The first arcade game I can really remember playing was a Star Wars game in the arcades. You could sit in a cockpit and shoot at little wire frame tie fighters. I was a kid and not particularly good at it, but it was really fun.
I had that on the Atari! I love how the TIE fighters fly past you, and shoot slow moving "fireballs" from rear-facing turrets that are big (and slow) enough for you to destroy, rather than using their forward firing lasers to shoot you from behind. XD
I played it before I saw the film, so I had no idea what was meant by "Red Five standing by!", "look at the size of that thing!", and "great shot, kid, that was one in a million!".
We had a pong game when I was in about 3rd grade so guess that would count. Yes I'm old.lol
You're just a youngster, I was already in high school when Pong came out. As for my earliest game, it's hard to remember clearly, but I seem to recall a text based game called Asylum being one of my earliest favourites. I was big on the Gold Box D&D games as well, I played them all several times through, along with Civilization 1.
The first game I remember playing was a tennis game I programmed in BASIC on my Apple ][. No graphics, you chose a stroke via text (backhand, forehand, overhead smash). It was a programming exercise in a book.
My first arcade style game was a Star Wars game on the Apple ][ that required rebooting into integer basic to load.
Super Mario Brothers arcade game. My brother and I would beg quarters off my grandma and then walk down to the convenience store and play for as long as we could. Mostly he played and I cheered. I think a few months later my folks got us a Nintendo.
Space Invaders in a movie theatre. (Arcades came Way later). I had Pong on some cheap knock-off/ripoff console, along with Tennis and a "shoot the dot" light gun game.
I was playing pinball with my older brothers when someone came into the pizza parlor and tried to explain to us what playing space invaders was like
From arcade machines, I went to the Atari 2600 (just called an Atari back then) and played most of the old standbys there.
The first RPG-like game I played was Zork - golden age of text adventures!
And the first roll your stats, D&D clone dungeon crawl I played was Temple of Apshai. Came on 2 cassettes for my C64. Character generation took a few minutes to load, then there was about a 20 minute load time to enter the dungeon. I was hooked
The first arcade game I can really remember playing was a Star Wars game in the arcades. You could sit in a cockpit and shoot at little wire frame tie fighters. I was a kid and not particularly good at it, but it was really fun.
I totally rocked that game (probably because I spent more quarters on it than it would have taken to buy the machine itself). I loved it.
I also spent days at a time playing both Gauntlet and Dragons lair.
With the original Gauntlet I eventually got to the point where it was impossible to lose health. Elf with extra speed and extra shot power was unstoppable. Throw in Extra mana potion and there wasn't a board where I wasn't gaining thousands of health every board. Then they changed the pathing in Gauntlet 2 and you couldn't do that anymore.
As a teenage boy, I considered it my honor bound duty to 'Rescue' Princess Daphny from the dragon.
Baldur's Gate I learned how to read in polish and I remember having nightmares about the armored figure after Gorion being killed , I was 6 at that time. I also remember that I accidently made an ankegh armour and found the wand of summoning and my older cousin who was 12 y/o at the time was so jealous because a six year old did something he couldn't
Star Control, I think. I mostly watched my older brother play, though.
The first one I bought (with the little money I had been saving) was Heroes of Might & Magic 2. No other game has given so much pleasure (I mean, the simple act of buying it), it's like those odd kobold gold coins you hoard until you have enough to buy that precious item. It was an adventure in itself.
Comments
I played it before I saw the film, so I had no idea what was meant by "Red Five standing by!", "look at the size of that thing!", and "great shot, kid, that was one in a million!".
My first arcade style game was a Star Wars game on the Apple ][ that required rebooting into integer basic to load.
My first CRPG was Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dendy_(console)
The first game I played with that console was Mortal Kombat
From arcade machines, I went to the Atari 2600 (just called an Atari back then) and played most of the old standbys there.
The first RPG-like game I played was Zork - golden age of text adventures!
And the first roll your stats, D&D clone dungeon crawl I played was Temple of Apshai. Came on 2 cassettes for my C64. Character generation took a few minutes to load, then there was about a 20 minute load time to enter the dungeon. I was hooked
I also spent days at a time playing both Gauntlet and Dragons lair.
With the original Gauntlet I eventually got to the point where it was impossible to lose health. Elf with extra speed and extra shot power was unstoppable. Throw in Extra mana potion and there wasn't a board where I wasn't gaining thousands of health every board. Then they changed the pathing in Gauntlet 2 and you couldn't do that anymore.
As a teenage boy, I considered it my honor bound duty to 'Rescue' Princess Daphny from the dragon.
The first one I bought (with the little money I had been saving) was Heroes of Might & Magic 2. No other game has given so much pleasure (I mean, the simple act of buying it), it's like those odd kobold gold coins you hoard until you have enough to buy that precious item. It was an adventure in itself.
Edit, thats not counting arcade games.