What was your first pc gaming memory?

[Raziel]

Way back in the day my father was actually one of the very first people to have a computer that I knew. I remember playing games on the really big floppies. Xexon? something basically the same if not that specifically. 3d pacman and my personal favorite was a maze generator where you could just enter the size to make it as large and complex as you wanted.


I can't recall if this was before or after atari consoles. But I had the atari 400 that had a built in keyboard as well as the normal 2600. We had the normal games for that, froger, pole position, pong, etc... But the one I really liked was this space sim game. You were a fighter craft and you entered coordinates on the keyboard to warp to locations and never knew what would be there when you arrived, enemies, space station, whatever. no idea what that was called.

 

[Joey Bolzenius]

My first memory is the original Doom on pc, 93 or 94, good times. Don't mess with the 90s! Har har har! Nostalgia is fun.

 

[Ravage]

I was probably around six or so but I remember playing pinball on Windows 95, or was it XP? Either way that's as far back as I can remember.

 

[Joey Bolzenius]

My intro to PC games & still one of my favorite games of time.

This is probably my earliest PC gaming memory as well.

Yes, this. Not my first pc experience but that was a fun christmas gift.

 

[DirgeNovak]

My first gaming memory is watching my mom play Wolfenstein 3D when I was four years old. I was scared of BJ's bloody face when her health got low, it took me a year before playing it for myself.

 

[Astoria]

I think it would have probably been watching my dad play Arsenal when I was 8 or so. I sucked so bad at it but it was really fun. I'd liken to play it again but I can't find it anywhere unfortunately.

 

[Fijiman]

That would be playing the Jumpstart games. Looking back those games were really kind of cheesy, but they weren't bad. Hell, I wouldn't be opposed to playing one or two of them again now just for the hell of it.

 

[FPLOON]

What do The Lemmings, Oregon Trails, and The Lion King have in common? I remember playing them all on a old Mac computer when I was 5 years old... The only difference is that I could not beat certain later levels (with the exception of the last level) in Lemmings, I could always beat Oregon Trails even though I had NO IDEA at the time how the game even worked most of the time, and The Lion King game I'm referring to was more of like this promotional demo for the movie, I think, since there were barely any mini-games outside of going through a boneyard labyrinth or playing match up against Simba or Nala as well as a separate section to just watch selected clips from the movie, like Simba learning to pounce...

Then again, during that time, my mom didn't have a computer for herself and the preschool I went to (that also had their own youth program for those attending elementary school) had, like, 7 Mac computers that were kinda old compared to the newer Mac that was just coming out at the time... So, I guess my first PC gaming experience, in terms of at home, was when I was playing this Hot Wheels CD-ROM game that was included in one of my Hot Wheels track sets... The whole game was just a small promotion for this new Hot Wheels CD-ROM game were you're traveling across these tracks that are connected across this standard two-story house with a "sunny" backyard and a "dark" basement (with glow-in-the-dark tracks), according to the trailer that played after you played the selected snippet from the game, I think...

The best part about that "game", for me, was when the game would keep track of your time of completion as well as how many times you "crashed" or "bumped" into certain obstacles that were presented sometimes, depending on how fast or how slow you drove through the track... You bet you ass I tried to get as many crashes (or "accident") as I could in one go... My highest, I think was 76 or something like that...

 

[talker]

I've got two... not sure which one was first. I THINK it was The Red Ace. It could also have been another game, but I don't remember what it was called. A pirate ship, sailing around and shooting forts and ships in a cannon pop-up minigame.

 

[Plinglebob]

This thread makes me feel both old and not quite that old at the same time. The first game I remember playing a lot of was Rescue Rover [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_Rover] on the 486/66DX with a 300Mb Hard Drive and a massive 8Mb of RAM when I was 7. Maybe its stockholm syndrome but I still have a fondness for DOS.

The other game I remember was Frogger on the BBC Micro when I was 8. One of our teachers had a disk of games he kept locked away for rainy lunchtimes and a friend and I used to play the games on it after school while our sisters had music lessons.

Basically the original(?) worms style game. You threw explosive bananas at each other after inputting your angle and velocity values.

I'd forgotten about that game. My friends and I occasionally tried playing by setting the angle to 0 and just drilled through the buildings.

 

[FPLOON]

That would be playing the Jumpstart games. Looking back those games were really kind of cheesy, but they weren't bad. Hell, I wouldn't be opposed to playing one or two of them again now just for the hell of it.

