chinny22 wrote on 2020-06-01, 10:43:

rmay635703 wrote on 2020-06-01, 02:09:

As a kid I found paratrooper to be a lot of fun, in its green screen glory on my uncles then new 5150 with upgraded graphics.

Agreed although I was in the IIe and doesn't rate as my favorite

I think my point is at a given time different games were my favorite

Paratrooper was one of three games I played on pc in the day and was my favorite at that time (I was very young)

My favorite games changed as new ones came out and I think it good to note that what was a favorite in the day might not be anymore.

Though I still know folks who enjoy digger

Buggy Boy C64 (1985)

This is a difficult one, because as time went by my favourites changed and I also had favourites in different genres.

When I started gaming in the early 1990s, Duke Nukem (2D)/Bio Menace/Commander Keen were my favourites and remained that way until Need for Speed II: SE, which took way too much of my time for the next few years. After that, Age of Empires was good but Age of Empires II was what really grabbed me. Between all this I had others, such as Tomb Raider III and Quake III Arena. I was a young kid at the time, so there were some educational games in the mix as well such as The Magic School Bus.

In a nutshell, these are the games that did it for me:

Duke Nukem
Commander Keen
Bio Menace
Jazz Jackrabbit
Need for Speed 2: SE
Tomb Raider III
Future Cop LAPD
Half-Life
Suzuki Alstair Extreme Racing
Age of Empires II
Quake III Arena
Deus Ex

Add to that there were games I was too young to fully appreciate at the time which are brilliant, such as the Monkey Island games, Grim Fandango and Dungeon Keeper.

From the 2000s onwards there have been many games I've thoroughly enjoyed but don't belong on this list, such as Bulletstorm, Age of Empires III (which I still play regularly), Battlefield 3, etc etc etc.

OP, your question isn't quite as straightforward as it first appears 😁

will1384 wrote on 2020-06-01, 04:43:

1989 - DOS 1993-94 - The Adventures of Robbo -- I bought this game at the local Walmart, I played this too much.

Thank you for introducing me to this game. Does anyone know the Polish version cheat codes?

By the way, thanks to the OP for introducing me to Hidden Agenda. I tried this game and it is delightful.

I will have a very hard time trying to remember the very first or oldest computer game that I liked!

I didn't have my first computer till I got my Deschutes with 98FE but I had been playing on friends computers for many years before and many of those game I have no clue what they were called.

But one that I actually managed to re-discover its name was Jezzball, but some other older ones were Sopwith Camel (a sidescroller-ish game in which you flew a biplane to bomb stuff, iirc) and Stunts with its awesome (cheat enabled for extra track elements) track editor! 😀
And Tank Wars which taught me some basic ballistics xD
I've also played some Mahjong game and Wintersports or something. But it's very hard for me to point out which games I played as I probably don't even remember most of them anymore.

Desomondo wrote on 2020-06-01, 12:57:

Stunts (1990). There is something about games that come with editors (an awesome track editor in this case) that tickles my fancy. My mate introduced me to this one in early high school and I was hooked immediately. We made tons of tracks and swapped them back and forth. Good times...

^this

The built in ROM to the Vectrex is probably my favourite asteroids clone, but my actual favourite game on that system was Cosmic Chasm.

I feel the Vectrex version is *way* better than the Arcade version. So this is probably my oldest favourite game.

Accolade Grand Prix

Well, I change, I will go with the one I played most: MicroProse Grand Prix

that's pretty hard tbh, I don't like anything too old but Stunts is probably the oldest that I'd go with

If handhelds count, my first real game was "Frisky Tom", from Bandai Electronics.
This was in 1982 or 1983.
As for real computers, it was "Choplifter" on the Commodore 64, a year later.
For DOS, the first game I really played a lot was "Fire Power".

I'm not exactly sure which my oldest favorite game really is,
but it's perhaps among those, I suppose:

Chess88 (PC, 1984)
MZ-80K Schach (a German game of chess; Sharp MZ, ~1979-83)
Defender (vid #2) (Sharp MZ, 1981)
Sky Jinks (Atari 2600, 1982)
Starflight (PC, 1986)

Edit: @RacoonRider Thank you very much for introducing us to this gem, sir! ^^
It seems to be really interesting and I really like the graphics art of this game.
Putting something worthwile out of CGA's Hi-Res mode isn't exactly easy.
From a pure artistic point of view, these graphics resemble old ink drawings, I's say...

