What are the first games you remember playing?

[Barry Admin]

I thought that Ghostbusters game was cracking. Quite a lot in it for a 1984 game, driving sections and all. It seems Zzap!64 only gave it 4/10 although it got a 9/10 from C&VG. Interesting to think back to it as an early strategy/management game of sorts, had never considered that.

[Cuellar]

What year are we talking? Are we going back to the 80s (in which case it was probably a BBC Micro game) or 90s (more likely to be a DOS or early Windows game)?

Early Windows (well, probably not that early). Must have been around, ooooh....er, 94-5?

[AsparagusTrevor]

I thought that Ghostbusters game was cracking. Quite a lot in it for a 1984 game, driving sections and all. It seems Zzap!64 only gave it 4/10 although it got a 9/10 from C&VG. Interesting to think back to it as an early strategy/management game of sorts, had never considered that.

I did love it myself, I played it so many times since each time you completed it you got more money for the next playthrough, meaning you could buy better equipment. It's just weird to think that kind of low-action management thing would've held my attention at that age. It's also weird to think the developers saw Ghostbusters, the supernatural comedy film and thought "let's make a business management simulator", but my younger self is glad they did.

I believe there were some ports to other systems, like the NES and Master System.

[studpuppet]

Spacestation Pheta, among other early 90s Mac games. There were more fun games, but this always seemed the most impressive because it was the only game my dad would actually play on occasion.

Of related interest, I was one of the funders of this self-published tome:

https://unbound.com/books/macgaming

(Waiting for it to be printed at the moment)

[Jerzy Bondov]

We had a Dragon 32 as my aunt worked for Dragon. I remember playing Asteroids and Berzerk on it. My favourite game was Lunar Rover, which was a port of Moon Patrol:

Except I don't remember it like this because the computer TV was a little black and white one. Made the snooker game very difficult.

[Phil_A]

The earliest computer I can recall seeing in action was the Acorn Electron owned by my Uncle and cousins - not sure how old I was, but just cognisant enough to recognise the things moving around on the TV as a game.

The first game I think I saw in action was probably Boxer, was I realise now was a pretty blatant ripoff of Nintendo's Popeye(obviously I didn't know that at the time). There was another one called Birdstrike which is actually a pretty fun little shooter.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bqse-xfVv70

My sister and I later inherited the Electron as our first computer, although it tended to be me that got the most use out of it. The first game I bought with money was a puzzler called Palace Of Magic, followed by Spycat, which is the first big disappointment I can remember as it was incomprehensible to a child and the instructions were completely vague and useless.

Now, memory is a bit hazy as to which came first, but at some point my dad got a green-screened Amstrad PCW to do his word processing on, which wasn't exactly flush with games, but it did have a decently playable port of Batman, the weird isometric puzzle game from the programmers of Head Over Heels. This would probably have been the first game I played for any length of time, and by god it was hard as nails. The bleepy sound effects don't sound quite right under emulation, sadly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LuALRJyhfgw

[Twed]

I think it must have been one of the games on the Amstrad Compilation Disk that came with our Spectrum +3. That was a selection of real oddities: Gift from the Gods, Mailstrom, N.O.M.A.D., Daley Thompson's Supertest and Cosmic Wartoad. I think being three or four years old and playing a mail-delivery-cum-action game where you killed thugs with a bacon slicer was very formative for me.

The first game I had on cassette tape was the aforementioned Ghostbusters, but the Speccy version. Still had sampled speech.

[Gurke and Hare]

In the early 80s my uncle would sometimes bring home a Commodore Pet from his work, and my cousin and I would play a few games that he had on tape for it, including a version of Space Invaders, a horse racing/betting game called Grand National. (I loved this, especially the horses being represented by π. Mind blown.) My favourite was Nightmare Park - basically a collection of mini games, or mini "games" as some of them weren't interactive, and just a matter of random chance whether you won. If you lost, it was game over. Someone magnificent has recreated it for Android.

[Penfold]

Horace was absolutely horrific wasn't he?

Spectrum for me.

So Horace, Jet Set Willy, a Daley Thompson game, Harrier?, Booty, Skool Daze (for 3 minutes, I had no idea what to do) and Bomb Jack.

In primary school I liked the Geordie Racer game which had pigeon stuff and then a quiz to complete the Great North Run.

I eventually got a NES and learned to hate Zelda II which has led me to be suspicious of the series until this day, I don't remember why, the cartridge was shiny.

I also played a Star Trek game on a Commodore at a friend's house but couldn't pilot my shuttle out of the Enterprise. Also a Dizzy game that involved dropping rocks in water.

