# What was your first computer/video game?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544
**Category:** The Game Room
**Created:** [August 13, 2018, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544 "2018-08-13T19:58:44Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 7:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/1 "2018-08-13T19:58:44Z")
Inspired by [this old and just revived thread,](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=279445), what was the first computer and/or video game you played?
My first was a tic-tac-toe game I wrote in machine language for the LGP-21 computer in our high school, in late 1968. When I was in college I got to play Space War on the PDP-1 at MIT made famous by the book Hackers. My assembly language class was on that machine. I also played Computer Space, the first Atari game, at the student center, in 1972 I think.
I translated the Star Trek game from David Ahl’s book of 50 BASIC games into Pascal for the PDP-11 we used in grad school, with a few changes. I also played lots of multiplayer games on PLATO around 1974-77, including what I bet is world’s first MUD.
What’s yours?
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### Author:  [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 8:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/2 "2018-08-13T20:04:26Z")
The oldest one I remember is [Castle Adventure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Adventure). I suppose there were text adventure games that were older, but I think I played this first.
Eventually we got exciting 4-color CGA graphics! With [Alley Cat](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alley_Cat_(video_game))!
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### Author:  [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/3 "2018-08-13T20:05:12Z")
The first I owned was a tie between **Donkey Kong** , **Smurfs** , **Cosmic Avenger** and **Turbo** – all for the Colecovision I got for Christmas one year.
I have no idea what the first arcade game I ever played was but the first computer/console game was a year or two before the Colecovision, playing some poker game on a neighbor’s early computer (I think it may have been a Sinclair)
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### Author:  [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 8:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/4 "2018-08-13T20:11:27Z")
I got a Pong knockoff (probably a Sears-branded one 😉 ) for Christmas in 1976.
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### Author:  [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 8:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/5 "2018-08-13T20:19:08Z")
Christmas '79: Atari 2600.
First game that I paid for myself? [Fast Tracks](http://www.mobygames.com/game/c64/fast-tracks-the-computer-slot-car-construction-kit).
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### Author:  [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/6 "2018-08-13T20:22:26Z")
Either Pacman on the Atari 2600 or [Pong](http://computermuseum.50megs.com/collectionpong.htm), I don’t remember which.
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### Author:  [@Inigo\_Montoya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inigo_Montoya)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 8:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/7 "2018-08-13T20:23:35Z")
First video game: Pong (at Shakey’s when I was a wee sprog)
First home-console game: [Odyssey 100](https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=odyssey+100+video+game+console&view=detail&mid=89CD55966FD961A49A9389CD55966FD961A49A93&FORM=VIRE)
First PC game: Leather Goddesses of Phobos (text-based)
First PC game with non ascii graphics: Bard’s Tale
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### Author:  [@Leaffan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaffan)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/8 "2018-08-13T20:32:41Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#):
>
> I got a Pong knockoff (probably a Sears-branded one 😉 ) for Christmas in 1976.
Yeah, that’s it for me too, around the same timeframe.
Technically it was my younger brother’s Christmas gift though.
In 1983 I bought an Atari home computer, probably the 800XL model, ([Atari 8-bit computers - Wikipedia](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_8-bit_family#/media/File%3AAtari-800XL.jpg)) and loved playing Donkey Kong on it, especially with friends after the bars closed.
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### Author:  [@ftg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ftg)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 8:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/9 "2018-08-13T20:44:34Z")
The first non-trivial computer game I played was [Hamurabi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamurabi_(video_game)) on a PDP-11.
We realized that it came down to just buy low/sell high and keep enough grain around to feed a small population. Soon we’re overflowing the integer for gold and it went into floating point with rather big exponents. (It was a team effort to play that long.)
We also had the [Star Trek game](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_(1971_video_game)) but it was boring to play on a paper TTY.
The first game console I got was Pong. The first multi-game console was the Atari 2600 (which I still have).
Sometime before the latter I had access to Xerox Altos which had lovely games like Asteroids, Pinball, etc.
Oft told tale: before all the above we had a “game” on a computer (dialup) that would guess your number between 1 and 1000 in 10 guesses. (High, low, correct were replies.) We had a demo day. My English teacher came in. We explained the game. The computer started with 512. She went pale. Yep, that was her number. Computers are psychic, folks!
