Flashing back to the early days of computer games...

[motley]

I don't really do this anymore (unless you count wordle and crossword puzzles), and I was never a hard-core gamer, but when PCs and computer games were a new flashy toy, I did get into it for awhile. The best to me:

- XOR football. Best of the early "primitive" games. Just Xs and Os representing players, select your play, and watch what happens. The game had mostly monochrome green on the black screen, but it was fun because it was easy to learn and play. (I hated games later where you had to learn 100 different commands to move around or all this info about hit points and abilities, etc, too busy for me) Plus you could edit the players, including their abilities.
- Jack Nicklaus golf game (forget the name). You could play and even design and build new courses.
- DOOM (including "DOOM 2" which was really still just DOOM). Greatest computer game ever. Although it was its predecessor Wolfenstein that initially fired me up even more because of the then-new first-person perspective. I always hated that they never made a worthy sequel. In fact, the newer ones didn't even mildly resemble DOOM and the idiot creators seemed to not realize what made it great.
- Command and Conquer. Action mixed with strategy of what to use/build and how.
- Starflight 2. Very imaginative and in-depth for its day. Liked how you could build up wealth through exploration and use it to upgrade your ship in different ways. You had to "earn" you way through the game, which some don't like, but I did (I don't think that I would have the patience for it now).
- Star Control 3. I loved games where you had a lot of character dialogue/interaction and this game did it better than anything I ever saw. This game had a lot of great writing/personality, with numerous races, all very unique, an interesting story line, and a sense of humor. Also had a fair bit of simplistic but fun action combats. Its biggest fault was a pathetic conclusion.
- Age of Empires. See Command and Conquer. Once I got to know the civilizations fairly well, it was addictive because it was familiar yet still so variable due to being able to mix n match what civilizations you played against and its ability to create so many new maps to battle on, making it like a new game every time.
- 100% Hidden Objects. The last game I got into. I like hidden object games and this was the best one I saw.

 

[More Cowbell]

Wasted so much time and paper in college playing zork (or was it adven?) on the PDP-11/70 using daisy wheel printers for hardcopy output just to reconstruct a world map.

"The only winning move is not to play."
WarGames, 1983

 

[frayne]

First started out using a Tandy Color Computer using ROM pack games and I actually learned to use BASIC programing language and wrote a football program for the little machine, this was probably in the mid to late 70s. First IBM type computer I bought shortly there after went an overhaul of hard drives, RAM, motherboards and processing chips, not to mention an array of graphic cards and other misc. internals. Only game I was really got into was the MS flight simulator.

 

[VanWinkle]

I played mostly strategy games although I spent several years on World of Warcraft. One of my favorites that I still play today is Heroes of Might and Magic III. Great repeatable game play. I played the original SEGA baseball and football and thought them to be cutting edge games at the time. Command and Conquer was
also a favorite.

 

[DayDreaming]

I remember playing "Empire" on a VAX VMS (or maybe PDP-11) computer at lunch time on my first real job:

VMS Empire

VMS Empire is a war simulation between the player and the computer.

libregamewiki.org

 

[target2019]

The one game I've always used is Tetris, or some knockoff.

 

[Closet_Gamer]

As my handle implies, this is still very much the monkey on my back! I love computer games tho 90%+ of what I do is in VR now.

I’m embarrassed to admit how much time I spent playing the Civilization series. It was the original computer addiction. “Just one more turn…” I looked up at 4am more times than I can count. It was bad.

Doom series
Quake series
Half-Life
Homeworld
XCom series
Command and Conquer
Company of Heroes
Wii everything
Tetris
…

My Atari was my gateway drug! And I’m still going.

 

[Healthy Lifestyle]

I played the Original Diablo
1&2 (at an advanced level) actually as I defeated the Lords of Hell.

 

[Closet_Gamer]

OMG. The Diablo click-fests.

I forgot about those!

 

[Car-Guy]

Pong

 

[Stormy Kromer]

In High School back in the 70's we had a one computer that looked like an old deep freeze in the computer lab ( a big closet next to the principal's office). It had a phone modem that connected to a somewhere.

The only game I remember playing on it was Oregon Trail.

 

[GalaxyBoy]

My first computer was an Atari 400. One reason I bought it was to play Star Raiders.

 

[latexman]

At Uni, we played Adventure and Star Trek on a TSO connected to an IBM mainframe in a satellite computer center near the dorm.