I remember playing the Grade 2 version as well as the Typing version... The formal you could technically speedrun through in under 5 minutes, since there were certain sections you didn't have to go through if you knew where that damn rabbit was actually going to appear... And the latter was so broken, you could reach the game's end goal (which was to get that one dude out of that typing-sensitive cage, I think) just by holding down the space bar...

Still, those games were still fun to play and, I think, I still have my old copy of the typing version in my CD-ROM case next to, possibly, Scrabble and Nicktoons Basketball...

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

My first memory was playing some sort of "101 Games" collection, essentially 101 different little minigames to play through, like Pac-Man, minigolf, connect 4, etc.

 

[Rose and Thorn]

There was this old man who pretty much lived in his garage. It had an office in it and in the office was a computer. It was a long time ago and the old man is ash now. The room smelt of cigarettes and I don't think it was ever cleaned. So lots of dust and what not.

ANyway, when I was a kid I went on to that computer in the office and played the only game that it had on it, solitaire. I had no idea how to play so I tried to learn for about 5 minutes, but then became ill because of the smell and had to leave the room, plus the game was giving me a headache.

That was my first pc gaming memory. tadatada

 

[gorfias]

Fortress of the Witch King on the Commodore 64. Turn based RPG that you can start and finish in a single session, text based with some graphics. I was completely addicted.

All hail the Commodore 64 playin' master race. My elementary school had 2 of these bad boys. I skipped recess ever chance I got to play it.

We are dating ourselves here! I was in the USAF, playing this in the barracks. This was way before networking, and everyone would come to my room to take turns on it, particularly Ultima 3. Everyone had their opinion about what to do next.

Great system. It had a printer, separate disc drive, a tape drive. I had a plug in cart. meant to speed it up. I blew that puppy up the first week I had it. As it was, it took about 5 min. to load a game. I'm surprised you had time to play anything during recess!

Every post in this thread should start with "I'm dating myself here but..." lol oh well I'll bite.

I remember being really impressed with the graphics for some Magic Schoolbus (I think) adventure game-type thing in 1st grade. But the first PC game I actually remember playing a lot was Doom and Doom 2.

Spoiler: Specifically the Doom95 port.

LOL, you looking at me?!?

Note Bill says the PC is the entertainment device of the future. Now that is supposed to be Microsoft's XB1. I think he was kind of right then. I have a PC in one of my entertainment centers. It can store a terabyte of music, play Steam games, be on the network/internet. Neat video. Thanks for sharing.

 

[MrDumpkins]

My first PC experience was Half life 2. I had played consoles for a long time so my fascination with games was as alive as ever. The physics engine blew my mind and to this day the gravity gun is my favorite weapon of all time (portal gun isn't a weapon).

 

[Caiphus]

Aw man. Educational games.

One of my very first memories at all is of me playing some sort of balloon-based maths game at around the age of 4. Then I quickly progressed into:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spelling_Jungle

Fukn hardcore m8.

 

[Fijiman]

That would be playing the Jumpstart games. Looking back those games were really kind of cheesy, but they weren't bad. Hell, I wouldn't be opposed to playing one or two of them again now just for the hell of it.

I remember playing the Grade 2 version as well as the Typing version... The formal you could technically speedrun through in under 5 minutes, since there were certain sections you didn't have to go through if you knew where that damn rabbit was actually going to appear... And the latter was so broken, you could reach the game's end goal (which was to get that one dude out of that typing-sensitive cage, I think) just by holding down the space bar...

Still, those games were still fun to play and, I think, I still have my old copy of the typing version in my CD-ROM case next to, possibly, Scrabble and Nicktoons Basketball...

Yeah, I think that the 3rd grade one was probably my favorite. It's mostly because, well, what's not to love about running around a giant mountain fortress/laboratory while trying to save history as we know it? Our version of the 4th grade disk was crap though as the audio was fucked for some of the minigames, making it very hard to actually do them. Unfortunately, I think my mom tossed out all of the Jumpstart games we had years ago.

 

[Chrozi]

First computer game was A-Maze-Ing on the TI-99\4a, hottest around at the time. That was 1980. Yup

 

[duwenbasden]

The first game I've played on a PC is the original SimCity back in 1993. Still plays it occasionally (via VirtualBox on Windows 3.11)

 

[TheMigrantSoldier]

Aside from Math Blasters and Pajama Sam (thanks, Elementary School), I'd say that my first experience was Creatures. I had no idea what it was about and no idea how to progress the game but it was a fun, worthwhile experience to "explore" the world with my cute, little monster babies.