Columns This Isn't About Monkey Island, Honest

the first game that got me hooked was elite on the acorn electron. my mates and I used to spend our entire french lessons discussing our progress after each weekend to discover which spectactular trades we'd pulled off or the latest rating we'd achieved.
progress was only halted when my electron stopped being able to save games (to tape!) and i had to get as far as i could in a single day. the real physics of elite II really put me off the next updated versions though

the next real addiction i had was to civilization on the amiga, and laterly civ 2 on the PC. again whole days would disappear trying to complete a game in a single session. the advent of the internet led me to apolyton (as someone else mentioned) and other forums to pit my skills in OCC challenges on deity level

now i mainly play RTS games, all those FPS's are best left to consoles

 

Remember those handheld game were everything was preset, you just moved from preset image to preset image. I think those were my earliest gaming experience... then there was a plethora of consoles and great games (metroid, sonic the hedgehog, super Mario 3, ff2, ff7, nba jam, super Mario world, star fox, Mario 64, smashies, doom, age of empires, wing commander 1,2,3 just to name a few), but I remember the first time were things changed and gaming became, less socially acceptable.

I remember the night I had just discovered battle.net on Diablo and I stayed on that game for 36 hours sans bathroom and snacks. My mom woke up the next day and was hysterical that I was still awake and she didn't understand that I was still playing the game. a few months later when I was in the throws of Diablo clans and duping, my grades were falling and there was this night were my mom and I got into an argument about the game and she was crying that I was wasting my life and I gave her the cd as a sign that I was done playing.. I think I pilfered it back in a couple days so I could make a no-cd image. Ahh the good old days... then I discovered asheron’s call and I can has mmo!

 

MechWarrior (1st was very open, only the 1st was great IMHO)
Pirates! (very open ended, many difficulty levels)
Sim-City (best simple time waster ever)
Civilization (I even made batch files that hex-edited in cheats, 2 was great, 3 sucked, 4 bored me)
Wing Commander (1&2) (linear but Extremely Immersive for its day, great storyline, wingmate selection was brilliant)
Warlords (won on the original demo, liked 2 & 3)
Secret Weapons Of The Luftwaffe (wow, just wow, loved the Go-229)
Monkey Island (what can I say?)

Sadly most of those had sequels that disappointed.

One thing I'm noticing is that games like Pirates!, MechWarrior, Wing Commander, etc. had many facets to them (trading, combat, big picture results of player actions, storyline, ...). They were the antithesis of the simple platformers of the day.

 

For me, Rainbow Six without a shadow of doubt.

Quite how your girlfriends grandfather comes into this I have no idea...

 

I guess I'm an old-schooler, who was privileged to say the least...

The first game I ever played, was Pong. My neighbor was probably the least likely person I would have ever expected to own one, and honestly, he rarely ever even touched it. None the less, he had purchased one of the early early home units, and he and I would occasionally sit down and play together. When he wasn't playing with us, it was generally the other neighborhood kids or their family we'd play against. It was an odd experience, much like table tennis but without all the exercise, which given his medical conditions suit him just fine. A far cry from anything that came after, but it always leaves me with a bit of nostalgia whenever I remember it. It brought us together, and gave the people on our block one more chance to get together, share, and enjoy an experience we'll never forget.

From there, I was personally hooked. There was the old Atari 2600 games like Tanks!, then the Intellivision with Bomber Squadron, etc. Not to mention the arcades and coin-op games that came tumbling one after another after...Galatix! and Pac-Man, Sub-Roc, Robotron, and 1942 just to name a few. After that a good friend's father bought a Commodore 64, and soon after myself also, using all my paper route money, playing such oldies along the Epix Megagames line, amongst others (Paper Route, Marble Madness, etc.) With my own in hand, I was able to help my friend's father figure out how to do word processing and budgets and simple type spreadsheet programs to help him manage our Boy Scout troop and other daily tasks. Surprisingly, it was my first consulting experience, and lead me further along the road to ruin.

After that it was the Amiga 1000 where I would play such greats as Contra! and many if not all of the early EA games (Snow Fox, BlazeBall, to name a few). My uncle went and bought a real IBM PC just to play around with (which those days, cost as much as a car!) and we would spend hours together playing such awesome greats as Flight Simulator. As much as the EAA had instilled in me to learn about aviation, it was a mere pittance compared to the real experience of FS. I'll never look at a ball gauge the same way again...

But the few that stick out as real *experiences* were the following:

Scorched Earth (IBM PC 386) - This was the first intensely fun multi-player experience we ever had. We as college buddies would all get together and play SE with it's snarky epithets and raucous weapons. We even managed to turn it into a drinking game, forcing each other to snap a shot each time we died. That, if we didn't fall over just from sheer laughter. It brought us all together as friends, and to this day, we reminisce about how so and so killed such and such, using their Death's Head in a horror of calamity!

