Your First PC Gaming Memory

Null

Null

Bards Tale I was a kick in the fucking balls. "Okay, you've set up your party, but you have zero equipment, the store is 5 spaces away, and 10 ENEMY GOLBINS SURROUND YOU THE SECOND YOU LEAVE THE ADVENTURER'S GUILD AND YOU'RE FUCKING DEAD."

I'm pretty sure that 50 foot span of Skara Brae was 10 feet deep in 1st level adventurer corpses.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Null said:
Bards Tale I was a kick in the fucking balls. "Okay, you've set up your party, but you have zero equipment, the store is 5 spaces away, and 10 ENEMY GOLBINS SURROUND YOU THE SECOND YOU LEAVE THE ADVENTURER'S GUILD AND YOU'RE FUCKING DEAD."

I'm pretty sure that 50 foot span of Skara Brae was 10 feet deep in 1st level adventurer corpses.
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Yup. That's why the first thing to do was always to create a bunch of player characters, add them to a party, pool all their gold and equipment to one person, sacrifice all the naked people, repeat, until you had enough of a proper starting budget.

--Patrick
 
Ravenpoe

Ravenpoe

PatrThom said:
Yup. That's why the first thing to do was always to create a bunch of player characters, add them to a party, pool all their gold and equipment to one person, sacrifice all the naked people, repeat, until you had enough of a proper starting budget.

--Patrick
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Capitalism!
 
Null

Null

PatrThom said:
Yup. That's why the first thing to do was always to create a bunch of player characters, add them to a party, pool all their gold and equipment to one person, sacrifice all the naked people, repeat, until you had enough of a proper starting budget.

--Patrick
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And then save scum until you made it to the goddamn equipment shop.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

Null said:
D I I L ?
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That was the code for the "Disrupt Illusion" spell.
See, there were summoner-type enemies who would do nothing but summon illusionary enemies to fight you, but you had a spell you could cast to immediately destroy all illusionary creatures (DISB - Disbelieve) which meant you got the experience for killing the illusionary creature without actually having to fight it.
Later, you would get the improved version of the spell, DIIL, which worked essentially the same way, except that you only had to cast it once and it would persist for the remainder of the battle, destroying all the illusions as they were summoned without having to recast it. So encounters with these conjurers/summoners were cause for celebration because you basically got free levels forever limited only by how long you wanted to prolong that specific battle (at least until they became trivial enemies for you).

--Patrick
 
Null

Null

PatrThom said:
That was the code for the "Disrupt Illusion" spell.
See, there were summoner-type enemies who would do nothing but summon illusionary enemies to fight you, but you had a spell you could cast to immediately destroy all illusionary creatures (DISB - Disbelieve) which meant you got the experience for killing the illusionary creature without actually having to fight it.
Later, you would get the improved version of the spell, DIIL, which worked essentially the same way, except that you only had to cast it once and it would persist for the remainder of the battle, destroying all the illusions as they were summoned without having to recast it. So encounters with these conjurers/summoners were cause for celebration because you basically got free levels forever limited only by how long you wanted to prolong that specific battle (at least until they became trivial enemies for you).

--Patrick
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Yeah I never got that far.
 
fade

fade

Staff member
For a vague memory, it was probably one of the math flash card games on the green Apple ][e's in school. My parents didn't allow video games, which is probably why I still suck at them. But I do remember Odell Lake and Oregon Trail from school. The first real computer games I played were when I went to college, which would've been Wolfenstein 3D shareware and company.
 
Hailey Knight

Hailey Knight

Another: Gremlins 2. Anyone else play this?

You roam the Clamp building from the movie with a few sources of bright light, clearing floors by scaring Gremlins away, but never finishing the job. And I mean that because floors would keep getting re-infested. It was endless.
 
Officer_Charon

Officer_Charon

The first SOLID gaming memory that I can recall is playing Muppet Learning Keys on the Commodore 64, with a special plug-in keyboard. Once I got past that point, I can remember playing a LOT of Pitfall, Spy Hunter, Pitstop, Epyx Summer/Winter Games, GI Joe... so many games.

