bar, cost a quarter, and it was so astounding to people you couldn't get near it when it first came out.