Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Memory Lane - Which were your first games on the PC?

anvi

Prophet
Village Idiot
Joined
Oct 12, 2016
Messages
7,530
Location
Kelethin
1987 ish:
I went down a wiki rabbit hole and found tons of old games I used to love. I always wanted to make a note of some of them because they were a huge deal to me growing up. If anyone wants a long history of all the millions of games I played, here goes. We didn't have a PC at first, I used to play it at my dad's work. They had a bunch of computers and one of them had Police Quest and Leisure Suit Larry. They were the first games I played on a PC. Police Quest I was too young to really get anywhere, but I used to just drive the little car all over the town and visit the various locations and marvel at the graphics which was way ahead of the Atari or whatever we had at home. Later we got a PC at home which had a green screen and no graphics card. But it could play Tetris which I was hooked on. And it also had a text based game called Trucker where you have to deliver oranges over a long distance by making good decisions. I liked it.

A year or so later we got a PC at home to keep, with a graphics card. We had one of the first Microsoft Flight Simulators which I played a lot. I started getting my own games from computer fairs and things, and then swapping games with the few kids at school who also had PCs. They were mostly terrible but some used to keep me happy. I had some really bad games too, a few were so bad my dad managed to get a refund. But I always ended up with at least a few games a year that I loved and could play over and over. I remember one called APB All Points Bulletin (1987), sort of an early 2d GTA where you play as a cop, it was pretty fun. We also got one called Alley Cat (1983) which was made by IBM and was amazing, one of the best games of that time really. You play as a cat which had to jump on trash cans to avoid being killed by a dog, and then you could jump into the windows of an apartment building and each room had a different mini game. Really well made and impressive for the time. I had one called Airborne Ranger which was quite good too. Battle Chess was a staple that everyone I knew had, and it was fun to play. It made chess fun for kids who wouldn't usually play it. I also used to really love Bubble Bobble and some others I forgot. Jones in the Fast Lane was one that had me really hooked, I played it over and over.


Late 80s:
I got Test Drive 2 which I loved and I completed it every day for weeks. Lombard RAC Rally (1988) was one of the first racing games that felt more like a sim. I enjoyed TD2 more though. Golden Axe, amazing, completed it so many times. SimCity which I didn't particularly like. 688 Attack Sub which I hardly played because I thought it sucked. . Populous which seemed cool but I don't think I understood how to play it. And Hillsfar which was primitive but seemed fun and I liked the atmosphere. There were a lot of Adventure Games in those years too, starting with Maniac Mansion which frustrated me and I never got far in it, but I was kinda fascinated.

Midwinter (1988) was incredible, still today one of my favorite games. I read about it in a magazine and was like wooooah! I couldn't believe you could do all that in a game, when just some years earlier gaming was little more than Pac Man and Space Invaders. This was like a big open world game with so much going on. When I bought it, it was as good as I hoped it would be, if not better. F-19 Stealth Fighter (1988), the second best flying game I ever played. I played a lot of flight sims in those days but they just weren't fun... But this one had you fly into a dangerous area, bomb a building, and then you had to escape. Usually I would get chased by a jet but you could do things like drop a decoy which the other plane would follow. Then things started getting really good, 1990. I got Wing Commander which was way beyond what I ever expected to get from a game. I had played Flight Sims since mid 80s but this was on a whole other level, it had a story and great characters and real missions and a briefing and even when you save the game you would click on some cryo-sleep bed things. It was just so good. Same year, Monkey Island, an Adventure Game really stepping up a level. Also Panza Kick Boxing, best fighting game I ever played, even compared to modern ones. Silent Service II was awesome too, another attack submarine game but I loved this one. And then...


