Your First Game

[Small Man Big Horse]

I found this at a car boot sale today and it bought back a flood of memories:



It was the first ever game I had for my Commodore 64, when I was aged 8 back in 1982. We used to play it as a family for hours on end, and as it didn't have a high score table, my Dad used to make one on paper and if anyone was close to beating the high score the whole room would fall silent as we watched in awe. It's basically just a maze game where you have to eat cheese and avoid other (red) rats, though with the added excitement that the screen scrolled, but it kept us gripped for months and months. Indeed as we had our C64 shortly after release, I don't think we were even able to get another game for a good few months. And I know, if I played it now it'd no doubt be rubbish, but that's why I never will.

So what was the first game you ever owned? And do you rate it to this day?

[rudi]

That was the first I ever played on a PC; it was my mate's vic 20 and I don't dare try to think of the year...

[Consignia]

I couldn't remember the exact one, but I did get an Amstrad CPC 6128[nb]Oh, yeah[/nb] with loads and loads of games when I was about 5. Of them I remember Chuckie Egg and Killer Gorilla, so it may have been one of those. I do remember the first game actually bought for me was the infamous Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.

I also vaguely remember a VTech educational computer from before even then, but I'm not sure maths puzzles really count.

[small_world]

I've still got the first games 'console' I ever had. It was a Tandy. And it played tapes!!! How did that work?
Anyway, I had a few games for it. A penguins one, a one with a guy who had to run a grid and black squares off, or something.
But THIS ONE....

Left the best memories. I can't remember playing it, but the cover and the pictures of the game bring back so much.
I'm pretty sure you had to move around the 3D MAZE! and when you saw the phantom, you'd press Spacebar!!!! Really hard.
I remember it being fucking terrifying though. I would have been 5.


I don't want to turn this in to a  'games I remember being awesome-but were shit' thread.
But, my cousin was always a generation ahead of me in gaming terms. He had a BBC were I had the Tandy. He had a Mega-Drive when I had a Master-System. And he had an Amiga thing, then I got one.
But before I got my Amiga, he had a Robo-Cop game. I don't remember much about it, but you had to follow a van, or you were in the back of a van, or you WERE A VAN! Anyway, it seemed so open-world and free, and the graphics looked amazing.
I played it a few years after, and it was crap.

[Sivead]

Star Wars Death Star trench run rip off and destroyer of eye sight, Planet Zeon - Tomytronic 3D.

[madhair60]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j429zhJH1gU

[confettiinmyhair]

Pushover for the Amiga 600 was the first I played
http://youtu.be/-E06Yi14IbQ

the computer package also came with Formula One Grand Prix
http://youtu.be/4T9h3P8xtgA

[Ginyard]

Star Wars Death Star trench run rip off and destroyer of eye sight, Planet Zeon - Tomytronic 3D.

FUCKING HELL JESUS BANANA COCK I'd totally forgotten about that!!!!!!!!!!!!! Nice one :) I can't remember if I owned it but I played it a lot. Might have been a mate's.



I can still remember hearing my dad playing it on christmas eve before they gave it to me. There was no randomness to the assault. The ships moved the same way each time so it didn't take long to suss their pattern and defeat each level. I'd love to have a go at it now.

[Phil_A]

First game I'm pretty sure was Batman on my dad's Amstrad PCW, rendered entirely in two shades of green. It came on one of those weird chunky disks that I think only Amstrad ever used. And we never beat it because it was incredibly hard.



The best part of it was the sound effects. The PCW wasn't designed with sound in mind, so the only "music" in the game was just a terrifying series of grating single channel beeping noises, which only served to make the game feel much more unsettling than it really was.

[jutl]

[rudi]

Star Wars Death Star trench run rip off and destroyer of eye sight, Planet Zeon - Tomytronic 3D.

Fuck yes!

[thecuriousorange]

The first computer game in my household was this Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtes game for the NES (or the Nintendo as we simply called it). It was really good and nothing like all those shit Turtles beat-em-ups that came after. There were bits where you had to swim or drive, in addition to the platform parts. It was hard! AND when you were nearly dead you could pause and switch to another one of the four turtles with more health. Each one was slightly different because of their weapons. It was the only computer game in my house for a full year and i don't remember being bored of it, although I was about five years old. The music can still bring a tear to my eye.



When we finally got another game it was Super Mario Bros. 3!! Seeing that game still makes me do a big rubbery one.

[Big Jack McBastard]

Star Wars Death Star trench run rip off and destroyer of eye sight, Planet Zeon - Tomytronic 3D.

Jesus how old do I feel now... again... I remember that so well it's frightening but it was behind a very old door in my brain.

Beyond that, possibly Chuckie Egg or Barmy Burgers on the ZX.

[HappyTree]

Best thing was if you put the game selector in between slots it gave you the football game with 3 men on one side and only 2 on the other. My first cheat!