Then we got an Atari ST, and I fell for the improve graphics (and what do you mean I don't have to listen to one or two 5 1/4" drives snarling away... what's this little hard diskette? You mean it stores MORE?). There was A LOT of Dungeon Master played on that, amongst a slew of others.

The first PC we had was a 386/33(? I might be misremembering). Ultima 6 was the game I recall most clearly as being one of the first played, and has DEFINITELY had a huge impact on my moral compass.
 
figmentPez

figmentPez

Staff member
Mathias said:
PC?

Sim City 2000 baby. No specific memory other than spending hours designing cities.
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I wish I had a screenhot, but one time I made a map that was completely flat, except for a corner that was just one tall hill covered in waterfall tiles. My entire city was hydroelectric powered. It was far too easy, though I never did find the optimal layout for getting enough police, fire and hospital coverage for arcologies. To get enough money for that arcology experimenting, I got my city to a prosperous condition, left it on cheetah speed overnight, and then bulldozed and dezoned the entire amp. Still had 30k people living in my city of nothing. Then I tried laying out arcologies with nothing but underground rail for transporation.
 
Mathias

Mathias

sixpackshaker said:
I would love another Sim City 2000 style game. I liked Streets of Sim City, but one of my favorite games was Sim Copter.
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I was so fucking excited for SimCity 5, and then EA happened...

The overall game isn't too terrible, but those map sizes just plain suck.
 
jwhouk

jwhouk

After racking my brain, the only thing I can think of is a simple hockey simulator (Pass/Skate/Shoot) for BASIC that I remember playing on my Atari 400.
 
PatrThom

PatrThom

I mean, if we're going to go back that far, I also have hunted the wumpus on a friend's Ti-99/4a, Cosmic Conflict on Cranky's Odyssey2, and all that time I spent on 2600 Combat after school at the day care (not a commercial day care, just a family that watched a bunch of us kids after school). I just didn't start playing "PC" games of my own really until college, where I finally didn't have to depend on going over to someone's house to use their computer.

--Patrick
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

We had a pong machine, but because of the title of the thread, I tried to limit my choice to the first actual computer game I remembered playing.

Hell, in elementary school (yeah, like 40 years ago) I used to play a math game on a teletype hooked up to what I assume was a mainframe. It would type out math questions, and I would type in answers. The teacher chose 3 of us from the whole school to be allowed to use the thing (supervised) during recess time.

Then again, for all I know, there was some teacher hidden in another office typing out the math questions :D
 
Eriol

Eriol

Cosmic Crunchers on the VIC-20. Pac-man clone. First I remember playing. We had an Intellivision too, but that doesn't count for this discussion.

But for IBM-PC, this old game called Donkey. Developed by Bill Gates. Yes THAT Bill Gates. And really really simple. But I was like 3 or 4, so that's OK.
 
Wahad

Wahad

My first one was playing Sokoban and Go on my grandpa's old DOS machine. I was like...seven, I think. Good times.
 
Tinwhistler

Tinwhistler

Eriol said:
Cosmic Crunchers on the VIC-20. Pac-man clone. First I remember playing. We had an Intellivision too, but that doesn't count for this discussion.

But for IBM-PC, this old game called Donkey. Developed by Bill Gates. Yes THAT Bill Gates. And really really simple. But I was like 3 or 4, so that's OK.
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That reminds me. I may have played a text version of Hunt the Wumpus on the apple before we got Apple Panic.



But I'm not really sure this qualifies as a "pc game" in the sense that most people use it today. And while this video is from 1972, I was 3 years old then. I played it probably closer to '77 or '78
 
GasBandit

GasBandit

Staff member
Tinwhistler said:
That reminds me. I may have played a text version of Hunt the Wumpus on the apple before we got Apple Panic.



But I'm not really sure this qualifies as a "pc game" in the sense that most people use it today. And while this video is from 1972, I was 3 years old then. I played it probably closer to '77 or '78
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Heh, that reminds me of M.U.L.E. on the C64..

 
jwhouk

jwhouk

Eliza! How could I forget Eliza?

Of course, it stretches the definition of a "game", but I definitely remember playing it back in middle school.
 
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