What game system do you prefer/When did you get into gaming?

JetSonic · Post by **JetSonic** » 10 Dec 2005, 00:15

I played my first game on my home TV called PONG back in the 1970's. And I was hooked immediately, then came the original consoles and arcade rooms in the malls like Space Invaders and Asteroids and Tron and PacMan which to me those games were so addicting.

Then I tried this console called Odyssey in the 1980's and it was okay. Then I quit playing consoles and arcades for years. Then Playstation came out and DOOM and that blew me away. And then I tried Nintendo and Goldeneye which was amazing, still best console game I ever played.

Then I got a computer and played Half-Life and was blown away. I prefer the computer as a gaming platform over everything else.

My first real gaming experience was the PinBall machine when I was a kid in the 1960's and I could play pinball all day, it was so fascinating. Look how times have changed, now I don't take a second look at a pinball machine.

Yes I'm in my forties now and still enjoy gaming, especially the role playing games on computer.

How about you? :)

Post by **skipclarke** » 10 Dec 2005, 01:29

:lol:

Didn't know you were such a young dude! :wink:

Deux Ex was my 1st PC game :shock:
- Voodoo 3 3000 3DFX all the way baby!!
Stayed up late many nights with that one.

I have been an EXTREME PC gamer addict ever since. :twisted:

Post by **ctrlsteef** » 10 Dec 2005, 09:29

I started gaming with the original Prince of Persia game. I played it on my dad's 286 he got from work. He was the onlyone who got one because they costed loads and loads of money. So I was the man back then since i was the onlyone in my class who had a computer :D . After that i never stopped gaming on pc.

Now i also have an XBox and a PSP but my pc still remains my favorite.

fugaz · Post by **fugaz** » 10 Dec 2005, 10:21

First game I played has to be Pitfall on a Atari 2600 somewhere back in the early 80's. Freakin loved that game!

Than there came the Commodore64 and after that the Amiga 500. Played for thousands of hours on both systems.

But at age 16 or so I lost interest in computers completely though. Other things became more important ;) That lasted about 4 years or so untill I saw DUKE3D running on a friend's Pentium133. My jaw dropped to the floor and that got me completely hooked again till this day now (approx 10 years later)

(PC)Gamer for life I guess :D

vhato · Post by **vhato** » 10 Dec 2005, 16:30

Timex Sinclair ZX81 w/4kb Ram. I had to write all games in basic from samples. 1980 I think.

Then came the Timex Sinclair Color w/64k Ram. Followed by an Odyssey also. Then a Sanyo 1250 MBC w/CPM-86 and a Zilog-80C 8-Bit Processor w/64k Ram. I became a 10-year old coder in Fortran, Pascal, Algol and 8-bit Assembly in this era. I think it was 1986.

PC-XT w/i8086 at 4Mhz w/256kb Ram and then an i286-8mhz w/20mb HDD, 512kb Ram and the games that started my fall from grace as a coder and into a lazy game player. Police Quest 1 was it. Sierra had me hooked on every game they made. From 1987-1995 I was a mess with Sierra games. Their technology jumps from the old AGi to SCi to SCi32 kept me hooked......and then came Wolfenstein-3D and that changed the way I played games. Doom's release was awesome, specifically the non orthogonal walls blew me a way. Id included peer-2-peer playability but it didn't work. So I became a coder again and was one of MANY people who fixed their p2p system so I could play Doom via modem against co-workers. The days of the 16550 UART are fresh in my mind. If it was FPS, we played it. Games later went to DirectX (WinG isn't even worth mentioning) which were garbage and they all looked the same. Then there was 3DFX. Monster 3D from Diamond was my first and then a Canopus Pure3D and finally 2 Canopus Pure3D 2's doing SLI. Quake and Quake 2 as well as Need for Speed SE were gorgeous. Later came Unreal. I spent hours just walking around basking in Unreal's beauty. It wasn't until Half-Life 2 was I as impressed with the advancement of graphics as I was with Unreal.

Nice to see there are others in here who remember these great times. I'm 30 years old now.

Post by **skipclarke** » 10 Dec 2005, 17:02

"I had to write all games in basic from samples. 1980 I think."
"I'm 30 years old now."

You were 5 :shock:

I always envied these folks who could pick up coding like writing the alaphabet to us.