After that it was Space Invaders in pubs. Then I think Puck Monster followed.



But the first "home" computer was the Acorn Electron. First game Chuckie Egg.



In those days you had the patience to make an effort and try, try again until you mastered it. Now with the ease of loading it's easy to switch off at the slightest irritation.

[Famous Mortimer]

Zolyx, for the Commodore 64.

http://www.fupa.com/games/1/zolyx.html

I remember, like SMBH, me and my Mum competing to get the high score. She actually qualified for Zzap! 64's high score table at one point, although I don't think we ever sent the photo of the screen with the score on it, in to them.

[thenoise]

Granny's Garden, on the BBCs at my primary School



Not played it since but I remember it being pretty terrifying, actually.

[I accept the terms of the]

It would have been one of these (the compilation that came with our Spectrum).



All pretty weird games with lots of character!

[AsparagusTrevor]

The first computer game in my household was this Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtes game for the NES (or the Nintendo as we simply called it). It was really good and nothing like all those shit Turtles beat-em-ups that came after. There were bits where you had to swim or drive, in addition to the platform parts. It was hard! AND when you were nearly dead you could pause and switch to another one of the four turtles with more health. Each one was slightly different because of their weapons. It was the only computer game in my house for a full year and i don't remember being bored of it, although I was about five years old. The music can still bring a tear to my eye.

I had this notoriously difficult game on the Commodore 64. That version didn't have different ranged weapons or directional attacks, and also didn't have the collectable projectile weapons. I died a lot, only got to Shredder once and he beat me in about 5 seconds.

A friend of mine at the time had a NES and he bought the game. I played it and because I was used to the crippled C64 version I found it much easier and even managed to beat it.

[Consignia]

Yeah, it was similar with the Amstrad version of Turtles. I only ever finished it via pokes.

[sick as a pike]

[Atari Adventure]

That's mine as well.  Seeing the box has set off all sorts of unsuspected memories. Proust's madeleine?  Pah!
I think the Atari is still in my Mum's house somewhere- I may have to play it again.

[Tokyo Sexwhale]

This was the first electronic game I actually owned.  Even before I had a spectrum.

[Treguard of Dunshelm]

Ooh, I had that!

First game on a computer or console would have to be Burnin' Rubber on the Amstrad 464 Plus:



Never got more than halfway through. I wonder how well I'd do on it nowadays.

[defmem]

Ghostbusters 2 on the C64. I was hugely obsessed with Ghostbusters as a nipper, and i remember the above screenshot vividly as i always got stuck around that bit (which i think was early on).

Also:



It may have just been me being shit as a child, but I started Aliens, and NEVER ONCE fought an alien or figured out how to progress through the game...

I was a shit gamer in my youth it seems

[sirhenry]

First game I played came with an early computer magazine - it took up 4 pages. After typing in the code for over two hours it turned out to be an incredibly basic maze game that I got bored with after 5 minutes. The only sense of achievement was in that it worked first time.

Most of the time it looked like this:

\__|__|__/

[Kapuscinski]

First game I ever owned was Gran Turismo, and I was the worst at it in my family. I had a PS One and also enjoyed Die Hard Trilogy and Grant Theft Auto.

The first game I ever played (at school) was some roleplaying game where if you asked the characters to take part in a sex act you'd be disarmed or told off.

[Cohaagen]

This behemoth:



I actually had two. I broke the screen on the first one after headbutting it in frustration.

The first proper game I would have played is something crap on the Atari 2600. Keystone Kapers I think.

Things improved when I got Seaquest, because I was obsessed with submarines at the time. I grew up next to a huge US naval base and a year or so later got a NES from the base PX. It was great until I found out it only worked with NTSC cartridges. With a bit of swapping I did get to play Captain Skyhawk and Super Mario 3 before they came out in the UK, though.

[Space ghost]

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

PAPER BOY

[Small Man Big Horse]

This was the first electronic game I actually owned.  Even before I had a spectrum.

My best friend at the time had one of those and I lusted after it so much. He'd be really choosy as to when you could play it as well, and I ended up having one go to every five that he did, the bastard.

It may have just been me being shit as a child, but I started Aliens, and NEVER ONCE fought an alien or figured out how to progress through the game...

I remember finding that terrifying, it was the first game to ever make me all but jump out of my skin...Can't remember it being hard to shoot the bastards, though perhaps you had to find a gun first or something...

PAPER BOY

Which version though? As the C64 version was hugely superior to the Spectrum one if you ask me...

<reignites the Great C64 / Spectrum War of 1984>

[Famous Mortimer]

<reignites the Great C64 / Spectrum War of 1984>

It's still burning - every time I mention how great the C64 was, my flatmate chimes in about the Spectrum, and it's like we're 11 again.