The Mother of All Nostalgic Posts(TM): the first video game you played

Mine was called “Super Idraulico” :stuck_out_tongue: (Super Plumber, literally). And I found out that the music was Debussy’s Golliwogg’s Cakewalk. I bought a Yamaha Clavinova digital piano a couple of years ago and I was going through the 50 midi piano songs included in it and suddenly, “wtf, this is Super Idraulico’s theme!”

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Battle Chess was really funny. And Prince of Persia damn good. Sometimes I play it still today.

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A game called “Laberinto” which was a randomly generated 3d labyrinth with a hidden bomb. You navigated it and then find the bomb and had to guess the 3-number code in less than 10 tries or it would blow up. #C16

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And the Oscar for the “don’t be nervous while playing me” category goes to…

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But it had these incredible long loading times, AFAIR. :slight_smile:

My first game was Pong or Street Racer on the Atari 2600. I can’t remember exactly which of these two I played first.

(Oh, great. Now I’m feeling old…)

I remember Aztec Challenge! I haven’t thought about that in 25 years… But I used to play it a lot on C64.

Being the same age as most of you, my first games were on the Atari 2600. Might have been Space Invaders but I don’t remember exactly… I would just watch my older brother play at first. I think Adventure was the first one I really liked.

There’s a pretty cool GDC post-mortem for that one.

Smurf on the atari 2600

And pacman on the same atari 2600

I remember there was a (VHS) video rental that also had atari 2600 games for rent, so I actually got to play a lot of games on that system. Some are still favorites to this day (Pitfall! 2, H.E.R.O., River Raid, Frogger). I even played E.T.!

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That game was brutally hard!
Probably another reason I liked Zak and MM so much after being punished for slow reflexes and dodgy controls for years.

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The first computer game I played was Maniac Mansion, for the Commodore 64.
We got an Atari 2600 shortly before our Commodore, and I have some memories about playing Joust and Ms. Pac Man on it, so these were probably the first video games I played. But the first computer game I played was MM, and it’s the one I immediately remember when thinking about the first video game I experienced (I played MM way more than all the Atari games together).

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I still play Prince of Persia too, via the Raspberry Pi. I’ve never managed to complete it though.

Back in the day I remember there being a cheat room with loads of potions marked with different letters. I think you had to look something up in the manual and then drink the potion with the corresponding letter to skip the level or something. But I didn’t have a manual and guessing never worked!

If you want to RELIVE your nightmares:

… and even worse:

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I loved Prince of Persia, was damn hard at some points but did complete it

The one I could NEVER complete was Luna 10

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Aztec Challenge! I loved that game! A friend of mine got so frustrated he began punching the monitor and almost broke it.

And Prince of Persia is still one of my favorite games. I still play it. One summer, 10/15 years ago, I had friends at home for a week or so and we stayed at my parents’ summer house, where we found an old 486 PC, and it had Prince of Persia. We started it just for fun, but then we got so involved that we spent a lot of time trying to beat each others’ times. My record is 27 minutes, if I recall correctly.

Someday I will try to finish it without ever dying.

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“Loved” is a big word! To me, it was like a drug! The real challenge was always the first level. If you succeeded in the Gauntlet, you were the best.

My first game was either Soko-Ban

or Packman

I think that one was just the copy protection!

There were cheat codes, though.
There were some fan-made utilities (like “POPhelp” or “princemegahit”) that allowed you to recover lives, kill enemies, skip levels and so on.
I used it a lot to practice levels. I eventually got to beat the game with no help at all, but to do so you have to be fast and avoid to waste time. So you must know all the levels very well, and here the cheat comes in handy.

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I played Aztec Challenge a lot, to the point that its music is forever stuck into my head.

Unfortunately I played it on a monochrome green phosphor screen and there was no way to see the piranhas. I died a lot. :smiley:

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It would be interesting to know which video games @David, @RonGilbert and @BorisFromGermany played first. :slight_smile:

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Ohhh yes, you’re right! Does that mean I couldn’t have got any further without entering the right letter then? My memory of this is really hazy!

My first videogame was when I was on a college field trip to Stanford Research Institute in 1972. It was Space Wars, and was on a CRT running off of a minicomputer. Looked kinda like this.

No sound, music, joystick. You used the keys to move your “ship” around and shoot “.” at the other ship.

I was totally sold, and knew this is what I wanted to do when I “grew up”.

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