Well done & congrats !!

I was working on the IBM 7074 & 360/60 & 80's series in the mid to late 60's & had to study like a "bastage" to know what to do.

JetSonic · Post by **JetSonic** » 10 Dec 2005, 17:29

First game I played has to be Pitfall on a Atari 2600 somewhere back in the early 80's. Freakin loved that game!

Yeah I remember playing Pitfall on that Odyssey console, it was incredible! That had to be in the early 1980's. Of course back then the graphics were amazing or so we thought, isn't that crazy as compared to now?

Uh, people since we are all showing our age here it would probably be wise to go buy one of these old consoles as they are probably worth a significant amount of money.

The original Apple computer is selling for alot now a days. This post has turned into a history of video gaming. I wouldn't mind getting my hands on the original PONG game.

Since we are talking about history of video gaming, here's a link to the very first video game and the first gaming consoles- very interesting read

Magnavox Odyssey 1972- very first video console

http://www.pong-story.com/intro.htm :)

AND....

Magnavox Computer Space 1971- very first video game

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/gamestimeline1.html

Post by **Gilly** » 10 Dec 2005, 19:41

First i played was Pacman, then i had a Mega Drive and Mega CD, i only got serious with a Playstation, then PS2, UT2003 got me going onto PC's and i stayed there ever since :P

vhato · Post by **vhato** » 10 Dec 2005, 20:03

"I had to write all games in basic from samples. 1980 I think."
"I'm 30 years old now."

You were 5 :shock:

I always envied these folks who could pick up coding like writing the alaphabet to us.

Well done & congrats !!

I was working on the IBM 7074 & 360/60 & 80's series in the mid to late 60's & had to study like a "bastage" to know what to do.

oooops, Definately a mathematical error on my part. There are kids who can do that stuff now at 5, but it wasn't till 10 or 11 for me.

cmay119 · Post by **cmay119** » 11 Dec 2005, 22:13

Stonekeep for DOS/Windows 95 was my very first PC game that I still love to this day (too bad I have to dual boot XP Pro with windows 98se just to play it).

First console game was Super Mario Brothers for regular NES. What a classic that one is.

Post by **Paradigm Shifter** » 11 Dec 2005, 22:23

Stonekeep for DOS/Windows 95 was my very first PC game that I still love to this day (too bad I have to dual boot XP Pro with windows 98se just to play it).

I know the feeling. Final Fantasy VII and VIII are distinctly allergic to Windows 2000/XP. :cry: They're also happiest on a Voodoo card...

I'm a relative youngin', but have played more than my fair share of old games thanks to friends and family who don't throw things away when they're "obsolete", but just put them in the loft. :D

I didn't own a PC until '96, and didn't own a console until... oooh... 2001? Something like that. I bought a PS2 for Final Fantasy X. :D

I prefer PCs in general for gaming (Planescape Torment, greatest PCRPG ever!), but there is something to be said for Japanese RPGs. 8) (To be fair, RPGs are the only games that really hold my attention aside from the Civ games...)

FortranDragon · Post by **FortranDragon** » 13 Dec 2005, 03:23

Adventure (the 350 point version) on a PDP 11/70.

Cue the guy that played Spacewar on a PDP-1 at MIT....

;-)

Komoto · Post by **Komoto** » 13 Dec 2005, 15:45

I'm with Fortran Dragon, though I don't remember the hardware it was running on because I was (really) 5, this was in 1975. My grandfather was president of a local construction company and would drop me off with the sysadmin while he was in meetings. Adventure, and some Star Trek game with ASCII graphics.

Then pong, atari, trs80, c64 (long break while I lived as a gypsy with my rock band) 486, pentium, p2, athlon tbird, athlon xp.

I prefer pc gaming by far, on my home theater, though I also own a GC and Xbox.

funch · Post by **funch** » 14 Dec 2005, 02:57

I don't think we had Pong on our TV.

But I did at one time own a Apple IIe, Apple IIc, Colecovision, Atari 2600, Commodore Vic-20, and an NES. (gotta love the green screens from the old Apples)

When I had the Apple computers, I totally enjoyed adventure games. I loved the original King's Quest game, Oldorf's Revenge (if any of you can remember that badboy), and ALL of the Infocom line of text adventure games. Those were my all-time favorites.

