I figured, this is the first post on this section of the forum... so why not make it a thread about first?

What's the first game you played? The first one you beat? The first one that made you fall in love with a genre? Anything goes.

First game I played: An Atari console with integrated games. I think my first game was Breakout. First game I beat: Super Mario Bros, back in 1989. First one that made me fall in love with a genre? Final Fantasy III.

Anyone? :)

Nice topic, Kitsune Sniper :) Sounds like something I would suggest myself :)

So... first game I ever played - Alley Cat. It was in 1988. I was visiting a friend of mine, and she showed me her computer and this game, which I played a little. I didn't have a computer myself and I had no idea what it was. The first game I played properly, on my own computer, was Nibbles. A QBasic game that came with the QBasic software. I was already 17 years old at the time.

Soon thereafter, I played Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards. This was the first game I ever completed. And it was the one that made me fall in love with the adventure genre (of which I knew nothing at all at the time). A very memorable game for me.

As for my most favorite genre, which is Asian RPG, it was Final Fantasy VII that introduced me to it. Till this day it remains one of my top ten favorite games.

Great first topic! For me:

First game played: Adventure on an Osborne (CPM machine)

First one I beat? Can't remember, probably a toss-up between Dragon's Lair and Cliffhanger (both laserdisc games)

Fall in love with a genre: I love all of them, so that's hard. My favorite "genre", if you want to call it that, is any game that is so well programmed that it does things with the machine most people wouldn't think possible. Some games like that are games that do really good 3D on the original IBM PC, like Powerdrome, Starglider 2, Stunt Track Racer, Vaxine, Indy 500... Being an assembler programmer myself, these games just make my jaw drop.

Nice topic :D

I think the first game I ever played was Into the Eagle's Nest, on a ZX Spectrum, mostly because it was the fist game on he tape i had. I still remember that it was followed by Saboteur 2, a great game as far as I can remember.

I kinda fell in love with a genre when I first played Doom (I was visiting someone with my mom and I was really really hard to leave :) ). I still play Doom and Wolf, also Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis was the game that opened my appetite for quests.

Damn, can't remember what the first game I beat was :( . Probably an old jump'n'run or something.

The first game I ever played was Space Invaders on, what I think was, a Spectrum. I'm not really sure of the format since it was a long, long time ago. But I remember the game well. It took forever to load :p

The first game I beat was Super Mario Bros. 3. I would have said Tetris, but that's neverending.

The game that made me fall in love with a genre, besides Tetris? Super Mario Kart.

The first game I played was Doom on a ... on my cousin's computer. I did not like it too much. I think Battle Isle 2 was the first game which I liked very much and which motivated me to learn English (at the age of 7 :D ), since I couldn't understand a thing they were saying.

The first game I finished...I usually get bored of games very fast, but I think I finished Earth 2150 The Moon Project...but The Blue Planet was better.

The first game I remember was Choplifter for the C64. The first game I fell in love with was Jumpman and the first game I beat was Karateka. I'm not even sure I thought of games having endings before Karateka. Most of the games I played then either looped around at a certain point, became too difficult/frustrating, or crashed because they were poorly cracked. I remember beating Karateka and running downstairs to tell my mom. She gave me the ultimate WTF look (although since we're talking 1980s, maybe it was more, "Whatchu talking about, Willis?").

Gah, can't really remember the very first game I played. I think it was one of those multi-games for the Atari... there was this chicken that you had to cross the road with, and these cowboys that had to shoot a wall before shooting each other... there was a fishing game too... Then I purchased one that had four adventurers walking through a cavern or castle avoiding spikes that came out of the ground or fell from the roof... can't really remember, I was pretty bad at it. I should probably look for them. My first PC games though were World Cup 94, Dracula and Sorcerian.

I can't really remember which the first game I finished was. I think it might have been Shining Force for the Mega Drive/Genesis, at least that’s the earliest memory I have of beating a game.

Finally, the games that sparked my initial interest that would eventually grow to full fledged love for the Adventure genre were The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes and Quest for Glory 4, the first which I played together with my sister and remains to this day the only game which we completed together, and the later which led me to look for other Sierra titles.

First game I played was Adventure on the Osbourne. My dad brought home an Osbourne from work. We spent the whole day playing with the two or three games he somehow got for it. I remember it must of been Adventure we were playing since there were some twisty passages in one of the games. The others I cannot remember.

The first game I really really loved was Rescue Raiders for Apple ][

The first game I finished I think was Wishbringer. I know that game started a real love for Infocom games. I ended up fininishing a few without help and without hints. A fact i am quite proud of.