[Cloud]

Erm... it was on my Atari ST when I was 5... thing is I only have a very vague memory of a maze and some sort of floating eyeballs.

[JoeyBananaduck]

Spectrum for me.

So Horace, Jet Set Willy, a Daley Thompson game, Harrier?, Booty, Skool Daze (for 3 minutes, I had no idea what to do) and Bomb Jack.

Bomb Jack was great. Skool Daze is bloody nigh-on impossible. Turn on the shields, write down all the numbers, figure out the code, go to the head's office, put in the code, turn all the shields back....or you can just fire your peashooter at everyone and write 'WANKER' on the blackboard. So guess what we did....

[Billy]

Told by my parents that the first game I ever saw being played was Donkey Kong Jr, on my uncle's Atari as a new-born back in 1988.

First I remember would probably be the Funschool games on my Dad's Amiga 500, a Noddy game on my uncle's ST and the first two Monkey Islands which everyone had - Maniac Mansion too. We got a SNES for Christmas 1994 and never looked back.

Not a game, just a demo, but Puggs in Space sums up my entire childhood: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kIqu_S0txc

[shh]

The duck shooter NES game, complete with gun.

[Barry Admin]

I was delighted to be reminded of Bomb Jack, and I was immediately surprised that he's not been reprised and rebooted to appeal to people of our age. I see Tecmo has ceased trading as of 2010, but yeah, a great wee character and I'm surprised more wasn't done with him over the years. I like the wiki article, I wonder if it's ever been edited by Mr G Jones of London.

Bomb Jack[1] is an arcade platform game that was released in 1984 by Tehkan (known today as Tecmo). It was followed by two official sequels, the console and computer title Mighty Bomb Jack, and the arcade game Bomb Jack Twin[2] and Bomb Jack II, which was licensed for home computers only. The highest known score was by Mr G Jones from London: 6 746 800.

Any Bomb Jack experts who know another reason that score might be so well-known, buzby?

[biggytitbo]

Codemasters were  king of the budget game, especially the simulator series and dizzy. I particular love the hyperbolic blurb on the back of the cassette, where's they'd say stuff like "amazing gameplay" in quotes as if it was from a magazine but was just something they'd written themselves.

[Kelvin]

I think I've mentioned this to you before on here, but this was mine too, probably with the same version your Dad got, first episode shareware?  I remember being blown away when I first played episodes 2 and 3 for the first time, especially the level where you fly around on a little hover disc thing instead of jumping.

Yeah, you have mentioned it to me before. As has Thursday. I always thought I was the only person who had even heard of those games. Commander Keen was the one who always seemed to get the limelight.

And yes, it was the episode 1 shareware. The final level was just a pit, which you had to fall down, avoiding the sides, and eventually you were eaten by a monster at the very bottom. Cut to it upselling you episodes 2 and 3.

So many good/frustrating times, really lush colours and art style.  That body-horror level after you fall down the monsters gullet has always stuck with me!

Funnily enough, due to the limitations of my Dad's computer and screen, I actually played all 3 episodes in black and white originally, and without any music. It was only years later that I experienced them properly, and I actually thought the whole thing looked garish in colour. I was so used to seeing it in black and white, and with only atmospheric sounds, that the bright visuals and upbeat music jarred with the more low key experience I remembered.   

[Thursday]

Yeah Cosmo was lovely definitely one of the strongest shareware games, but it does seem to get forgotten.

[Pseudopath]

Codemasters were  king of the budget game, especially the simulator series and dizzy. I particular love the hyperbolic blurb on the back of the cassette, where's they'd say stuff like "amazing gameplay" in quotes as if it was from a magazine but was just something they'd written themselves.

Codemasters started out in an industrial unit in my home town of Banbury (before moving up the road to Southam). As most of my schoolmates can attest, the skip behind their office was a veritable cornucopia of free games and promo materials. Happy days.

[hewantstolurkatad]

Super Mario World, All Stars and F-Zero at my cousins house.
They had absolutely no interest in the machine or the television so it was a lot of work to get them to even turn it on, I was envious as all hell. Bastards had televisions in each bedroom too...


We didn't get a machine of our own for another 5 years either.

[zomgmouse]

The original Prince of Persia on my Mac. A staple growing up.

[a peepee tipi]

Putt Putt Travels Through Time or Speedy Eggbert. I remember both as a toddler but not which came first. Putt Putt, Pajama Sam, they taught me about friendship. Eggbert was ok


This is one of those threads that will prove to be a great resource for a free afternoon

[olliebean]

I remember playing a pre-Rogue Roguelike called Dungeon on my dad's friend's Commodore Pet that he lent me, circa 1980. It looked like this:



I think he'd typed it in from a magazine.

