God damn right! And snake. And Alpiner.
The paddle games were actually pretty cool. For the VIC-20, I think Omega Race was my favorite game; smooth, fast gameplay and worked great with the paddle (though you could play with joystick, too.) The VIC-20 port of Donkey Kong was fantastic, too. I have such fond memories of those old VIC-20 games–the Scott Adams adventure series, Radar Rat Race, the Rally X clone with the awful repetitive music, Tooth Invaders, Centipede, Defender, Sea Wolf, Cosmic Cruncher (Pac-Man ripoff), Dig Dug, Alien, Jupiter Lander and a whole slew of forgettable tape games (if you had an unexpanded VIC-20, as I did, the cartridge games were pretty much the only ones worth playing, as the cartridges were 16K, while games loaded in could only be a max of 3.5K, IIRC.)
The VIC-20 was really just a little too early for me–I missed most of those games. I might not even have been 6; I was born in '78 so I might have been as young as 3-4. But The Sky is Falling left an impression, apparently. I’m actually a little shocked it came to mind since I don’t know the last time I’d have thought about it.
The first game I *wrote *was at maybe 8-9, on the C-64. It could hardly be called a game, really; it was a BASIC dice-rolling program that printed out an “ASCII art” image of the roll. It was up to the user to pick an actual game…
I only wrote my first real game in college. It was an assignment to implement Othello/Reversi. I misunderstood the assignment–it was just supposed to be an implementation of the rules for two human players. But I wrote it with an AI that could play a human or itself. And it could beat me. It was a trivial system that just played a few moves against itself in the future, picking the moves that led to boards with the greatest point difference. I suppose that’s when I learned the lesson that extremely simple recursive searching can make for a powerful AI. There was no pruning or the like (aside from illegal moves), but that wasn’t really necessary.
You’re only three years younger than me, and it sounds like you got your C64 at almost the same time I got my VIC-20. (I think I got mine in '85.) I actually loved that you could read through the manual and actually learn how to program. I remember programming a version of “Kaboom!” (Atari 2600) on the VIC-20 when I was around 10-11 years old. It was a much slower version, written in BASIC (I didn’t get familiar with 6502 assembly until my C128), but it was playable. Still remember drawing out my characters on graph paper and POKEing in the custom character set values.
This. Mine was bright yellow, had the paddles embedded onto the machine. My 11yo sister constantly kicked my 8yo ass on this.
Pong
And then Witchaven for the computer.
Probably the Pac-Man that came with my Atari 2600.
I also fondly remember some text adventures on my earliest PC.
There are still people around who love them, though I honestly don’t know if they’re still being made. They call them “interactive fiction” now. And of course you can play Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy online now.
Oh, the memories.
My dad had a “laptop” probably around 1990. I played the classic Star Trek, Rouge, and Alley Cat. Can’t really claim which was first.
I do remember another. It was a turn-based civilization-like war game with text only. You start in a city (shows up as “O”) and make whatever units you need while the computer did the same. You use your “A” army units on land to capture cities and fight the computer’s “a” army units. Haven’t found anything about it, may have been just another game.
The first home video game I remember seeing was Adventure on Atari. A neighbor had it and would let us come over to watch (but never play!). I also played games on a friend’s Intellevsion before getting my own Atari.
First PC game I ever saw (that I remember) was the original Space Quest at a friend’s house. I badgered my parents into getting me a PC so I could also play it.
I’m loving these replies, they make me feel so young! My first video games were Super Mario World and Mario Paint (to the extent that the latter was a game) on the Super Nintendo.
“It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.”
“You are in a maze of twisty passages, all alike.”
“Created by Warren Robinett.” In these days of Skyrim, it boggles the mind Adventure was any fun at all. But it was really good.
Honestly, despite all the early games I listed in my other post. I didn’t really get into it until the SNES came out. The first game I played on it was Final Fantasy 3 (now known as Final Fantasy 6).
Technically, the first computer game I played was - well, I don’t know if there’s a name for this (it’s not Nim); two players alternately remove 1-N items from a pile, and whoever removes the last one loses - on an IBM 1130 at the local community college. The first “home computer” game I played was probably something lowbrow that I wrote myself on an Atari 800 (similar tech to the C64).
The first video game I played? Pong. The first “home” video game? Whatever the Pong-type game was on the original Magnavox Odyssey. The first color one? The Combat cartridge game that came with the Atari 2600.
My first game was King’s Quest on the Tandy 1000. It took me years to beat that game, Sierra’s 1-900 hint line didn’t work in Canada. I’m pretty sure Sierra’s employees in the 80’s and early 90’s lived on the tears of their frustrated fans and the sale of hint books. (Remember hint books? Pepperridge farm remembers.)
Yup, that’s Empire. There were ships and aircraft as well as army units, so it was a lot like civ except that all your cities could build was military units. It was also my first multiplayer game, I remember you could connect two PC’s with a serial cable and play two-player. My dad whooped my ass for the first few games, but eventually I got to the point where I was winning more games than he was. I have fond memories of that game, and it definitely led me to spending a lot of time playing 4X games down the road.
So after clicking on Skywatcher’s link , I just found that you can actually download Empire 2.01 for free from the developer’s webpage. Goddammit, I had work I needed to do today. That work is now just sitting in my in-basket giving me the stink-eye while I play a game that’s almost older than I am.
Sierra games were brutal. Forget to pick up an item on screen 2? Well you’re going to need it in screen 105.
Yeah, all those early adventure games (and I’d extend it to just early computer games in general) were pretty brutal by today’s standards. Early Lucasfilm games were similar in that you could “dead end” a game by getting rid of an item that you need to finish it, and the game will just let you play on and on without telling you that it’s unsolvable from that point (like I seem to remember you can kill the man-eating plant in Maniac Mansion, but you need it to be alive to access some necessary rooms. Also, the game won’t stop you from killing off your characters, like in the pool.) Rules of what was “fair” by gameplay standards wasn’t quite well established in the early days.