Support NeoGAF

[Amon37]

Vic-20 to a C64 then a buddy got a C-128 and I was like, man that is way better than mine. :lol

 

[Borgnine]

When I was in elementary school (sometime in the mid 80s) I was the best artist in my class, so every few days I got to leave and go hang out with some hippy teacher and play with this program called Dazzle Draw for Apple computers. To this day I'm still not entirely sure why they wanted me to do this, but I got out of class so I didn't ask questions. I might even have been beta testing the thing, which would actually be kinda cool.

 

[Marvie_3]

2nd grade. Some dumb typing program featuring a cat as your instructor.

 

[Amory]

I was pissed because my parents bought it for Christmas in '95 (Compaq Presario) instead of the sega genesis I asked for.

I was a greedy bastard.

 

[Yasser]

microsoft encarta i think?

 

[blame space]

microsoft encarta i think?

I completely forgot about this. I think I had Encarta '95, narrated by Patrick Stewart! :lol

 

[NZNova]

Sinclair ZX Spectrum, baby. Rubber keyboard for the win.

 

[Markster]

Watching my older sister play King's Quest IV, and Liesure Suit Larry 3.
I couldn't handle the grammar and spelling necessary to play at the time, so I just pulled up next to her and watched all the way through the game.

(For LSL3, we had to make a chart for every question that the age-check would ask so that we could figure out the answers by process of elimination. Our parents didn't mind at all that we would play the game.)

 

[Freshmaker]

Apple IIe paint program demo in a computer store. Our version never actually worked however, and even if it had, using an art program was muted by the amber display my parents bought for it.

Actual use, loading a lot of programs off floppy disks that my parents had programmed in from computer magazines. Brickbat, Bank Street Bomber (weird game since your plane would turn into the bomb, then pop back up into the sky after smashing through the buildings you'd targeted...)

 

[Jill Sandwich]

48 KILOBYTES of memory! 8 colours! A speaker that BEEPED! Software on TAPES!

Me and my brother got it for Christmas in '82, to replace the old Pong-clone machine.
A short read of the Quick Start manual and we learned the sacred incantation:

LOAD ""

Then we pressed play on the tape recorder. 3 minutes later we were RACING!

There was no going back.

Edit: Experience the Power of the Spectrum - NOW!

 

[Baraka in the White House]

My very first computer was an Intel 386 with 4 megabytes of ram that my parents bought from a kiosk at the mall. I remember being introduced to Wolfenstein 3D and playing a bunch of Apogee's early games, and when Doom came out we had to create a boot-up disk for it to run worth a crap.

I also remember being blown away when we finally upgraded to a Packard Bell with a Pentium 100mhz chip and 16 megabytes of ram, not to mention 32-bit sound. The jump from PC speakers was unbelievable.

 

[Raistlin]

Ahhh ... how I loved thee, Suzi.

 

[agrajag]

My dad got some sort of IBM in '92 or '93. It was pretty rad. He had a port of Golden Axe on it and some driving game, awesome times.

 

[Sol..]

I can't quite pin point the earliest computer memory.

But it was either playing some horrible simpsons game my mom got from a computer fair or Sitting at fulton county stadium playing some game where gorillas would throw bananas at each other. But they weren't just regular bananas nay nay. They were super bananas that could inexplicably blow up buildings.

 

[Boss Doggie]

Yes, this is the one I was talking about!

 

[besada]

The first thing I ever did on a computer (unless you count staring at one at the World's Fair) was to enter a basic program into a TRS-80 Model I. I'd already written the entire program from a flowchart I'd made, because they wouldn't let us touch it until we'd done that.

Across the way, someone was playing a game on one, and I was desperate to stop entering my little program and do what they were doing. This was the summer of 1980, when I was 10.

 

[Guybrush Threepwood]

Brøderbund <3

 

[2 Minutes Turkish]

Dad bought an Amstrad back in 1986, and I remember playing Solitaire in black and white:lol

I was only 6 at the time.

 

[Like the hat?]

first thing i remember is playing Number Munchers at school.

 

[Skittleguy]

Almost forgot

 

[Foob]

I don't remember what kind it was, but it was some Apple computer like 13-ish years ago..Played Oregon Trail and this really shitty Mac equivalent of Paint..I also remember playing Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego on DOS

 

[evil solrac v3.0]

fear, anxiousness, nauseous, a bit scared.... we talking about our first times right?

 

[Coolio McAwesome]

My elementary school had Apple IIs, and I fondly remember playing Oregon Trail, Number Munchers, and Cross Country USA.

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

My first computer experience was in an after-school program, and they had both Univac terminals and commodore PET machines (see pic above).

Then came hanging out at friend's houses who had Apple IIs, TI 994/as, TSR-80s, etc. I finally got my own Atari 800 (rocked the house, it did).

 

[Solideliquid]

I think I was 5 and I was visiting my dad at work. I think he had an Apple computer of some kind. I just remember him letting me type stuff out on the keyboard, and telling me how great his new 5mb (megabyte, yes) hard drive was.

 

[cashman]

Reader Rabbit.

this, when I was 3. So It was back in 96-97 or something.

 

[besada]

I finally got my own Atari 800 (rocked the house, it did).

Psssh. My first was a TRS-80 CoCo. 32k, bitchez!

What amazes me is how expensive they were. 5 1/4" drives for the CoCo were $450 each.

 

[AlternativeUlster]

I was over at my Uncle Tom's and he had a computer and I had never seen one before. I think I was 5 or so. I would type stuff and was frustrated that the keyboard wasn't in alphabetical order. It was just on MS-DOS and I just kept on typing random things and would get the same error message. I had a blast with it regardless. That was 21 years ago. Oh man, that sound of wind gushing when you first turned it on. God, I used to love old computers.

 

[blahness]

Thank you Dad

 

[AlexMogil]

Thank you Dad

I still have the music of that stuck in my head.

 

[Dan]

I made a turtle move, spin, disappear... then made the screen flash obnoxiously.

YES!

We did lots with that program in 1st grade.

I think my first encounter was around 3 or 4 years old. A friend's family had a computer and some super basic DOS games for preschoolers. My dad bought like a 386 or something soon after and I did more of the same. Basic drawing programs, Reader Rabbit, etc. I've been using computers for a solid 21 years. Crazy.

 

[Ignatz Mouse]

Psssh. My first was a TRS-80 CoCo. 32k, bitchez!

What amazes me is how expensive they were. 5 1/4" drives for the CoCo were $450 each.

CoCo had nothing on the Atari 800 decked out with 64K!

And, yeah. I think mine was $400, which was down from it's higher initial price.

 

[Shao Kahn Brewing a Stew]

 

[Lion Heart]

I think it was in grade 2-3 which was 93 or so.

The PC didn't have a mouse, instead it used a trackball. It was just a black screen with green text and I didnt know what the fuck was going on (only program we were allowed to use). Actually, I had an Atari 2600 that had a keyboard attached to it so you can type on screen (4 years old) I liked that more than bug hunt and my flying game.

After that was the Commodor 64 at my cousins house. He had 100 games man, it was a paradise. Summer Olympics FTW.

 

[SwitchBladeKneegrow]

All I remember was it was a Tandy from radio shack and used tapes...god it sucked. I was stoked when I later got something with DOS and could play shareware game from the grocery store and a horrible flight simulator my mom got me.

 

[marvelharvey]

Another Spectrum user here, I even remember the first game I ever loaded. I was blown away by the 'realism' at the time.