That Nightmare Park game that Gurke and Hare posted a screenshot of looks vaguely familiar, too. I'm sure there were others, but Dungeon is the one I remember most clearly.

[Replies From View]

Fantasy World Dizzy on the ZX Spectrum.  Used to play it at my friend Ben's house when I was about 9.  He had a few other games on the Speccy but I couldn't be arsed with any of them; he'd play some kind of jerky motorbike riding game on his own while I was there and it would piss me off.  I had no other real frame of reference for computers at that point so Fantasy World Dizzy was essentially an interactive board game to me.  I didn't really have a sense of us 'playing on the computer' so much as playing that specific game, and then we'd play (or make our own) board games or piss around in his garden/house, or record audio cassettes of us doing any of the above.

I've never really developed a fondness for any other computer games to that extent, which mainly owed to the strength of the childhood friendship it existed within.  I'm not lying when I say Fantasy World Dizzy probably represents about 1/20th of all the games I've ever sampled on a computer or console.

[Barry Admin]

Jerky motorbike game made me recall Kikstart, wow. I bet it was Kikstart, or more likely Kikstart 2: Motorbike Boogaloo.



Dizzy was always very popular; I had an uncle (different to the one who was a beast on Kangaroo), and he was obsessed with the Dizzy games. Would never play anything else though, and probably hasn't been near a game ever since.

[a peepee tipi]

I remember playing a pre-Rogue Roguelike called Dungeon on my dad's friend's Commodore Pet that he lent me, circa 1980. It looked like this:



I think he'd typed it in from a magazine.

That Nightmare Park game that Gurke and Hare posted a screenshot of looks vaguely familiar, too. I'm sure there were others, but Dungeon is the one I remember most clearly.

Woah, I'd only heard of Beneath Apple Manor, much appreciated. There's a modern remake based on the developer's memories of the game. It has the PET look, but since it takes a few liberties with the gameplay I didn't want to play too much of it. However, the first enemy I came across was a Goddamn Spider, how accurate is this?

[biggytitbo]

Jerky motorbike game made me recall Kikstart, wow. I bet it was Kikstart, or more likely Kikstart 2: Motorbike Boogaloo.



Dizzy was always very popular; I had an uncle (different to the one who was a beast on Kangaroo), and he was obsessed with the Dizzy games. Would never play anything else though, and probably hasn't been near a game ever since.

The Oliver Twins keep 'finding' new old Dizzy games down the back of the sofa don't they? There was one they'd completely forgotten about, and another unreleased NES version of Fantasy World Dizzy I think.


Kikstart 2 was my favourite game on the C64, played that to death.

[DukeDeMondo]

Defender II on the Atari 2600.



Lying in the corner of the living room squinting at a wee portable B&W telly. Three or four in the morning sometimes before I'd ever prise myself away. "Skelly Bellies" my Da called it. "Are you on these Skelly Bellies the night again? Dear me. Wired to these Skelly Bellies."

Also Solaris.



I never knew what the fuck I was supposed to be doing with Solaris, but I played away at it anyway, shooting blindly at anything and everything. A mystery of a thing. Inscrutable. But all the more enchanting for that.

Then the Commodore 64 strutted onto the scene and that was the end of the Skelly Bellies and the flying about aimlessly in Solaris. CJ's Elephant Antics was the talk of the town, and I was glued to it for hours on end. That and Impossible Mission, which seemed like it was being beamed into the house from 2065 because it had a man's voice talking to you at the start. I'd never known the like of it.

I do regret selling the C64.

[biggytitbo]

I enjoyed playing C64 games at the time but the games make me feel sick looking at them now. Can't think of a system with uglier graphics. Spectrum games still look pretty spanky even now, you can imagine a new indy game using that limited palette and still looking nice.

[bomb_dog]

BMX Racers was the first game I played, then Jumpin' Jack (frogger in 3D isometric).

Great at the time, and very hard past about the fourth level as the screen updates faster than you can cycle. Early version of the endless runners you get now?

[Replies From View]

The Oliver Twins keep 'finding' new old Dizzy games down the back of the sofa don't they? There was one they'd completely forgotten about, and another unreleased NES version of Fantasy World Dizzy I think.

Yes, that's right.  Wonderland Dizzy was released in 2015; Mystery World Dizzy in 2016.  The latter came out alongside an Oliver Twins Kickstarter for a new game they want to make which was along the lines of "we have loads of ideas for a brand new Dizzy game, and we'll reveal what they are if you pay us first".  I don't know how progress is going for that.

I've played both Wonderland and Mystery World Dizzy, but they're just uninspired rehashes of the Magicland and Fantasy World maps.