System Shock (PC) - This game was so visceral it wasn't even funny. At night I would play it with the lights turned low, and the speakers turned on high. All that would be seen was lit by the ethereal glow of the monitor and miscellaneous lights blinking from the computer below the desk. My wife would sit behind me just to see what was happening, and was the only game I can really remember in which we felt our hearts pound and jump in fright as we heard the growling noises and deafening roar of the creatures roaming the halls. That's when we both really realized how much *more* there was to a video game than a movie or book. You don't watch it, you don't read it.... you *experience* it.

World of Warcraft (PC) & Lineage II (PC) - These games were huge time sinks. Not because the game itself was such a wild experience, but because it kept us as friends together regardless of the vast distances between us. No matter how far we were from each other, we could still get together online, chat, and share experiences trying to slay the next raid mob, or show off the latest gear we managed to score. It was a forum not only for entertainment, but a means to share something with everyone, that life and it's trials kept us from doing by sheer distance. Coupling that with the added bonus of tech such a Ventrilo and TeamSpeak, and it seemed like we were all back together again... just like in SE.

Of course, time continues marching on, and as well, the new and exciting experiences that await. Every day, I look forward to seeing the 'next big thing' that will either bring us closer as family, or reunite us as friends no matter where we live. At the moment, it's the wonderful Wii and it's awesome control interfaces, and the Star Wars games which my kids adore so much. Hopefully, I'll be able to share a bit with them the experiences I so loved, and start them along the road I so aptly followed...

Thanks for a great article and an awesome site!

 

The first game I played must have been my sisters Game & Watch back in the early 1990s. The first gaming platform that I got was the original Game Boy, complete with Super Mario and Tetris. I played the Game Boy on and off over the years, along with a few PC games that my father had on an old computer that we had (circa 1992 I think), up until about 1999.

It had some classic games (well I grew up with them!) like PGA Tour Golf (the 1st one) and Xenon 2.

Then, two things happened - we finally got a new computer (an old Pentium 166Mhz from work) and I got a Nintendo 64. What a great system that was.

One of the few games that would run on the old computer was Railroad Tycoon 2, and there was a demo in a games magazine that I picked up. I played it and I was hooked. It can still draw me in for hours and hours to this day (still haven't finished the expansion pack).

 

I think the first game I remember using was a version of Monopoly that came on a floppy disk for my family's first computer. I say "using" because, being as right-brained as I am, I remember never being able to get the game to work. I must have been 3 or 4 at the time. Still though, that is one of my earliest memories, period.

Fast forward a few years when I was at my friend's house and discovered Doom II. My friend's family, albeit turf farmers, had quite a bit of money and were always able to get him the newest tech presents. At his house I discovered Doom and Jazz Jackrabbit, until, for one holiday, he received the N64. And a little while after, came the Holy Grail.

Goldeneye.

I never really turned into a hardcore gamer, and we never even finished the single-player missions, but that game was so mind-opening for me. Three dimensions, location damage, a little bit of auto-aim, the most incredible array of guns and it was just... beautiful. As the years went on we'd still diversify in our game choices, always being a little partial to Bond games - even today we'll still throw Agent Under Fire or Nightfire in the Gamecube whenever we just want some mindless shooting - but I'll never forget the implicit impression that the multiplayer in Goldeneye left on me. (And it wasn't until much, much later that I'd get around to seeing the movie.)

In the meantime, I messed around with online flash games for several years until I got my first personal computer, a Pentium 133mHz IBM Thinkpad. I played a lot of single-player games from then on, especially Starcraft, and some older DOS games but I forget which. When I got a better computer in high school (500mHz, 640MB RAM) I expanded a little to Age of Empires II and Counter-Strike. At school (my first 2 years of high school were at a boarding school) I played on another friend's uber-laptop and played a lot of C&C:Generals and just got introducted to HL2 but never finished it.

Two years ago, almost, I built my current rig and thank God I was able to get the 7600GT. I've been able to run almost every game since, depending on settings, and was finally able to experience Half Life 2 and Oblivion. Now, at college, I've been gaming a little more but until I can get a new card (9600?) and better CPU cooler things are on hold.

I think that it's possible I may have an inherent proclivity towards computers and gaming, but I don't fit the type - I'm, as aforementioned, right-brained and not nearly as good at math or science as most enthusiasts I've met. While I truly do love games as an art form and think perhaps one day they could be the successor to cinema itself (which is something that really came to me in HL2), now life is starting to really sink in for me and I'm starting to use my computer experience and knowledge in more practical pursuits.

