• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

What was everyone's first computer and first computer game?

Ibm_aptiva.jpg

IBM_Aptiva_PC_Geh%C3%A4use_vorn_offen.gif


IBM Aptiva in 1995. I was 7 when we got it. It came with a whole booklet of CD-ROM games, including Hyperman, Cyberia, Blockbuster Movie Trivia, and a couple others. My first "real" PC game was Quake in 1996.

I had this too, it came with Battle beast!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55_3aTJad4U
 
Custom build PC by my dad, dunnow what the specs were.
But my first game was either Jazz Jackrabbit, Command & Conquer: Red Alert or Mortal Kombat II (lmfao).
 
80´s kid here, so it was a C64 for me and my first games were B.C´s Quest for Tires and Impossible Mission.


impossible_mission_2.jpg


Another Visitor… Stay A While… Staaay Forever! :)
 
C64

I don't remember what game I played first, as my father bought the system used from his co-worker, and it came with a selection of games on floppy disks. I was one of the few in my circles, who didn't have the cassette drive.
 
Technically, the Atari 2600 with the programming cart and keypads.

Realistically, the Atari 400 with a "high-speed" tape drive.

First games were States & Capitals (came with the tape drive), Canyon Climber (tape), and Star Raiders (cart).

Nothing better than loading for 30 minutes and then the game ran... or not.
 
Can't remember my first computer, but the first game I ever played were some old SNES roms. I thought I was the sh*t downloading roms and emulators lol
 
Dark Castle on a Mac Plus, late 1986 or early 1987 (I can't remember exactly).

Brzitgt.jpg


Played it on a computer my dad had brought to a meeting at Radium Hot Springs. Basically sat in a corner of a board room after a meeting while a few people were working out changes to a funding model or something.

I was five. It was awesome.

edit - I actually have that exact computer in a closet, although it no longer works. Scooped it up when they cleared out a ton of old tech about 15 years ago along with an external 40MB hard drive. Some day I'll go back and fix it, but I do have a working Mac Classic that I use mostly for Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle as I've never been able to successfully emulate them.

Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle are great games. In a way they were way ahead of their time.

They are the first games that I can recall that used the keyboard for movement and the mouse for aiming.

It was incredibly difficult for me at 5 or 6.

I also remember how awesome it was when I booted it up in December to find out it had a Christmas tree on the menu screen.

With all of the great games from that area getting remakes, I'd love to see someone port or remake this.
 
First computer I owned, personally, was a macintosh 2 that my grandfather gave me as he was cleaning out his old stuff. Gave it to me in 96 or so, and basically all I could play on it was sim city 2000. Shortly after that we bought some gateway computer with a voodoo graphics card so we could play black and white and thief and such.

300px-MacII.jpg


My dad used to be big into computers, though. Not sure what he used to have, but he'd let us play on it, even showed us how to manipulate DOS to free up memory to play certain games, like King's Quest 5/6 or Monkey Island (and let us use the manual/piracy wheel to bypass the copy protection!).

King's Quest 5 is the first game I *remember* playing with him, but I'm sure we played stuff before that. I would have been 5 or so when he got it, so probably that, to be honest.

King's_Quest_V_-_Absence_Makes_the_Heart_Go_Yonder!_Coverart.jpg


First computer game I played and beat entirely on my own was mixed-up mother goose on CD-ROM! Back then CDs were brand new and my dad had to teach me proper CD care (don't put it data-side down, always put it back in the case, don't push the drive back in, let it do it when you press the button!)

Mixed-Up_Mother_Goose_cover.jpg
 
I had some 386 turd muffin. The first game I vividly remember was Dark Queen of Krynn. I also had some flight simulator or ww1/ww2 air combat game. Then I got Eye of The Beholder.
 
we used to have a pc back in the day but i never got to use it because my dad thought i was gonna use it to watch porn or something. i could finally use one from dell cant remember the model but it was with winXP and an uncle gave me a bunch of games, my first pc game was either star craft or warcraft 3 &TFT or maybe Hot Pursuit 3? cant remember too well if im honest
 
It was a refurbished old IBM office PC my dad got from work.

The very first game I played on it was DOS. Heh, I was so fascinated with it, that playing around with the OS felt like a game to me.