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### Author:  [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 8:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/10 "2018-08-13T20:47:47Z")
> [@thelurkinghorror](#):
>
> The oldest one I remember is [Castle Adventure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castle_Adventure). I suppose there were text adventure games that were older, but I think I played this first.
I started sometime around this time, too. Castle Adventure, Sopwith, Bushido, Striker (helicopter game), Archon, The Ancient Art of War, and other such relatively primitive PC games were all part of the regular rotation. No idea which one I played first.
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### Author:  [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/11 "2018-08-13T20:58:48Z")
> [@Inigo\_Montoya](#):
>
> First video game: Pong (at Shakey’s when I was a wee sprog). . .
Also Pong (in the college game area - it was the only video game, sitting against the wall between the bowling lanes and the pool tables. Further back in the pool area was foosball and air hockey.
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### Author:  [@Sefton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sefton)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/12 "2018-08-13T21:02:58Z")
Pac-Man on the Atari 2600. Thought it was the most incredible game ever made.
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### Author:  [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 9:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/13 "2018-08-13T21:03:47Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#):
>
> I got a Pong knockoff (probably a Sears-branded one 😉 ) for Christmas in 1976.
Same for me, except it was probably purchased at Alexander’s Department Store. (That was my parents’ favorite place to shop.)
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/14 "2018-08-13T21:16:00Z")
[Moderating]
Is it just me, or have there been a lot of Game Room threads started in Cafe Society lately?
[/Moderating]
But to the topic, the first games I owned were Centipede, Frogger, and Jungle Hunt on an Atari. Not the Atari model that everyone else had; ours had a keyboard, which meant you could program it yourself\*, which meant that it was educational, which meant that Mom was willing to buy it. But it also meant that it was impossible to find cheap used games, or trade with friends, because they didn’t use the same cartridges.
I’d played others before that, on friends’ and relatives’ systems: Pac-Man, Pong, Breakout, Pitfall. I don’t know which one was first.
\*Yes, we did do a little bit of programming on it. But mostly just stuff like
```auto
10 print Hello
20 goto 10
```
And I have to give Mom credit for realizing that computer programming was a valuable skill to learn, even though she’s always hated computers herself.
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### Author:  [@thelurkinghorror](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/thelurkinghorror)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 9:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/15 "2018-08-13T21:21:15Z")
> [@DCnDC](#):
>
> I started sometime around this time, too. Castle Adventure, Sopwith, Bushido, Striker (helicopter game), Archon, The Ancient Art of War, and other such relatively primitive PC games were all part of the regular rotation. No idea which one I played first.
I think Bushido is the only one of those I played.
We also had Leisure Suit Larry. Once we upgraded from loading everything on 5 1/4 disks to a 20 megabyte hard drive, my dad locked it out by putting up a boot loader (e.g. type A for Wordperfect, B for Castle Adventure). So I had to learn DOS commands to get past that.
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### Author:  [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/16 "2018-08-13T21:28:50Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#):
>
> I got a Pong knockoff (probably a Sears-branded one 😉 ) for Christmas in 1976.
Something like this for me, too. I don’t remember the exact year, and I think there may have been more than one Pong knockoff in my history.
The first non-Pong my family got was the Atari (called VCS at the time, later rebranded as the [2600](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600)). I’m pretty sure that would have been Christmas 1981, since we got Asteroids and Missile Command to go with it, and Wikipedia informs me that these were released in 1981.
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### Author:  [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/17 "2018-08-13T21:32:56Z")
Table Tennis, the Pong clone for the Magnavox Odyssey.
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### Author:  [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/18 "2018-08-13T21:39:06Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> [Moderating]
> Is it just me, or have there been a lot of Game Room threads started in Cafe Society lately?
> [/Moderating]
Video games are ART, man! :mad:
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### Author:  [@Airman\_Doors\_USAF](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Airman_Doors_USAF)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/19 "2018-08-13T21:46:23Z")
The first computer game I ever played was Pinball Construction Set for the Commodore 64, and the first console game I ever played was Asteroids for the Atari 2600.
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### Author:  [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)
#### Post date: [August 13, 2018, 9:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-was-your-first-computer-video-game/819544/20 "2018-08-13T21:47:33Z")
[Ti-99/4a](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_TI-99/4A) was the first thing we had with a keyboard. We also had a sears brand Atari 2600. But I can’t remember which we had first.
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