What game turned you into a gamer?

[DarkUnderlord]

Worms on the old Microbee. After that, Alley Cat on the 286. Played Wolf3D, Blake Stone. Civ. Doom was a blast. First game I ever bought myself (IE: Not Birthday or Christmas present) was X-Com. That was based purely on playing the demo constantly which I got from one of the covers of a gaming mag. Other memorable buys include European Air War based solely on seeing an ad in a game magazine and Fallout because I saw it in a store and it looked cool. After asking a friend about it and him saying "turn-based combat" I bought - on the basis that I loved X-Com so much and that was turn-based.

 

[Lim-Lim]

I blame alley cat.

 

[Black_Willow]

Dune 2

 

[MetalCraze]

Exolon, back in 1990

It was quite a nice arcade with each one out of 128 screens being a puzzle that required both reaction and brain plus it looked good.

 

[shihonage]

Exolon DX is a faithful recreation of that game with updated visuals:

http://retrospec.sgn.net/game-links.php?link=exolon

 

[DwarvenFood]

Donkey Kong. And River Raid.

River Raid.

anyone know where to get the windows port/remake ?

 

[Hobo Elf]

Well, I had some consoles before I got my PC, but I was never really a gamer. Then one christmas my parents got a PC. I got Dungeon Keeper that christmas. Also, the PC came with this 12-games-in-one pack, and it had Master of Orion 2 and Jagged Alliance and some other goodies that I can't remember. That christmas was the beginning of my downfall.

 

[CreamyBlood]

Star Trek

and

Hunt the Wumpus

Both on an IBM Mainframe.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Exolon, back in 1990

It was quite a nice arcade with each one out of 128 screens being a puzzle that required both reaction and brain plus it looked good.

Did it have one of those cool techno MIDI tunes that games back then did?

 

[MetalCraze]

Exolon DX is a faithful recreation of that game with updated visuals:

http://retrospec.sgn.net/game-links.php?link=exolon

Ya I know, but I strongly dislike its looks:

It looks like some too much colourful flash game (especially backgrounds). Spectrum's version has considerably less colours of course, but somehow it looks better for me.

Did it have one of those cool techno MIDI tunes that games back then did?

Yes. You had to have a soundcard though if it was a Spectrum version

 

[asper]

I's impossible to remember my very first game. My first memories include computers, I grew up with them. I don't have any recollection of my pre-computer life, and I don't remember the day when my parents bought a C-64. My brother quickly collected every title he could get his hands on, so we must've played nearly the whole C64 catalogue during those years. Games that I remember fondly: Boulderdash (my dad was a master at this, he completed each of the 6 or so parts multiple times), Giana Sisters, Bouncers, Turrican, The Keeper of the 7 Keys, Spy vs Spy, Spy Hunter, 4x4 Off Road Racing, Aztec Challenge, Barbarian, California games, Winter Games, Summer Games...

 

[shihonage]

skyway: I agree, the Spectrum version looks grittier somehow.

My big problem with Spectrum emulators is that they fail to reproduce the pixel blurring effects of the old televisions which made for "free" dithering and made it appear that the games had more colors than they actually did.

I'm pretty sure a lot of graphics in those games were made with blurry televisions in mind. For instance EXOLON's green metallic turrets look all dotty and square while on old TV they looked smoothly shadowed.

 

[ghostdog]

The first game I ever played was probably the qbasic Gorilla

but the first game I played like crazy was super mario bros 3

edit: No scratch that, it was Fist II in zx spectrum

 

[Zhuangzi]

Shit, I've played most of the games mentioned in this thread. Brings back memories.

Anyway, Wolf 3D was a big one for me and my father. I was about 8, he was early thirties and we both loved it. I remember sending off to Apogee for the disks after playing the demo.

Anyone ever play the Llamasoft games on the Atari ST? Llamatron, Revenge of the Mutant Camels etc? I loved these as a child.

 

[DemonKing]

Wizardry I: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord on the Apple II (yes I'm old).

 

[MetalCraze]

skyway: I agree, the Spectrum version looks grittier somehow.

My big problem with Spectrum emulators is that they fail to reproduce the pixel blurring effects of the old televisions which made for "free" dithering and made it appear that the games had more colors than they actually did.

I'm pretty sure a lot of graphics in those games were made with blurry televisions in mind. For instance EXOLON's green metallic turrets look all dotty and square while on old TV they looked smoothly shadowed.

I think Spectaculator has quite a nice emulation of the old TV screen, with blurring and a bit noticeable scanlines.

 

[Luzur]

first game: Pyramid of Doom from a pirate tape C64 in prob 84'-85' dont remember any details more then my friend putting in a tape into a datasette and then the load screen.

first RPG game: Pools of Radience on C64.

game that solidified it: Might and Magic II on C64.

 

[Pliskin]

Empire, Wargame of the Century

I actually remember bringing a copy to work and running it in the DOS shell of the QC terminal when nobody was looking. Heh, and they thought I was just a very dedicated employee...

 

[Delirious Nomad]

Secret of Monkey Island made me play adventures.
Fallout made me play rpgs.

 

[Elwro]

I think it was the first Prince of Persia. Amstrad 1512.

 

[goatvomit]

At 1st it was arcade machines in some dark corner of a local gas station and from there it evolved from Scramble on friend's c16 to finally having an own comp amstrad cpc 6128. I still have fond memories of Konami's Track & Field arcade although you really couldn't win as the 2nd player since the buttons were far tighter than with the 1st player. Unfortunately amstrad suffered from really horrible conversions and you couldn't really trust any of the reviews on other platforms. Nemesis was a rather good example of that. Excellent on msx but the amstrad version was pure crap. Still there were a number of really great games such as Head over heels, Academy, Antiriad, Elite and so on. I still play some of them with an emulator sometimes cheating like hell to see the end screens of games like Herbert's dummy run and Aufwiedersen monty. I never was good enough to finish those. Perhaps one day I'll finish Romantic Robot's Wriggler but that might take some time.

 

[Malachi]

My list:

Atari 2600 --> Pitfall!, Missile Command, Yar's Revenge, Donkey Kong. Oddly enough, Pac-Man wasn't a favorite of mine, though my younger brother was really good at it.

NES --> Super Mario Bros., Gauntlet.

PC --> Wolfenstein3D, Might and Magic (either 2 or 3, don't remember), Might and Magic: World of Xeen, Civilization. Civ probably did more to kill my academic ambitions than anything else -- thanks Sid.

Later PC games --> Master of Orion, Master of Magic, Fallout 2, Baldur's Gate, PS:T. I also played quite a bit of X-Com: UFO Defense. That one was really fun, even though I had to restart many times. The aliens always got to a point where they would thoroughly kick my ass -- it seemed like wave after wave, without enough time to recover in between. Good times.

 

[JrK]

For me it was a whole tribe of games on the C64. The most interesting picks (at least the ones from which I know the name) were:
- Trolls & Tribulations
- Flimbo's Quest
- Rambo 3
- Boulderdash
- wizball

 

[MetalCraze]

I remember Rambo 3 had an exploit on Spectrum where you could walk through walls just by going into the top right corner of the screen so you could avoid enemies that way.

 

[Durwyn]

Contra for NES