1991, second best year in gaming, ever. All this in one year:
Castles - you are a King and get to build a castle of your own design, kind of a primitive early version of Stronghold but better in some ways too.
Lemmings - one of the best games ever made.
Willy Beamish - Adventure Gaming really smashing out of the park.
Eye of the Beholder 2 - my first real RPG which kinda changed my life.
Gunship 2000 - the best flying game I ever played by far. The flying and blowing stuff up was great, but you also could control wingmen and give them orders and coordinate attack plans with them, amazing, and you could even promote them and give them medals etc, which made them better.
Moonstone - So much fun.
Falcon 3.0 - The most advanced Flight Simulator at the time, and for years after too. Needed a top end PC.
Gods - I don't really like platform games but this one was a really great one.
Leisure Suit Larry 5 - This game was so big! You travel all over the world to interesting places, and I think it made young me feel comfortable with the idea of just jumping on a plane and going to lots of places, which I did years later.
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge - Adventure Gaming continuing to grow. I suspect it was one of the biggest budget PC games of that time. Great game too although a bit hard for me.
Police Quest 3 - I loved it.
Space Quest IV - Really good.
Another World - kind a gaming landmark.
Battle Isle - turn based strategy


1992:
Dune - Yeah Dune 2 was the first RTS, but Dune did it earlier. It also had a story and characters and a world and was amazing. It was like an adventure game and then morphed into an RTS at the end. Blew my mind.
Indiana Jones: Fate of Atlantis - best adventure game I ever played, and I probably played them all. Sam & Max Hit The Road was close though.
Alone in the Dark - It was so good I felt spoilt playing it. I couldn't believe my luck. The art style was great, great graphics, great sound, great atmosphere and setting, puzzles and items to find etc, yet decent combat too. Really a step forward for gaming.
Space Crusade - I had never heard of it and was never interested in all the little figurines people used to paint and stuff. But this game blew my mind, it was my first taste of strategy gaming and it was great.
Stunt Island - Amazing game, so unique. It was like a flight sim but you were a film director or something and had to repeat a stunt that was shown to you.
Wolf 3d - FPS is born
Flashback - good, but my last platform game. It was hard work.


1993:
Only one or two games I sort of liked.


1994:
System Shock - totally blew me away.
Tie Fighter - ditto
Under a Killing Moon - really interesting but my interest in adventure games was beginning to wane


1995:
Command & Conquer - so good omg

1996:
Total Annihilation - I think this was the start of what seems to me like a new era in gaming. A more modern era.

1998:
Halflife, Baldurs Gate, Thief, Rainbow 6, Unreal Freespace, Delta Force, Starsiege Tribes,
Loved them all, felt like a new generation in gaming. High tech, big games, big budgets.

1999: the best ever year in gaming:
Age of Empires 2, Unreal Tournament, EverQuest, System Shock 2, Tiberian Sun, Quake 3 Arena, Driver, Age of Wonders, GTA2, HOMM3, Hidden & Dangerous, SWAT 3, Kingpin, The Nomad Soul, Delta Force 2, Rogue Spear, Jagged Alliance 2. All of them blew my mind. I'll never forget them. I also started smoking pot and 1999 I basically spent in a haze of pure bliss, getting baked and playing all these masterpieces. In year 2000+ I felt like gaming took a nose dive, but I replayed all these many times, and went back to find all the ones best games from the 80s and 90s I missed.
 
Last edited:

Tweed

Professional Kobold
Patron
Joined
Sep 27, 2018
Messages
2,838
Location
harsh circumstances
Pathfinder: Wrath
It was either this:



Or this El Grinch there doesn't seem to be any video footage of this game on the internet, anywhere.

The best days of gaming are truly behind us now.
 

The Decline

Arcane
Joined
Aug 24, 2009
Messages
7,248
Location
Everywhere
One of the earliest games I remember playing was Designasaurus for MS-DOS.

220px-Designasaurus_Apple_II_Cover.jpg

SmallDesignasaurusScreenCap.jpg



It wouldn't work out of the box on our computer so my dad had to get advice from the sales guy at Egghead Software.

My dad also had the original Leisure Suit Larry which I tried to play at the tender age of 6. It was fun trying to get past the protection screen without my parents knowing.

Other than that for the next few years it was mostly just all the best and worst shareware titles you can name.

*edit*
Anyone else have a childhood filled with playing both computer games and console games? I had my computer, but I also had an NES. I played both all the time.
 