The first actual game though was Commander Keen in Goodbye Galaxy!
 
KveWnAD.jpg


Got given a Macintosh LC575 in like 1996ish, only game on it was Harry the Handsome Executive. Oh, and Rodger Dodger in the After Dark screensaver set. Got given some kind of ratty IBM pc a while later which had Sim Tower and Invention Studio. Had a lot of good times making completely un-flyable airplanes in that one.
 
Seeing all of these old PCs is bringing back memories of when I worked at a local PC repair shop. I remember opening up a lot of Packard (Hells) Bells and finding tons of dust caked with cigarette smoke. Was so gross...
 
Apparently I have everyone beat.

Sinclair ZX81, the Spectrum's predecessor:
Sinclair_ZX81_Setup_PhotoManipped.jpg


The legendary Mazogs (I still remember how it's played):
Mazogs.screen.gif


I didn't play it nearly as much as the ZX Spectrum, which must have consumed literally thousands of hours of my time. Both the ZX81 and the first Spectrum I played were my father's, but later on I got my own Spectrum as a second (third actually) hand gift. I even learned to program on the Spectrum, and now I make a living out of it! :)

Atari 2600

That's not a computer, pal. If that counts that was my first one as well (again, my dad's).
 

The first computer I remember was my grandma's Apple II GS. I don't remember the name of any of the early childhood sort of games I played on it, but I do have a vague recollection of a pixelated train pulling into a station.

Ibm_aptiva.jpg

IBM_Aptiva_PC_Geh%C3%A4use_vorn_offen.gif


IBM Aptiva in 1995. I was 7 when we got it. It came with a whole booklet of CD-ROM games, including Hyperman, Cyberia, Blockbuster Movie Trivia, and a couple others. My first "real" PC game was Quake in 1996.

And the Aptiva is the first computer I remember well. I was also about 7 when we got it, and hearing about Hyperman brings back so many memories! I think mine was a horizontal version though, rather than a vertical tower.
 
We got an IBM 386 when I was a kid, I know one of the first games I played was the shareware for warcraft 2. Blizzard got their hooks in me right from the get go.
 
The first computer game that we owned that I played would have been Where in the World is Carmen San Diego, played on an IBM 386, our first computer.

I played other games before that though, but they weren't ours... A friend had a computer with Prince of Persia. It was an Emerson computer but I have no idea what kind of computer it was, what the OS was, or anything else.

Also, we had RadioShack Tandy EMS (or whatever they were), and would have been able to play some learning games, like this Star Trek math game, on the two-color screens. But, again, not my games.

Ibm_aptiva.jpg

IBM_Aptiva_PC_Geh%C3%A4use_vorn_offen.gif


IBM Aptiva in 1995. I was 7 when we got it. It came with a whole booklet of CD-ROM games, including Hyperman, Cyberia, Blockbuster Movie Trivia, and a couple others. My first "real" PC game was Quake in 1996.


Yup, this as our second home computer. Although I remember it more for the clip of Buddy Holly by Weezer that came along with it... so odd.
 
I don't recall the computer model but I played SkiFree on Windows 1.1 or something like that.

edit: Wait... I think I played an older computer game where you ran on a track as a penguin.
 
I believe my first computer was either my dad's or Texas Instrument (can't remember the model though), or this bad boy:

Atari_800XL_and_Peripherals.jpg


The games I played were mostly shareware and such we got from old magazines or that I had to code myself, back when programming used to be a thing I liked lol. Games I specifically remember are Flight Simulator, a Fraction-based math game I used to love whose name escapes me, and this game:

http://youtu.be/E-Bc_fN25JU

I didn't really get into the more memorable stuff until I got my Atari 520ST for Christmas in like 1986? Tower Toppler (aka Castelian), Ikari Warriors, Star Goose, Bobo in Stir Crazy, Better Dead Than Alien, xenon, Trantor... I even made a ton of my own games using STOS basic (again, when programming as a kid was still a thing for me lmao).

Man I miss those days.

My dad used to take me to this out-of-the-way software rentl store every other weekend to get stuff. Rite Way Computers I think it was called. I played so many games I couldn't begin to name them all.