Edit: Video links added.

In my early computing days I was more into QBasic 4.5/BPO 7.0 (a dull, boring nerd born in the beginning of the nineties), but these are the first games I played A LOT back then, in no particular order:

Leisure Suit Larry I (AGI)
Mindscape's 4D Sports: Driving (yes, Stunts!)
Secret Agent Man (sam1! Apogee?)
Boloball (was glad to see it mentioned in another thread not so long ago)
SkyRoads (shareware back then, plus a Christmas version, now free if I'm not mistakennow available online)
Cannon Fodder
Jazz Jackrabbit
Accolade's Summer Games, Winter Games (loved them!)
Terminal Velocity (with keyboard)
Slipstream 5000 (was when I decided to get my first gameport joystick, and then:)
Descent I & Radix: Beyond the Void
Duke Nukem 3D
Lemmings Paintball on Win3.1 + Win32s iirc

Most of them shareware versions/first episodes/demos. First compilations were two CDs I can remember called CD POWERPLAY, one showing two cars and having lots of racing game demos, another one purple-ish with space-related games, and two CDs with yellow covers/listing booklets called Great Games for DOS vol.1,2... Those were the days where I could try games all day long! However, the first of the firsts I ever played though were Alley Cat I believe, and Pippo on the ZX Spectrum.

Apes, Quick Basic computer game.

newtmonkey wrote on 2020-05-31, 11:43:

Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (PC 1984) […]
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Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord (PC 1984)

I listed the PC release date above, as that's the version I played, though the game was originally released in 1981 for the Apple II according to Mobygames.

I actually only played & finished this game a couple years ago, as I had previously just assumed it was too ancient to be enjoyable. My plan was to explore a few levels and then skip right to Wizardry 7. However, I got seriously addicted and ending up completing not only Wizardry 1, but transferred my party and went on to complete 2, 3, and 5!
It's just a fantastic game. The dungeons have really smart layouts and aren't just seemingly random corridors and rooms (a major criticism I had with the Bard's Tale series), and the game is balanced surprisingly well; by the time you have completely mapped a floor you are typically just around the right level to being exploring the next. It's also quite fair, though I did back up my save file as I played.

This is probably the same answer for me. I've always been intrigued by how this game is designed. It's from an era when people just wanted to play D&D with all of it's dramatic ups and downs, and didn't feel entitled to beat the game just because they played it. The danger of death in Wizardry is riveting, and I like the management aspect of having a potentially large roster of characters who you can swap into your party as you wish. It feels like a war campaign that can only be won if you earn it, and you know there will be losses along the way that you will have to be prepared to overcome. The scope of the dungeon that you and your friends may never progress far enough to explore adds to the sense of mystery.

That said, I haven't actually gotten very far. I left off at dungeon level 2 in the NES version. I had an unfortunate encounter with some ninjas and lost 1 or 2 characters after spending a *lot* of money trying to revive them. I wasn't mad, I knew this was part of the game and was actually a bit amused about it. I started leveling some other characters in my back roster, but eventually petered out as I tend to with RPGs. I have a hard time sticking to them long enough to finish them, I've played many but finished only a few.

Since it's the NES version that makes it like 1989 or something, but the computer versions are older.
I really wanted to play this game on NES, I even got the Japanese Wizardry 3 cart (which they called 2) so I can have the trilogy, but I might switch versions after all. The NES versions don't let you transfer your party between games and they've been altered to make them playable without doing that. If I ever get to Wizardry 2, I might regret not being able to play the "real" version of that game.

I was reading posts in the GameFAQs forum where the different versions are compared, and I'm now leaning toward the PS1 version. I didn't think I wanted to play that but it gets great reviews from people who have played multiple versions, so maybe it's the way to go. My biggest fear with that version is that I don't trust Playstation memory cards.

The MSDOS version has been criticized for having an excessive tendency to drop your stats when leveling. The NES version has broken AC so I guess armor is useless. The Apple version has some important difference in how it handles some high level spells, making them less useful than all the other versions.