Last edited:

anvi

Prophet
Village Idiot
Joined
Oct 12, 2016
Messages
7,530
Location
Kelethin




I also played Monkey Island at the time, although I thought it sucked a bit.

*I can't remember the sound was so shitty, maybe the use AdLib in the videos (?)

I loved Red Baron! I also played Indy 500 a lot but I hated not winning so spent a lot of time driving the wrong way around the track and smashing into people. Monkey Island I really loved. Sequel I liked too but not as much.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
928215-space-quarks-apple-ii-screenshot-title-screen.png

917656-david-s-midnight-magic-apple-ii-screenshot-a-game-in-progress.png

43196-choplifter-apple-ii-screenshot-title.gif


These were my first three. Enjoyed them all, though in retrospect I'm not sure any deserve classic status. Maybe Choplifter.

Next batch:
42887-karateka-apple-ii-screenshot-title-screen-2.gif


145138-where-in-the-world-is-carmen-sandiego-apple-ii-screenshot.png


43157-wasteland-apple-ii-screenshot-intro.gif


All definitely classics.
 

agentorange

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 14, 2012
Messages
5,256
Location
rpghq (cant read codex pms cuz of fag 2fa)
Codex 2012
*edit*
Anyone else have a childhood filled with playing both computer games and console games? I had my computer, but I also had an NES. I played both all the time.
Yeah, as much as I'd love to claim that I played all sorts of classic PC games as a kid, the gaming device I spent the most time on as a kid were the various incarnations of the gameboy.

Recalling other PC games I did play as a kid though, while I never played any proper point and click adventure games I did play a lot the kid focused adventure games. Probably played through this haunted house game like a hundred times. Also played a lot of those alphabet/science/math learning games.

302039-jan-pienkowski-haunted-house-macintosh-other.jpg

1*5Qftl54t34P_RNoxtcgf2Q.png
 

Burning Bridges

Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk
Joined
Apr 21, 2006
Messages
27,562
Location
Tampon Bay




I also played Monkey Island at the time, although I thought it sucked a bit.

*I can't remember the sound was so shitty, maybe the use AdLib in the videos (?)

I loved Red Baron! I also played Indy 500 a lot but I hated not winning so spent a lot of time driving the wrong way around the track and smashing into people. Monkey Island I really loved. Sequel I liked too but not as much.


I once managed to lead a 60 laps race, mastered the pit stops etc only to fuck up with 2 laps to go. I can't even say I was devastated or anything, just had an overpowering feeling of "why?!".

The reason I played these 2 games was that they pioneered real 3D graphics. Whoever wrote "SWOTL was better" is imo totally wrong because they used bitmaps and it was basically just Wing Commander in WW2. I never liked Wing Commander even back then.

Aces Of The Pacific took 3D even further but unfortunately was too performance hungry. I can still remember how angry I was when AP run with like 5fps on a 40 Mhz CPU when RB had been butter smooth with 25. But that was the 90s in a nutshell, you were always 3-4 years behind in terms of CPU speed, even if you bought the latest 486, and they were expensive as fuck.
 

DJOGamer PT

Arcane
Joined
Apr 8, 2015
Messages
7,350
Location
Lusitânia
The short version:
  1. CS 1.6 in some dude bros Lan Party
  2. GTA Vice City
  3. GTA San Andreas
  4. Need For Speed Underground 2
  5. Hitman 2
  6. Spider-Man 2
  7. Morrowind (made me love RPG's and open world games)
  8. Thief 1
  9. Splinter Cell 1 followed shortly by Chaos Theory
  10. Oblivion
  11. Temple of Elemental Evil

I think I only started playing games when I was 5. Before that I have very vague memories of seeing my brother playing (like him playing Super Mario 64 on friends N64, in his GameBoy).
Before PC I mostly played on my brother's GameBoy Colour (Pokemon Red + Crystal, Super Mario Land 2, Wario Land 3, Spider-Man) and some SNES emulators I think (because it was mostly Super Mario World), that we had in the ATL's computer (an ATL is a space where most elementary school kids usually go after school to study or play with each other while waiting for the parents to pick them up from work).