Digger was the first game I ever played! Super addictive...and it was also the first place I heard the Popcorn song. The first game I beat, well sorta, was along with my Dad when we completed Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter. The first game I beat on my own was probably Ducktales (NES.) Monkey Island 2 was undoubtedly the game that made me an adventure game enthusiast.

First let me say that it's great Moby Games finally has a forum. I look forward to loads of oldskool gaming lore being posted.

The first game I played was a cheap Pac-Man clone on my father's PC in early '89. I also played a lot of Tetris, Blockout and Test Drive on that computer. Later on (early '91) I got my own 286 and fell in love with Monkey Island. While I really liked Monkey Island, adventures are not my favourite genre. I guess the games which stand for much of my later gaming career are Civilization (it's hard to tell but this is perhaps the game I spent most time with - played it for years 'til Civ 2 took over) and Dune 2.

On a side note, I started without a sound card and even recorded the Monkey Island PC Speaker output. You can guess I was fascinated by Access' RealSound technology. Played Links only for the intro (no sports - also in games). I got a cheap Adlib clone much later (mid '93) and was fascinated by the Wing Commander fanfare. Later I exchanged the Adlib with a SB compatible but I never had anything better than OPL2 sound in my DOS days. (That made me like games with CD-Audio). Guess I had to compensate it somehow since I now own a collection of vintage soundcards and modules.

First game played was some cartridge or tape on my Vic20. Pac-Man, Alien, Road Racer.. I don't remember most of them. :)

First game I really got into was Starflight on the PC. Before I had my own PC, I'd spend every weekend at my dad's playing it, over a couple months or so. Other first PC games included Night Mission Pinball, MS Flight Simulator 2, and King's Quest (I). Needless to say, those are probably the genres I'm most into today!

I grew up with both an ATARI 8-bit computer and a ColecoVision. lucky me.

So the first game I played? Hard to say but I suspect it was Frogger or Pac-Man

First game I beat? Again, hard to say because a lot of games simply didn't have endings. I suppose I could say I beat Venture even though the game restarted after the fourth level. Karateka had an ending, but I also think restarted. I know I even finished an educational title called Word Wizard or the Wizard of Spelling or something. Not on Mobygames yet, but I'm pretty sure it was published by Broderbund.

Now for genres... well there's a whole bunch. I tend to play anything regardless of genre (same with music).

Some easy ones: I blame Double Dragon and later, River City Ransom for making me love simple beat-em-up games. I blame Wolfensten 3-D and Catacomb 3-D for making me love first person shooters. I blame Seven Cities of Gold and EGA Trek for making me love games of exploration. I blame Civilization and Defender of the Crown for introducing me to diplomacy or a sort. I blame Tempest and Atomino for making me realize that not all games have to fall into a pre-defined mold...

And I blame Pooyan for nothing in particular :)

I started out with the C64 many years ago. I don't really know which was the first one I ever played, but I have fond memories of playing games like Kick Off, California Games, Buggy Boy and The Boss.

I can't even remember what the very first game I played was, I was quite young at the time; it was on a TRS-80 my elementary school had. Some variety of math game.

After that though would be Pac-Man and Centipede on the Atari 5200.

Adventures in Math? I remember playing that game at school.

Nope; it was a text-only game.

My first game was Pong! I played it on one of those pong consoles (don't ask me which one). I was about four at the time and didn't even know what a videogame or computer was. Shortly afterwards my parents must have thrown it away:( ,and i had to wait a couple of years to be reintroduced into gaming with the C64. I don't remember finishing any games on it though, as I didn't own one myself, but I have very fond memories of Giana Sisters, Turrican, Pirates!, Winter Games, Summer Games etc., Last Ninja, Maniac Mansion and many others.

My first own console was SNES and the first game I finished on it was either Super Mario World or Street Fighter II.

Games that got me hooked on certain a genre were Giana Sisters (at that time I thought Super Mario was a blatant rip-off of Giana Sisters) , Street Fighter II, Shining Force, Maniac Mansion, Contra III, Breath of Fire II, Tomb Raider, Tekken 2 and lots of other I don't remember right now.

I had a C64 years ago, and the first game that I played was Cops and Robbers.
On the PC, it was Wolfenstein 3-D.

What's the first game you played?

probly these three on a BBC at primary school;

Some kinda pirate game with NWSE options and big flashing "MUTINY" occurances, and one which I think was called Osprey where you had to make sure cars in a carpark didn'r scare away the nesting birds or something and Chuckie Egg

The first one you beat?