Don't take that the wrong way, Joe - you're good at what you do and you've been able to make a career out of your passions. I just mean that personally I see my career future developing in other areas, namely law. Areas which, traditionally, one could draw little experience from an activity as gaming and computer science.

But I'm going to do my damnedest to get this entertaining and even enlightening pasttime involved in there somehow.

PS - kt3946, my roommate and I have been playing Scorched Earth on DOSBox this past week for a bit of nostalgia.

 

I started playing space invaders on an Osborne, and then moved up to Sopwith and Castle (an ASCII RPG thing) on the 8086. (yeah, I'm old. Get over it)

The gmae that got me hooked was DOOM, or more specifically DOOM2. I got the boxed set with 1 and 2 and the user created levels for DOOM2 and I don't think I ever played all of them, but I sure tried.

After that, there was a bit of a hiatus until Halflife, and then HL2 took over my life for a while. I just finished HL2 and HL2E1 again yesterday, and I'm not waiting until I can afford to get decent internet again so I can get E2 and portal.

I never got into online play as I hate losing and so it's pretty much single player story driven FPS games for me. Looking forward to Bioshock and STALKER this year.

 

LOL, That brought back a lot of memories: My neighbors also had a Pong. I remember using the bi-plane bit in "Combat" to do aerial stunts on a 2600 (mostly buzzing the tower while inverted and recovering from a stall - after getting bored of the combat part). I replayed Jill of the Jungle (from Epix Megagames) way too many times (& the music was awesome for it's day). And how could I have forgotten Scorched Earth? (incidentally the 3D version is not too bad). A group of friends and I have been using Guild Wars similarly to the way you use WoW & Lineage II.

I remember replacing the motherboard on my mom's computer from a 8086 board to a board with a V20. "zoom-zoom"

I wasn't into online games either until I tried Guild Wars (I only play PvE). As an additional bonus I really like the fact that it's instanced (It really feels like single player or cooperative LAN game when you leave town).

 

Mario 64 on the N64, simply awesome, then what got me hooked was Super smash bros on GC! And the last straw was HL2 and Legend of Zelda (series) which eventually showed me what I was lacking in computer strength which led me to the need to make my own computer which taught me everything I know today about computers, and the last step was bit-tech

 

Stakler's great and all but if you can I'd start with Oblivion if you haven't played it, simply epic!

 

For me it has to be back when I was five or six years old (so about 15 years ago) and we got our first family computer. It was one of the old macintosh power pc's. I was instantly hooked, even before I had played any games, I just loved using the computer, I am afraid I cannot really put into words what it was that I connected with, but I definitely connected.

Anyway, to cut a long reminiscing story short, the game for me was the original prince of persia, yes, thats right, the side scrolling genius of that game (not to mention the first time i fell off the screen and landed on some spikes and died!) had me hooked, I spent untold hours on that game trying to escape the evil sultan's dungeon and save the princess. Needless to say I dont think I ever managed to complete the game before the family upgraded the computer to a PC...

 

I think the first game the really sucked me in was playing Descent on my hottest in the hood at the time AMD DX2-100.it was also my first OC since it was really a DX4-100.lol. Then a friend brought his system over and showed me the magic on multiplayer over null modem cable..i was hooked. I had played Doom and Hexen and Heretic. but being able to move in "360 degrees of freedom"!! That for me was the defining moment. I had grown up with the Atari 2600 went through the Intellivision and Colecovision, even had a Vectrex. but that game. It got me. It was so bad that my friends and i would go to the local community college and sneak into the computer lad..LOL.

 

Command and Conquer: Red Alert


Nuff said

 

I don't think I can point to a single game to be honest, the best I can do is come up with a list of games that got me into different genres in the early days. Had a sega master system 2 before we had a PC, but I can't really say I could remember any of the games without having to think pretty hard.

FPS: Duke Nukem 3d
Tactical strategy: UFO: Enemy Unknown* (X:COM UFO Defense to those in north america)
Real-Time strategy: C&C: Red Alert
Big-stompy-robots: Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries
Hack-and-slash: Diablo
RPG: Baldur's Gate 2/System Shock 2 **

* = Force me to pick one this would be it I guess, though it wasn't the first.
** = So different, but both so full of stat-based goodness

 

I loved many games before The One. I loved Mechwarrior, Shining Force, Final Fantasy VII, etc. I didn't fall head over heels in love until Ultima Online.