Then one day when I was about 7-8, I was roaming the vacation colony's halls when I came across some dudes bros having a CS 1.6 Lan Party. They let me play some rounds, and that was the first time I played a PC game.

We had a desktop but no games to play in it, that until one day my brother started to get some pirated PC games and more SNES/GameBoy Advance ROMs - Super Mario Bros 2 and 3, Pokemon Emerald + Fire Red, Chrono Trigger, Tactics Ogre, Yoshi's Island, Link to the Past, Sonic Advance and around 100 other games that I don't remember (I should note that he got this over the years not all at once). That's when PC gaming started to become a thing for me.
The second PC game was GTA Vice City. We had that for about a year then it San Andreas. Also by this time we had CS but no internet so I only played with bots. We also had Need for Speed Underground 2 but I didn't play it very often, not my cup of tea.
He also got Hitman 2 which got us into stealth games. Since I was a kid, for the few missions I completed I simply either shot the target when I could.

In 2006 I got a DS Lite. The GameBoy Colour had been lost nearly a year before, my mom had forgotten where she hid it (to this day the damn thing wasn't turned out yet).
The year after I played Tekken 5, Sonic Rivals and a Worms game both in a friends PSP.
And in 2009 I got my hands on a R4 which allowed me stop buying DS games. One of which was Dark Spire.

But the event where I really became fascinated with videogames was when I was 9. It was a saturday morning, my parents had just left to go shopping. My brother the day before downloaded Project 64, and the Super Mario 64 + Ocarina of Time ROM with a Portuguese translation from the schools library computers (before he had his own laptop to borrow our neighboors internet, that's how he got all games by either downloading in the schools computer or getting it from a friend). We tried SM64 that friday and found to be quite nice, and left OoT for tomorrow morning. So he booted OoT up, and we completed the 1st dungeon and got to hyrule field before our parents arrived after 2 hours of play time. Those 2 hours were magical and simply mind-blowing, I can't really describe that joy.
Some 3 months after that he got Majora's Mask, and while there wans't any moment like that first time I played OoT, I still liked this one even more than OoT. I even gave two of my school friends copies of both games which they also loved.
There were some other cool N64 games we got later on: Aidyn Chronicles which was a cool little RPG no one remembers; Star Fox 64; Super Smash Bros.

Then, a year after (when I was 10) I played another game in which I almost felt the same as I had with OoT, which was Morrowind. And I'll be honest I understood very little about the game (because I still didn't possess a good grasp of english), but fuck me if it wasn't enjoyable to go around doing anything that came to my mind and exploring every square inch I could see. One time I won't forget was when the Icarus fligth dude first landed in front of me, I laughed my ass off and then used the spell and landed some 10 kms away from shore surrounded by fish men. Good times...
My love of RPG's and proper open world games came from here.

So with Morrowind, that's 7 PC games (my 5th one was Spider-Man 2, I'll explain later). My 8th one, soon after TES3 was Thief 1, which I have to be honest with you guys I played very little when I was a kid. I got to the "Break From Cragscleft Prison" mission and I shat my pants with the zombies, 2spooky4me. I only picked it up again by 2011/2012 I think.

Then the 9th game was Splinter Cell I believe, which I loved. We played a few mission and a few weeks later my brothers got Chaos Theory.
Actually a funny story about it was in 2006 when for my birthday, me and my father where in the shopping center and I saw a Chaos Theory game cover. Me and my brother wanted it for some time so I asked it as a gift. My father saw the 16+ so he gave me Spider Man 2 instead :lol:

Finally by 2009, my 10th PC game was... (drum roll please) ... Oblivion.
Which when I was a kid I fucking loved that game. I simply didn't see the now obvious design differences between it and Morrowind. And for me it was just more of Morrowind.
One funny detail is that since our PC was an old machine, we had to play Oblivion using a mod called Oldblivion.

Then by 2010 the timeline of games I played gets muddy.
Even before that there are some details I think I am misremembering.
I do know that 2010 was when I got a cracked GameCube for 50 euros (because Dolphin still wasn't good enough), with Twiligh Princess, Wind Waker, Sunshine, RE4, Soul Calibur 2, Melee, Metroid Prime, REmake and MGS.

