Early computer games

[jimclarke]

Heres a trivia question:  What were some of the earliest PC games and what were they like?

Jim

[WebbPA]

Most people think it was Pong http://www.pong-story.com/

But before there was Pong there were text based games http://www.karber.net/textbased/pong/default.htm

[flyboy 28]

That's sad... Someone actually made a .com of the story behind "Pong"? :-/

[Rivers]

I remember Playing prince of Persia when I was still very young in a green only monitor. And I think that Castle Wolfenstein was the first 3D FPS followed by Doom.

[Loafing Smurf]

LOL...I remember Prince of Persia and Castle Wolfenstein when I was a kid. It was on a 386 with a VGA monitor (and a Soundcard!). I also played Duke Nukem and Commander Keen.

[BFMF]

Gotta love Commander Keen

[gw]

One of the earliest games I played was a game of golf I wrote just for the heck of it in the early 70s.  It ran on a mainframe type computer with a mechanical teletype as the only terminal.

A game that probably qualifies more for this discussion was called Caves or Adventure.  It was the original adverture game.  It was text based because graphics terminals weren't generally available at the time.  My copy was sent to me on 2400 foot mag tape by someone who worked in the development group of the company I worked for at the time.  In the game you wandered around in a pitch dark cave collecting treasure, avoiding trolls, ogres, dragons, etc.  It's actually still around.  It was originally written in Fortran and somewhere along the way got converted to C.

And then there was Star Trek.  You wandered around the galaxy fighting Klingons, allocating energy to shields, weapons, etc and visiting star bases to refuel.  Still text based but it adapted to your playing skill.  The better you were the harder the game got.  We decided that the game's goal was to beat you and, eventually, that's pretty much what always happened.

All of this was in the 70s on mainframes.  Like playing with cardboard boxes compared to the games on PCs but still a heck of a lot of fun.

gw

[ozzy72]

I remember Pong, Space Invaders and Frogger. Loved Space Invaders and Frogger.
Does anyone remember Tron?

Mark

[Smoke2much]

I had a version of Lord of the Rings on a 286 (1987 I think).  I could never get past the first Nazgul...

They were the days when the C=16 was a better games platform and PC's were all about office applications.

[Politically Incorrect]

I remember Pong, Space Invaders and Frogger. Loved Space Invaders and Frogger.
Does anyone remember Tron?

Mark

Yeah I remeber TRON!! I noticed they have a new PC version available now, anyone tried it??

I remember pong, my dad built a game console it features pong, breakout (pong with walls), tennis (fast pong with two) super breakout (pong with two walls) and on and on  ;D
And when I first heard about computers they had green monitors and "spoke" basic . Wasted two years of school on that. It was back then my guidance counselour recommended I stay away from the "computer field" it was going nowhere, so I did and now I regret

We were kings of the neigborhood when we got the Atari 2600!!!

[ozzy72]

Fret who is Tron by? How much is it?
I remember going to see the movie with my dad and being blown away by the special effects! Fortunately my dad had more foresight than your guidance councillor and made sure I was learning computing, not just playing games

Ozzy

[Jared]

hmmm....the memories....the monochrome monitor...

All on the old XT there were:

Xonix (Really fun, and addictive!)
Tetris (same as above!)
frogger
and about 30 different things that were just as fun! all without a har drive! :-)

I also remember wolfenstein 3d! That was an awesome game for the time! ;-)

[Rivers]

Tron 2.0 Web Site
http://www.tron20.net/frameset.html

[Iroquois]

The first games I played belonged to my parents. There was Shanghi (Ma Jong, a chinese matching game), Where In Time Is Carmon Sandiego, MS Flight Simulator 4, and a few others that I can't remember. These were on a Mac LC. I also had Wolf 3D, Doom, and TIE Fighter for Mac.

The first game I ever owned was Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for Sega Genesis. I loved the original sonic series. Sonic 3 and Knuckles was the best. I think it came out in 1994.

And then there was Star Trek.  You wandered around the galaxy fighting Klingons, allocating energy to shields, weapons, etc and visiting star bases to refuel.  Still text based but it adapted to your playing skill.  The better you were the harder the game got.  We decided that the game's goal was to beat you and, eventually, that's pretty much what always happened.

I remember having a game a bit like that but it came out much later. Does anybody remember Star Trek: Judgement Rights? It was a pretty good 2D adventure/puzzle game. Still have it for Mac somewhere.

The games I played when I was little were a little more advanced than some of the ones listed above. Still a far cry from the ones of today. Who says 16bit graphics still aren't fun.