 

[sengsational]

I had Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, text-based game. I played on a Toshiba laptop, monochrome. You're actions were north, east, west, south, take, use, etc.

 

[Qs Laptop]

My first computer was an Atari 400. One reason I bought it was to play Star Raiders.

Mine was an Atari 800, then a couple years later I "upgraded" to an Atari 800XL. I loved playing Chopper Rescue, Dr. J basketball (not sure if that was the actual name) and whatever baseball game they had.

 

[Breedlove]

Man I remember a friend of mine that lived in an old trailer out in the country . He used to do ACID and play pong for days ..I would go see him in the winter he would never leave that trailer just playing Pong . He is probably in heaven playing pong . A good soul.

 

[motley]

At Uni, we played Adventure and Star Trek on a TSO connected to an IBM mainframe in a satellite computer center near the dorm.

I remember ST and football on mainframe printouts...

 

[chemEguy]

I’m 51 so I grew up during the golden age of the arcade.

Dungeons of Daggorath on the TRS80 was a great game, and brutal, I never completed it. I tried an emulator version a few years ago and still could not win…a testament to the code.

I think I managed to complete the first Might and Magic game but that was another tough one.

 

[Koolau]

We started getting mini-computers to run instrumentation in the lab in the late 70s, early 80s. Oddly enough, some came with games! Our favorite was "Fat Cat" which was a bit like PacMan. I think I got to level 10 or some such. One of the instrument sales guys that we all kinda liked got to IIRC level 84 one day. He had several sales presentations to make to our mgmt and in his off time, he wowed us with his Fat Cat skills. He was quite a rotund fellow about age 35 and I think his name was Hank. Good times - almost forgotten. Thanks for the memories.

Oh, and of course, everyone played "Pong."

 

[Closet_Gamer]

Wasted so much time and paper in college playing zork (or was it adven?) on the PDP-11/70 using daisy wheel printers for hardcopy output just to reconstruct a world map.

"The only winning move is not to play."
WarGames, 1983

I had Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, text-based game. I played on a Toshiba laptop, monochrome. You're actions were north, east, west, south, take, use, etc.

The old text games were fun but super frustrating at times. There was a detective game that was quite clever, but I don’t recall the name.

 

[Twilo123]

Commodore had some great games for it's time...
Commodore Games List

 

[Fermion]

I played Pyramid on a Color Computer II and cassette tape. Other than Atari, that is the earliest "computer game" I played. I think I attempted to program a version of Frogger on the same machine by typing the code from a few magazine articles but I don't remember finishing it. Perhaps as a 10 year old I didn't have the patience.

In college I remember playing Bard's Tale on 5-1/4 floppy disks and a IBM XT.

First sort of MMP my wife and I played was on Sierra Online in 1993ish, called Shadows of Yserbius. By massive, I think maybe 50 people were playing at a time?

 

[bobbfrommn]

I remember the first Pong game I ever saw, I was like 5. We were snowmobiling and stopped in Deerwood MN at a little bar for pizzas (I now know the pizzas were for the kids) and there it was. I watched my cousin play for about an hour, amazed.

I've done the gambit mentioned here: EQ, Wow, Guildwars 2, Doom, Quake. A lot of various FPS games, but was never hardcore. I might play more after I retire, it's a long cold winter and I don't like snowmobiling, but that's why I put a pool table in the basement.

 

[Fermion]

I don't like snowmobiling, but that's why I put a pool table in the basement.

I live for snowmobiling. Maybe because we live in the mountains but it is a dream world.

(if you squint, you can see Ironforge in the distance)

 

[jollystomper]

College in 1975 was the firs time I had access to computing terminals. The first games I recall playing were text based adventure games, "Hunt the Wumpus" and "Colossal Cave". No graphics, but it kept us entertained..

Our Computer Science department e had a PDP-11 that those of us in related majors received priority access. A couple of the folks wrote a multi-player game "Star Trek" which essentially was flying through space shooting at each other and at Asteroids. I wrote a couple of small modules for it, it was my first experience programming computer graphics and applying equations for real-time motion and transformations.

I played lots of the various computer games of the 80s. Many times when traveling for work I would relax after dinner by finding an arcade to playing the games.

The PC action games I enjoyed most in my 30s were DOOM), Wolfenstein, Duke Nukem, and Sim City. DOOM/Wolfenstein/Duke Nukem were my "stress relievers", Sim City fed my "creative" side .