No, the graphics were not earth shattering. No, the connection was not always stable or predictable. No, the cost was not small to play. But I loved the game all the same. I mean, what better than a place where we could all gather and leave the real world behind and enjoy an adventure together. Sometimes it felt like a comedy, sometimes it felt like a horror and sometimes it felt like a drama. I felt the real human connection in that game in a way I couldn't in person. I got to live outside myself in a way a movie or book couldn't let me. I was a social outcast in school(the only real socializing I got at the time) and the game gave a place where everyone was socially equal. No jocks, nerds, etc. It wasn't until later that the dream would die a little(and not untiil other MMOs came out that it practically died). The game became less about having fun and more about gathering and collecting wealth, at first not so much at the cost of others. Then that became the name of the game; screw everyone to get as much as you can. Dominate, make them miserable, win at all costs. That's when my short but passionate love for the game and even people died.

I guess that's why I loved the game and why I still enjoy trying out MMOs. I guess it'll never be the same, but the pursuit of that same feeling of wonder still persists.

I'd say the only game that brings me close to that again is EVE-Online, even though its limitations are pretty obvious and the same things that made UO die for me are there, but I'm older, wiser, and more willing to take the good with the bad.

 

I feel you Joe. The first game I ever seen on pc which actually lit the spark of passion for games in me was monkey island 2, after that experience I wasn't the same again. I bought my first 486dx pc and dedicated myself to adventure games. At the moment I got a PC a Wii and PS3, I really love action-adventure games, rpgs, some fps with decent storyline (bioshock) and adventures off course.

The thing that you said about gamers, trying to re-live their first experience is absolutely true in my opinion. I grow up to love games with strong storyline and humor above all (fallout anyone?) on the other hand I kinda dislike horror games but I still play them if they're fun.

 

Wintergames by Epyx on the C64. That was the Vampire that seduced me. My jugular would not recover ever again. Real Life was traded on a daily basis, for my Virtual alter ego after that.

 

I would start explaining what 'the game' was for me, but Joe's done a pretty decent job at it already.

Doom wasn't the first game I ever played, not by a long shot. My earliest game memories go back to the Commodore 64 (Dizzy!) and the Megadrive (instant loading!!!). Before the PC, my family owned an actually-quite-rare Amiga 1500+ (an A500, with two floppy drives), and I remember such games as Toki, Elf and Street Fighter 2 (whilst my brothers played endless seasons on Manchester United Premier League Champions, where every year you bought a new floppy disk with the updated teams on).

My first brief experience of Doom was the shareware version on a friend's PC. Enough to know the title, but not enough to appreciate the game. A little later when we bought our first 90Mhz Pentium (zzzooom!) it came with a CD of about 300 free and shareware games. Among them was the Doom shareware. And honestly, I've never looked back. I guess Joe's right, every hardcore gamer has the one game against which all others are (always unfavourably) measured. People say no game is flawless, but for everyone there is at least one game that is. For me, it was Doom. There is, to this day, absolutely nothing bad about the game. Nothing, zero, zip. It is, at least in my opinion, perfect.

There are some games you play, and there are some games you devour. Even after you've played them to death numerous times you just keep going back, doing different things to them. You don't just play them, you dissect them, take them apart, polish all the bits and put them back together. You read everything you can get your hands on about them, hear everyone's opinion on them, positively obsess over them. Finding a book like the Doom Construction Kit just added fuel to the flames for me. I would say that it was because of that book I am as easy with computers as I am now. It didn't just teach me how to edit Doom, it taught me the entire basics of manipulating computers. The whole foundations of my understanding of how a computer programme works, how the bits fit together, how the computer games grabs the various pieces of media and places them in an engine to render for the user, all that I learnt as an over-eager eight year old totally from playing with Doom. It taught me everything, and absolutely cemented my love of games ever since.

I guess that what separates us hardcore gamers from the casual gamers. They play games, we live them, they become part of our lives and actually have defining effects on our past. The same could probably be said for many people with certain films or certain music, but for us, games aren't just things we play, they're things with live.

 

I'vbe thought about this thread a good deal since my last post, searching my entire collection of games and how I feel about each one.

I still maintain that Halo brought me into the FPS world, but for flight sims the one that really is the game for me was European Air War for win 95.

what struck me so much about it was that the AI was actually Intelligent, and reacted in some very surprising ways, always leading to challenging and interesting dogfights, no matter how much you stacked the mission creation options in your favor.

I guess I've been lucky enough to have a repeat experience of the game because Wings over Europe was made by exactly the same development team, and using an updated and refined version of the same engine. the only difference is that this time round they released all of their dev tools and have continued to give the community their full support, which has turned it from a decent class WIN 2000 game with a great AI, into something with stunning visuals rivaling FSX with the correct mods applied. (even if the game swells to 30GB+)