Wing commander or Spear of Destiny or Elite(Elite rating:))

The first one that made you fall in love with a genre?

Elite - Freeform space combat/trading

First game to play: Super Mario Bros. for the NES

First game to beat: I don't even remember anymore. It wasn't Super Mario Bros, that's for sure. I keep trying to remember and I can't even think of it.

Game that got me addicted to a genre: Millions of them. But most importantly, I got a demo of the original Age of Empires from a neighbor. It got me addicted for life. That demo made me buy the game (gold edition with both the game and expansion). Then I bought the second one and had an addiction to it that lasted two years. I joined an online team called ET (European Team), which still is standing to this day. After a while I got over it, but just getting that demo sent me on a 3 year adventure that I will never forget. Age of Empires is also what got me hooked to RTS for life. Thank you Age of Empires 1 and 2!!!!

My first game i played on was 3d monster maze for the sinclair zx81 though i was only 2 so i cant remember it but my brother claims i lasted over a 20 seconds before the t-rex eat me. The first game i actualy remember playing on was mario brothers (not super mario brothers) on the spectrum but the one that i still find as entertaining today as when i played it in 1987 is Colin the Cleaner for the Spectrum. Also the first RPG i played on was Final Fantasy 7 which made me realise what a great genre it is.

Man, I don't think I can exactly remember wich was my first game, but probably some Atari 2600's one, back in the 80's.

First one I beat, well, maybe some NES' one, I really can't remember, but it was back in the 90's.

The first that made me fall in love with a genre, I would say Phantasy Star for the SMS, the first RPG I beat. As for PC games, I would say Secret of Monkey Island (made me fall in love with graphic adventures and the first one of them I beat).

Wow, first game? 20 years ago. Egad.

Hmm. I vaguely remember on the PC playing all these odd games that only run with basica.com or gwbasic.com, one of my favorites was "In Search of the Most Amazing Thing".

During DOS was when heaven made its first appearance on me. My first adventure game was King's Quest. First RPG: Dragon Wars and Hillsfar. First Strategy: Sword of Aragon.

They really don't make games like they used to...probably because we lacked a lot of entertainment back then...

The first arcade game I ever played was space invaders, and I was hooked. On the computer side, my dad had an old CPM with 8" floppies. There was a rouge/hack game for it that I played a lot too.

Great first topic !

My first game ? Hard to tell... Probably Alley Cat on my father's old computer, or maybe it was Burgertime on my uncle's Intellivision... The first game I beat was undoubtly Sonic the Hedgehog on Sega Megadrive (or "Genesis" if you prefer ;) But I also remember finishing Prince of Persia with my father... The game that made me fell in love for a genre was probably Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, the first adventure game I ever played.

I remember that game, in the left side of your basement. I'd give anything to know what the name of that thing was :-)

I guess the first game I really got into, the one that totally got me into gaming, was Starflight. I played computer games before that, like Lunar Lander and what not, but NONE sucked me in like Starflight, and few games since have grabbed me as intensely.

The first game I ever played was either Gyromite or Duck Hunt. I think the first game I completed was Donkey Kong Jr..

I don't remember the first game I ever played, maybe it was Ghost Busters on the C64 at a friends place. I do remember the first game I ever owned though, ALF on the PC. Sad I know, even better was it's lovely orange based CGA 4 colour graphics, which was a disappointment considering we had a Tandy 1000HX (aka a 16 colour PCJr compat).

Thankfully the next two games were Microprose's F15 Strike Eagle (by Sid Meier) and Sierra's Space Quest II. SQ2 was the one that really got me started with gaming though, and more specially adventure titles. I used to love admiring a new scene or animation after completing a puzzle for the first time. These days unfortunately pure adventure/puzzle games don't hold my interest.

Mmmm... Memory is a bit fuzzy here, first games I played had to be either a bunch of oldies for the Atari 2600 (or was it 2800?) like Combat and Space Invaders. I also remember playing a lot of games on my dad's Apple ][+ yet I only recall two: Donkey Kong and a weird space combat game in which you had to warp off into space using a starmap and fought whatever you stumbled upon from a first-person perspective.

The first game that I fondly remember beating was the first Commander Keen game, I had beaten others before but CK remains in my mind because it was the first game that made me fall so in love with PC gaming. I never felt too cozy with consoles and I resented my dad for switching from our beloved Apple and it's kickass Donkey Kong to a PC, but years later it was Commander Keen that made me feel that happiness was on the other side of the road :)

I could be wrong because there's quite a few "first person space games" that involve warping (they seem to all have a common ancestor in gameplay), but I'm going to guess Star Raiders simply because it's a game that I remember seeing distributed a lot at computer shows. Though that may be an atari-only product, so maybe it was a similar game on Apple II...