I guess ToEE was the 11th one, but I barely played it because it was mostly my brother's. Plus the game had some issue running on that desktop.

After that I don't remember the order anymore. Maybe Max Payne 1, Assassin's Creed 2 (on a friends computer), Sims 2, World of Goo or Amnesia? I don't know... one of those.
 
Last edited:

Binky

Cipher
Joined
Nov 17, 2015
Messages
453
These were the first games I played on the first PC I owned, a Tandy 1000 EX.


Sweet Jesus! I had no idea you could play Ninja on the PC/DOS. Game was definitely my favorite on the C64. Gonna have to replay it today. It's been a while.
 

anvi

Prophet
Village Idiot
Joined
Oct 12, 2016
Messages
7,530
Location
Kelethin




I also played Monkey Island at the time, although I thought it sucked a bit.

*I can't remember the sound was so shitty, maybe the use AdLib in the videos (?)

I loved Red Baron! I also played Indy 500 a lot but I hated not winning so spent a lot of time driving the wrong way around the track and smashing into people. Monkey Island I really loved. Sequel I liked too but not as much.


I once managed to lead a 60 laps race, mastered the pit stops etc only to fuck up with 2 laps to go. I can't even say I was devastated or anything, just had an overpowering feeling of "why?!".

The reason I played these 2 games was that they pioneered real 3D graphics. Whoever wrote "SWOTL was better" is imo totally wrong because they used bitmaps and it was basically just Wing Commander in WW2. I never liked Wing Commander even back then.

Aces Of The Pacific took 3D even further but unfortunately was too performance hungry. I can still remember how angry I was when AP run with like 5fps on a 40 Mhz CPU when RB had been butter smooth with 25. But that was the 90s in a nutshell, you were always 3-4 years behind in terms of CPU speed, even if you bought the latest 486, and they were expensive as fuck.

I was a bit too young and spazzy for Indy 500, I could come in 2nd or 3rd or something but I've never been good with losing :P I still played it 10000 times though. I also had some rally game which was really good, and a Formula 1 game which I got ok at. But I lost interest in racing as I got older. Had another period of interest with Trackmania though.

Wing Commander was the slickest thing I had ever seen, but the gameplay was pretty disappointing to me. If I remember right there were only really 2 missions. Fly from A to B, kill some baddies. Or fly from A to B, escort some guy back to A and kill some baddies. It bugged me because it had characters and exciting briefings and that cool launch sequence and everything was so exciting except for the actual game itself... I loved X Wing vs Tie Fighter though. Adjusting shields was a nice extra bit of a gameplay instead of just pew pew, and I also liked battles against huge ships, and I liked it when some ships would escape so you had to be fast. I don't think I ever played Aces, I played most other flight sims though. Falcon 3 was a highlight but one of my favorites was some actiony flight sim that has you dogfighting in huge air battles against lots of enemies, and if you die, you can instantly teleport into one of your wingmen and carry on. I loved F19 Stealth Fighter too because it was easy for kiddies. Best flying game I ever played though was Gunship 2000. Really bugs me that it is forgotten to history. My friends at school were all obsessed with it too so they were definitely onto something with that sort of game. RIP Microprose :(
 

Citizen

Guest
Worms 2 Armageddon - :love:

HoMM3, AoW2 - :desu:

Master of Orion 3 - :prosper:

Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, Rayman 2: The Great Escape - :popamole:

Then there were my first RTS games - Warzone 2100 and Warcraft 3. And some popamole games that I used to play in hotseat/LAN with friends: Worms 3D, some top down beat-em-up game with Ninja Turtles, and some weird multiplayer flight sim where you played either as a UFO or an anti-aircraft turret, sadly I don't remember the name :negative:
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Citizen

Guest
I also remember Taz the tasmanian devil 3d platformer game which I liked A LOT, I need to replay it
 

Turuko

Learned
Joined
Jun 12, 2019
Messages
352
Location
Verbobonc
if we consider this as PC i had this bad boy as a little kid

1280px-PIC_0150_Philips_VG-8020.jpg


it was already dated mind you, i had a box of tapes with all sorts of games and programs

first game i remember vividly was Spy Vs Spy

833fd02e.png
 

illuknisaa

Cipher
Joined
Dec 23, 2013
Messages
671
I'm pretty sure it's Doom. I distinctively remember playing e1m2. I remember it being the coolest shit ever and I was probably like 3-5 years old. I also think I didn't know how to read until I was closer to 6 years old so navigating the menus being more challenging than the actual game.
 