Back when I was a kid I did enjoy consoles. My sister and I saved our newspaper job money and bought the CollecoVision and we had our share of games too. We liked Smurfs Adventure- because the graphics were just pimp compared to Atari's 2600. Years later we got the Nintendo and of course the Playstation1. And at the same time loving the good old 25cent arcades with games like Space Invaders, Galaxian and Donkey Kong. Any of you remember Crazy Climber? Man I loved that one.

But still my heart was in computer games. Stonekeep! Yes I remember that one!! First person shooters- Quake, Doom, Duke Nukem!! Adventure games were the shizzle in my nizzle. I never cared too much for RPG's though. My all time favorite PC FPS is easily Half Life 1.

I wouldn't say that i'm an extreme gamer like I used to be but I still buy PCGamer, Play Magazine and Computer Gaming magazines to check out whats new and whats coming.

With the way games have evolved I look forward to seeing what games look like in 10 years.

Komoto · Post by **Komoto** » 14 Dec 2005, 15:34

(gotta love the green screens from the old Apples)

I use a black background with green text (terminal system font, natch) for my terminal windows in Mac OSX. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

stoopid · Post by **stoopid** » 14 Dec 2005, 17:00

I'm 30 (as well), so the previous posts concerning Atari and commodre 64 apply ;). Then once PCs became affordable early in the 1990s I grabbed hold of gaming. Doom, Duke Nukem, Quake (which was a revolutionary FPS in its day), Myst, Sim City, M$ Flight Simulator, Wolfenstein 3d, etc... then UT came along and redefined FPS all over again. Not much of a RTS player, and I only dabbled in Everquest, EQ2, CoH, and Asheron's Call briefly. MMORPG leveling bores me.

I owned a nintendo and original playstation as well. The playstation was a wonderful console. Lots of sports titles to play head to head with friends.

FortranDragon · Post by **FortranDragon** » 14 Dec 2005, 20:24

I use a black background with green text (terminal system font, natch) for my terminal windows in Mac OSX. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

I'm with you on the green text on the black background for the terminal window in OS X. I make make one concession to the gui world and have the terminal window be partly transparent. :)

neurotic · Post by **neurotic** » 19 Dec 2005, 20:00

Commodore 64 was my introduction to gaming when I was a wee lad. My grandpa had one. I would go over to this house just to play. I can't remember what it was called, but there was some game where you walked around in a little 2D house and could make a guy do random things. It was the first sims! I also played some F1 racing game, but I forget what that was called as well. When I was a little older I got an Atari for Christmas. My first real gaming experiences were on that Atari playing Moonpatrol. I dunno how that game never got old, but maybe it was because I was young haha.

After I got my NES I became an RPG fantatic. Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy I were my best friends. My friend and I would even call each other and sit on the phone for hours while we played, giving each other tips and talking about what we were experiencing. I remember killing some gold golem things for like an entire day to save up the gold needed for some item I wanted. Good times.

It's pretty crazy looking back, but things haven't really changed much. This year I spent hours sitting on WoW trying to kill things for gold just like back in the day lol.

Komoto · Post by **Komoto** » 20 Dec 2005, 15:35

I can't remember what it was called, but there was some game where you walked around in a little 2D house and could make a guy do random things.

Little Computer People
*knock knock*

Gabbo · Post by **Gabbo** » 09 Jan 2006, 03:28

Prefered platform: The ultimate gaming machine.... the PC.

Started with the atari 2600 for me, but once IBM compatible 8086 clones were available in the mid 80's, I started playing Infocom text adventure games. Started with the 4.77 mhz 640K Ram 2x 5.25 floppy 8086 and graduated to the IBM XT 10mhz (Turbo button!) and I finally got my own PC for college in 1991 (386DX 25Mhz, 2 MB Ram w/ 20MB HDD. I fell out of gaming when I discovered college parties. :D

Then in 1995, Doom was released and I rediscovered my love of PC Gaming and simply had to buy a new PC. Bought a AMD 5x86 133Mhz CPU (pentium 70 equivalent), and got my first 1 GB HDD. From there it has been a steady upgrade path to what I have today.

Sure, I have consoles (PS2, Xbox and a Gamecube) but none of them give me the gaming goodness of my trusty PCs.

PC Gaming Forever!

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