I really wish I'd've been more of my current mindset at the time and kept that computer instead of tossing it when it was outdated and I got my first Mac.

Edit:

TI 99-4A
ti-cosby-300x276.png


Demon Attack
DemonAttack2.png

Ah that was it!! This was the one! My favorite games on there were Parsec, Munch Man (Pac Man clone that worked in reverse... Weird to explain lol) and a game called Hunt the Wumpus.

Side fact, recently started using "Wumpus" as a tag on SSB4 online just for random obscurity loooool.

Man I'm such a damn nerd.
 
It was a Compaq which used an Pentium 133 MHz processor, 8MB RAM, and 1 GB harddrisk.
Used that shit for five years even to the point none of the games ran on my computer.

It came with these two games.
Descent
QYJbVea.png


Magic Carpet
Q551Viw.gif


I always played Descent though because Magic Carpet always crashes.
 
Can't remember :(

It was just shortly after I turned 7 in 1997 when I got a PC. Came with Duke Nukem 3D, Blood and shadow warrior pre-installed. I think Blood was the first of the games I played.
 
Amiga 500 and shadow of the beast 2.

I was only about 9 years old so that game was seriously difficult. Until I learned the "TEN PINTS" cheat!
 
My first computer game was some random racing game that came on these giant flimsy floppy disks. Don't remember what kind of PC it was. But I do remember the day Doom came out, It had like 8 regular sized floppy disks and I was in love ever since!
 
I don't remember the PC, it was my dad's and was Windows 95.

First things I played were DOOM,
Jill of the Jungle (anyone ever play this? Was so awesome)
, and eventually Command and Conquer.
 
Our first PC was monochrome and never had any games, but I drew ASCII art in the word processor. Then we got a tri color something (not DOS) with some "games", the best was some Sesame Street game, and my favorite part was building water slides. I've googled, but can't find any references to it. They weren't really games: no objective, you just did stuff.

Much later we got a DOS PC and my first game was Civ 1. That was a good time.
sid-meiers-civilization_16.png
 
200 mhz Intel mmx. 32 mb ram. Windows 95.
3.2 Gig hd. Forgot the video card.

First game. Descent 1.

So good. I think I still have the cd some where
 
I don't remember what our first home computer was. I think it was a Compaq?

For my first PC game, when I was about 5 I played a lot of King's Quest (1 or 2?) at the local church where they had a great daycare program. I remember being really awful at it. Sierra games where pretty prevalent in my early gaming years.
 
The earliest I can remember is the Commodore 64, and playing the likes of G.I. Joe, Ghostbusters and Little Computer People.

I love Little Computer People!
 
Apple 2 Plus, the game was text only, and the story was some sort of mystery set in Egypt. Can't remember the name for the life of me - I do remember that there was a series of these text games. Its gonna kill me now, engaging GoogleFu ...

It was probably Infidel by Infocom.

infidelfolio.jpg
 
Gateway in 95
Those big cow boxes were all the rage in my neighborhood at the time.
First games on it were some Carmen Sandiego game and Doom. Interesting combo, but whatever.

Had family computers before that, but I rarely was allowed to play on them, and when I was it was only centipede clones and stuff.
 
I think of the Swedish computer ABC 80 as my first:

kb3F9LM.jpg


As a kid, I couldn't afford one myself, but I got to borrow one for a whole summer vacation, much spent trying to create my own games in BASIC on it. The ABC 80 came with a demo cassette which had some games on it, and those were probably the first computer games I played. There was a moon landing simulator (MÅNLANDA), a chess game (SCHACK), a maze game (ARIADNE), and possibly some more I don't remember.

The first computer I actually owned was the VIC-20, probably with Skramble as the first (commercially developed) game:

FazSP2V.png
 
Apple IIe... first game? Couldn't tell you exactly, but games like Swashbuckler, Microwave, Lady Tut, Tax-Man, and Eliminator were among them.
 
grew up with a PC always in the house in the 80's

dont really remember my first one... the one i remember most was some IBM monstrosity.

of course the game i remember most was Captain Comic... i was 6.

Adventures%20of%20Captain%20Comic,%20The_4.png


CaptainComicBoxart.jpg
 
Top Bottom