@shamino (nice name btw 😀)

The PSX ports are excellent, and are probably the closest to the PC versions of all the ports. You can set the interface to English in each of the games, the level layout is identical to the PC versions (the NES versions have some altered levels), and overall they play nearly identical to the PC versions. Highly recommended if you don't want to deal with the quirks of the PC versions.

I prefer the PC versions, myself, but they have issues... the biggest of which is the stat drop when leveling that you mentioned. The DOS version is pretty much broken, with a slightly higher than 1/3rd chance of a stat below 18 dropping upon level-up. This is not a huge problem in Wiz 1 or 2, where your core stats will likely be 18... but is a MAJOR problem in Wizardry 3 as the game caps your stats below 18 when you transfer characters into the game.

Thanks for the interesting thread, OP! Will definitely check out Hidden Agenda.

As for me, it is Street Rod 2 (1990). I've found out about it in a 2000's PC games magazine, which had a column on old DOS games. This game is to American Graffiti what Need for Speed: Underground is to Fast & Furious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGj_tRSPHhU

I'd also name Sid Meier's Pirates! (1987), but I've only played the various remakes, and not the original one.

Pre x86 would have to be bedlam on the TRS-80, as for x86, that's simple, Quake II. QII was the 3rd game I bought for my PC preceded by Diablo and Myst. The days of dial up and the MS Zone gaming service for match making in QII took many hours from me. Matter of fact I finished the campaign again last night for the first time in 20+ years and it is still enjoyable and worth the time. Quake II quite simply is responsible for my ongoing love of 1st person shooters.

will1384 wrote on 2020-06-01, 04:43:

I can't pick just one, so here is a list with the year each game came out. […]
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I can't pick just one, so here is a list with the year each game came out.

1982 - Parsec -- I had this game on my TI-99/4A home computer, had an arcade game feel to it from what I remember.
1986 - Space Quest: The Sarien Encounter -- I played this on an Apple IIe computer at school, unfortunately I cant remember too much.
1989 - DOS 1993-94 - The Adventures of Robbo -- I bought this game at the local Walmart, I played this too much.
1990 - Microsoft Solitaire -- I have likely played this more hours than any other game - 🤣
1990 - Microsoft Taipei -- Another game I spent countless hours playing.
1992 - Galactix -- I liked this game but only ever had the Shareware version
1992 - Wolfenstein 3D -- I had a few different paid and Shareware copies over the years
1993 - Doom - Another game I got at the local Walmart, this was the first game I played over a network, "Linksys LNE2000 Ether16 LAN ISA Card"
1993 - SimCity 2000 -- I spent way too much time playing this.
1996 - DX-Ball -- I loved this game
1996 - Quake -- I like this game a lot - I got it at Walmart -- I made a better computer just to play this game
1997 - Quake II -- I like this game a lot - I got it at Walmart
1997 - Interstate '76 - I played this multi-player with a dial-up modem - everyone was cheating, they had flying school buses covered with machine gun nests, it was amazing!
1998 - Unreal -- I loved this game
1999 - Unreal Tournament -- I sometimes still play this

Interstate '76... what a huge buggy mess of a game.
If you build a short vehicle with small front tires and huge rear tires and then drive in tight circles, it will keep speeding up and eventually launch you off of the map. I had a bit of fun messing around with it but never really got into the game itself.

Revolter wrote on 2020-06-24, 13:30:

Thanks for the interesting thread, OP! Will definitely check out Hidden Agenda. […]
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Thanks for the interesting thread, OP! Will definitely check out Hidden Agenda.

As for me, it is Street Rod 2 (1990). I've found out about it in a 2000's PC games magazine, which had a column on old DOS games. This game is to American Graffiti what Need for Speed: Underground is to Fast & Furious:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGj_tRSPHhU

I'd also name Sid Meier's Pirates! (1987), but I've only played the various remakes, and not the original one.

I played sooooo much Street Rod 2 back in the day. That is a fun game.

Pirates is a good game as well, but Pirates Gold! is a lot better. It is the same game but just with better graphics and I think a few more features. Another game I spent a ton of time playing.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-06-21, 23:25:

Apes, Quick Basic computer game.

You ever tried backing up the game and then editing the code for a bit of fun?