Citizen

Guest
and some weird multiplayer flight sim where you played either as a UFO or an anti-aircraft turret, sadly I don't remember the name :negative:

HOLY SHIT I just found it after scrolling a huge wikipedia entry for space shooters, it was Incoming. I couldn't remember the name for years
 

Decado

Old time handsome face wrecker
Patron
Joined
Dec 1, 2010
Messages
2,544
Location
San Diego
Codex 2014
First PC was a Tandy 1000 HX. I played Oregon Trail and other shit like that in school, but that doesn't count. First real games I played:

Before they renamed it to Quest for Glory, still one of the best RPGs I've ever played.

Qg1cover.jpg


Phantasie was unforgivably hard when I was kid. This was before walkthroughs and wikis, etc. The instruction manual was thicker than cow shit.

Phantasie_Coverart.png


A very easy game but I loved Llyod Alexander when I was a kid, so even a decent game based on a butchered retelling of his second novel was worth trying out.

blackcauldron.jpg


Never got past the second stage. The Japanese were true assholes back in the day.

Thexder_cover.png


And of course I played the Bard's Tale.

bardstale.jpg
 

Snorkack

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Jan 8, 2015
Messages
2,975
Location
Lower Bavaria
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
POD
Racing / 1997

Futuristic racing game with seemingly cool vehicle designs and bad controls. Quite a rudimentary game.
Oh boy, this brings back memories.

I just read the thread title and wanted to answer either Dungeon Keeper 2 or Final Fantasy VII, because one of the two was the first I ever bought (with daddys money).
But yeah, the first game I actually owned was indeed POD. It was bundled with my first computer, that all-in-one PC from a big german discounter which caused some hype back in '97 or so. At first, I didn't even realize there was a game included, until I saw the advertisement on the box "with futuristic racing game included!". The game's name wasn't even mentioned. So I started searching, the box first. The CDs included just seemed to contain some technical stuff - Windows 95 installation disk, Windows 95 cleanup, some weird utility called POD... but no racing game.

Okay, maybe it is already installed? Let's have a look. With my back-then rudimentary pc and english knowledge, I turned the computer's file system upside down - and finally found what I was looking for.

Fast forward 30 minutes: Junior Snorkack sobs, his mother scolds, his father calls the customer support, the PC won't boot any more.
What happened? What I found wasn't the game POD, but the disk utility DriveSpace (remember, "Futuristic racing game"... That must be it!), and in my desperate attempts to get the fun going, I somehow managed to compress critical system files into oblivion.
 

Tigranes

Arcane
Joined
Jan 8, 2009
Messages
10,350
I remember the very first time we installed Windows in the home PC. I looked through all the directories and thought it's so messy, there's a couple of folders that have about 8000 files in there. That's going to be such a pain in the ass when I have to dir /w /p. So I divided them into "Windows1" and "Windows2" until I had a dozen manageable folders.

Once we got the computer able to boot again, I think that's when I found The Greatest Game

ski.gif
 

Melcar

Arcane
Joined
Oct 20, 2008
Messages
35,215
Location
Merida, again
I remember the very first time we installed Windows in the home PC. I looked through all the directories and thought it's so messy, there's a couple of folders that have about 8000 files in there. That's going to be such a pain in the ass when I have to dir /w /p. So I divided them into "Windows1" and "Windows2" until I had a dozen manageable folders.

Once we got the computer able to boot again, I think that's when I found The Greatest Game

ski.gif

My stepmom had that on her office PC. I remember as kids we had to tag along with our parents when they had night emergency calls (they owned a pet clinic) and this was one of the games we would play.
 

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom