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favorite early computer games

Helix

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i was thinking this morning about early computer games that i used to dig when i was a kid.

model : TRS 80
era : 1983ish
Oregon Trail
B52 Bomber*

*i can't find evidence that this game exists, so it might have been locally programmed. basically, you flew a monochrome pixellated plane over a monochrome pixellated city dropping pixels until the pixel buildings were gone or you ran out of fuel.

model : Tandy 1000
era : 1990 - 1993
Space Quest series
King's Quest series

model : CompuAdd 386
era : 1990 - 1994
Populous
Ween : The Prophecy (i think that i played this one on the 386, but probably also on my first Pentium.)
Wolfenstein 3D

the list is fairly long, but those are some of the the standouts. what are your favorites?
 
Pong - of course.

Missile Command. I remember playing it in arcades and think there was an early PC version. In any case it was a cool game.

In college, 1979-1983, I worked in the data center where we had an old DEC 2060 - a 36bit dinosaur that I absolutely loved. We used old VT100 terminals to connect to it. On it we had a game called VT Trek that used various ASCII characters to draw the Starship Enterprise. You used keys - don't remember if the Vt100 even had arrow keys - to move the ship forwards and backwards, turn, fire the phasers etc. It was hopelessly obsolete the minute PCs came out but it was such a cool game.
 
My kinda thread.


Let's see, there was Math Blaster, good educational game, with hot graphics for its day.

Kings Quest series.

Jet Fighter, cool flight sim.

And, the end all be all of epicness....

Pool of Radience
Curse of the Azure Bonds
Secret of the Silver Blades
Pools of Darkness

Those old forgotten realms games would still be fun today, if you could find a way to run them.
 
Number munchers because it was just plain cool.

In elementary school I loved Geography and so I always rocked it on Carmen San-Diego. I didn't need hint books or anything. I never actually caught "her" though.
 
All of those are older than me.
 
Rogue (DOS)
Wizardry 1
Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge
SimCity
Zork
Scepters (I think; ancient black & white game for mac. Involved a Vorpal Bunny that was hell to get past.).
Dark Castle series.
Prince of Persia (original)


A bit later,
Exile III
Doom/Doom II
Dragonrealms (perhaps the 2nd MMORPG made; text-only)
Warcraft I & II
 
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I don't know if these games are early enough to qualify since they used color monitors but Tetris and Ms Pacman were OK. I also liked playing Risk on a computer "long ago". ;)

What makes modern computer games much more interesting is that you can play them online with other folks as your opponent(s) rather than just playing against the computer.
 
System Shock
 
I'm not truly a game player, but with my first home PC, I got a "copy" of Wolfenstein. Yes, gory and violent, but I was good with wiping out Nazis and I got through all the levels more than once. :D (Did I mention I liked wiping out Nazis?)

I know my kids had computer games a few years after that, but I can't remember what the earliest were. They loved Sims and sports games. MLB, NBA, NFL and FIFA. Then came Warcraft, Halo and others.
 
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Pong - of course.

Missile Command. I remember playing it in arcades and think there was an early PC version. In any case it was a cool game.

In college, 1979-1983, I worked in the data center where we had an old DEC 2060 - a 36bit dinosaur that I absolutely loved. We used old VT100 terminals to connect to it. On it we had a game called VT Trek that used various ASCII characters to draw the Starship Enterprise. You used keys - don't remember if the Vt100 even had arrow keys - to move the ship forwards and backwards, turn, fire the phasers etc. It was hopelessly obsolete the minute PCs came out but it was such a cool game.

I remember that Star Trek game! We used it as kind of a tutorial for how to code in BASIC.
 
MULE Great game
 
Skate or Die!
 
i was thinking this morning about early computer games that i used to dig when i was a kid.

model : TRS 80
era : 1983ish
Oregon Trail
B52 Bomber*

I played plenty of Oregon Trail and worm or whatever that game was where the worm kept getting bigger.
 
Pong, really immersive game, LOL.
Gunship! (microprose), Wasteland, and Xcom. Spent many hours on those.
 
Rogue (DOS)
Wizardry 1
Wizardry VI: Bane of the Cosmic Forge
SimCity
Zork
Scepters (I think; ancient black & white game for mac. Involved a Vorpal Bunny that was hell to get past.).
Dark Castle series.
Prince of Persia (original)


A bit later,
Exile III
Doom/Doom II
Dragonrealms (perhaps the 2nd MMORPG made; text-only)
Warcraft I & II

i remember when i got my first computer capable of running Doom. it was even faster than my buddy's tricked out 486-66, which i had lusted after for a year. i played Doom a lot that summer.
 
i was thinking this morning about early computer games that i used to dig when i was a kid.

model : TRS 80
era : 1983ish
Oregon Trail
B52 Bomber*

*i can't find evidence that this game exists, so it might have been locally programmed. basically, you flew a monochrome pixellated plane over a monochrome pixellated city dropping pixels until the pixel buildings were gone or you ran out of fuel.

model : Tandy 1000
era : 1990 - 1993
Space Quest series
King's Quest series

model : CompuAdd 386
era : 1990 - 1994
Populous
Ween : The Prophecy (i think that i played this one on the 386, but probably also on my first Pentium.)
Wolfenstein 3D

the list is fairly long, but those are some of the the standouts. what are your favorites?

Commodore 64
Iwo Jima
 
My uncle gave me his old TRS-80 (the Trash-80) computer with all his games so it was second hand.

These are the earliest ones that I was fond of before I was 10 years old:

1bDSEtV.jpg


8t94oCb.jpg
 
i remember when i got my first computer capable of running Doom. it was even faster than my buddy's tricked out 486-66, which i had lusted after for a year. i played Doom a lot that summer.

I used to make a bunch of Doom II levels and upload them to AOL and/or play against friends over the modem.
 
Pong - of course.

Missile Command. I remember playing it in arcades and think there was an early PC version. In any case it was a cool game.

In college, 1979-1983, I worked in the data center where we had an old DEC 2060 - a 36bit dinosaur that I absolutely loved. We used old VT100 terminals to connect to it. On it we had a game called VT Trek that used various ASCII characters to draw the Starship Enterprise. You used keys - don't remember if the Vt100 even had arrow keys - to move the ship forwards and backwards, turn, fire the phasers etc. It was hopelessly obsolete the minute PCs came out but it was such a cool game.

Yep. Being older, I too remember Pong: the original video game.

My gf and I were also into Asteroids. Back in the early 80's, there was a machine in our local pizza shop--long before chain pizzas became all the rage--and we would play while the pizza was being baked.

Another game I remember a few years later was video hockey. It was pretty primitive, but still more lifelike than that old mechanical game with the twisty levers and little guys who spun around while moving back and forth in slots.

eaglex.jpg
 
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I used to make a bunch of Doom II levels and upload them to AOL and/or play against friends over the modem.

i played some modified levels that were uploaded by players; i think that i downloaded them via 14.4k modem from local BBSs. that was good fun.
 
Yep. Being older, I too remember Pong: the original video game.

My gf and I were also into Asteroids. Back in the early 80's, there was a machine in our local pizza shop--long before chain pizzas became all the rage--and we would play while the pizza was being baked.

Another game I remember a few years later was video hockey. It was pretty primitive, but still more lifelike than that old mechanical game with the twisty levers and little guys who spun around while moving back and forth in slots.

eaglex.jpg

Yeah I remember Asteroids too. Another fun game. My wife's favorite was Galaga. She pumped God knows how many quarters into that one at the arcade.
 
I was a fan of the Leisure Suit Larry series...and then Freddy Pharkas, Frontier Pharmacist, which I'm sure no one remembers.

I remember an old PC one - Silent Service- played with subs. And the original Civilization, which was fantastic.
And there was always Flight Simulator, which wasn't really a game, but it was fun.

This was all late 80s, early 90s. I think Myst came out around then too- maybe a bit later.
 

They make "adult" table hockey games. My wife and I have logged hundreds of hours on this one.

For computer games, the ones I played the most:
Doom
Silent Service
Micro League Baseball
Earl Weaver Baseball
 
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