Well I'll be damned, it looks a lot like the one I played! Specially the 2600 version... probably it was a port of it or more likely a clone. Thanks man!

My first game ? Hmm, I think it was "Summer Games II" on a Commodore 64.

A good feeling if I remember this time ! ;-)

Thats easy... Pong...

Bloop...bloop...bloop...buzz....

I fondly remember the first Summer Games. When I played Athens 2004, I kept wondering how a C64 game from the 80s could be so much better (and more authentic since Athens didn't have countries' themes).

An old homebrew/educational title called Math Rescue or smt like that. From there; Doom, Dune II, and the original Warcraft.




It's a mistake to think that new games are better design-wise than old ones. XD

Oh, I don't think that new games are better, but shouldn't they be? Just comparing Summer Games and Athens 2004, shouldn't game play have evolved from button mashing to something more elaborate (like Fight Night 2004's Total Control system)? Instead game play innovation largely gives way to flashier graphics and better sound.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but a large part of it is that games these days cost a lot of money to create, so if a game flops it could mean considerable losses for a company. It's tempting for developers just to create games with better gfx and sound and doing nothing new in terms of actual gameplay and control. Also, advertising plays a big part in selling a game, and it's way easier to hype a game's "revolutionary graphics" than a game's "revolutionary controls."

Yeah, I know there are exceptions to the rule.

That's an interesting topic... I think it depends on the genre. It might be that some genres haven't really evolved over the time. For example, I think adventure games were actually much better in late eighties than in late nineties or today. But other genres do evolve a lot. Asian RPGs, for example, have made a huge progress.

Is it that Asian RPGs have improved or that the industry in Asian countries has improved, generally? I'm just wondering if they got a late start and are now in their prime.

Asian RPGs have improved. At least in many important aspects: story, characterization, atmosphere, gameplay mechanics. Some aspects suffered, however: exploration became more and more limited, the games themselves became shorter.

As for the industry, in Japan it has been remarkably stable since the dawn of the genre (1986), which is not such a late start. Maybe it was because of Japan's advance economics, or because Japanese take gaming more seriously than Western people.

Taiwan entered the scene around 1990, and while Taiwanese games suffer until now from low budgets (which results in sub-par production values, naturally), the creativity is there, and the genre is very popular. As for Korea, I unfortunately know next to nothing about their games, because I can't read Korean at all.

The old games were often much more "thought-out" in my opinion.

Today everything in the video- and computergames industry is laid out purely on commerce and big sales amounts. :-(

Everything looks rosy when looked through the misty glasses of nostalgia guys. There were innovative games then and now, and there was commercial junk both then and now.

Definitely. E.T. anyone?

Very well said, Alejandro. This is my opinion as well. We cherish old games because in the beginning of our gaming lives, they seemed more unique and special. But objectively, this is not the case.

Ok, Ok ! I admit, that the old games seemed more unique in the beginning of our gaming lives.

I think this is probably the reason why they seem better in my mind. :-)

I couldn't have said it better myself. In fact, I think I've plagiarized you in the past ;)

First one I played - Was either the Atari trackball Football black and white arcade game, or the black and white wild west arcade game (both from the 70's, and I think both were from before Space Invaders was released. I also played some Sears PONG clone at my babysitters around the same time period. The first computer game I played was on the Pet; it was some spacewar game whose name escapes me at the moment (I just remember that you had several different kinds of shots, it was pseudo-3D, and was text but used the the little graphics characters that the Pet could produce). The first computer games that I owned were the TRS-80 Coco cartridges Skiing (3d), and Project Nebula (also 3D... a semi-clone of Star Raiders on the Atari). The first 3rd party game was Phantom Slayer by Med Systems (on cassette... anybody else remember using these? The first one I solved on my own was either Black Sanctum (a text adventure game) or Sands of Egypt (a graphics, cross-platform adventure game).

John Conway's 'Life' on mainframe in 1975.

Hmm, let me think...

I guess my first game at the Amiga was Lemmings 2. This is also the only game I remember which I beat there, though not perfectly (I didn't got gold for two tribes). Or maybe Aquaventura. (One of these two.)

At the PC, my first own game was Day of the Tentacle, but the first PC game I played was Digger.

A "golf" game called Hole in One on Canon CX-1. You entered some numbers at the tee and then the program animated the ball bouncing towards the hole. Same value wouldn't always shoot the ball to the same place so I'm assuming RND() was used as well as COS() :)