What were the earliest video games you played?

[jamus34]

I remember it was a cast iron bitch getting the Original Xcom running.

[mikeck]

Has anyone mentioned notching the C64 disks to use the other side yet?  :-"

Yes!!! The old home-punch.

Load"*",8,1

[jamus34]

What about the fact that Wasteland made you copy the master disks so the game could edit and remember all global changes...

And when you needed to re-stock on good equipment you could just put the master (or a clean copy) of Disk 3 for Vegas in, let it load and then swap it out once loaded to re-spawn baddies.

It was always satisfying when I reached the point I could melee Scorpitron

[DennisS]

....My first modem was just 300 baud. My first computer was a Texas Instruments (TI99-4A). I once spent $98 to upgrade my PC from 640k all the way to one megabyte. I still remember how to re-jigger my config.sys and autoexec.bat to free up as much upper memory as I could. Specifically, Falcon 3.0 and 4.0 required 603K free. I became quite the local expert on UMM (upper memory management)

As far as weeks to download games...hell yes. Only allowed two downloads per day...and there are at LEAST 50 games I want. Again.

After I added some RAM to my PC, I took the easy way out and used Quarterdeck Expanded Memory Manager (QEMM) to manage the memory on my PC.

DOS 6.22 had MEMMAKER.EXE, which loaded your terminal and stay resident (TSR) drivers in upper memory automatically. This was a godsend to me..as I had one bitch kitty of a time loading my video, sound, and printer drivers in upper memory, freeing up the 604k of conventional memory needed for Falcon 4.0.

[DennisS]

Thanks to the link to the the best old games site, I can tell you the two games I downloaded yesterday, and the two today, and the next two for tomorrow.

Yesterday was Red Storm Rising, and the original Sid Meier's Railroad Tycoon.

Today is Conquered Kingdoms, and Battles of Destiny.

Tomorrow will be Warlords, and Microprose's M-1 Tank Platoon.

This will take me weeks to download all these old, wonderful games.

Hmm...today's games were Warlords 2, and ... ACHTUNG SPITFIRE!!!! I LOVED this game. Flight Commander 2 is on the list now, as is Chaos Overlords.

[SirAndrewD]

Utilizing that himem.sys

I had a freaking boot disk for every single game I had.  It choked on games like Wing Commander.   It was an endless battle till games adapted in the post Windows '95 era.

[bbmike]

What about the fact that Wasteland made you copy the master disks so the game could edit and remember all global changes...

And when you needed to re-stock on good equipment you could just put the master (or a clean copy) of Disk 3 for Vegas in, let it load and then swap it out once loaded to re-spawn baddies.

It was always satisfying when I reached the point I could melee Scorpitron

And copy protection was a "code wheel" or "turn to page 23, paragraph 3, line 5, what is the third word?"  :D

[Kvothe]

What about the fact that Wasteland made you copy the master disks so the game could edit and remember all global changes...

And when you needed to re-stock on good equipment you could just put the master (or a clean copy) of Disk 3 for Vegas in, let it load and then swap it out once loaded to re-spawn baddies.

It was always satisfying when I reached the point I could melee Scorpitron

And copy protection was a "code wheel" or "turn to page 23, paragraph 3, line 5, what is the third word?"  :D

I remember Maniac Mansion on the Amiga had a point in the game where you had to open a large security door to access the rest of the house. The only way to do it was through a code wheel. Always forgot where I'd left it.

[DoctorQuest]

Yeah. Code wheels and codes in the manual were very common back in the day.

I played Microprose F-117 so much I had the aircraft recognition check nailed without needing the manual. I remember making cheat sheets for Gunship 2000 by copying the manual pages with the codes on them and literally cutting and pasting together my own quick reference.

[RommelFox]

My dad's factory used punch cards for some purpose or other and they were my preferred note card well into grad school.

I am a world master at Tapper. @me.  In undergrad, I once played it for several hours straight and only quit when the thing rolled the score over.  People bought me beer for the effort.  Kind of meta.

I stink at it!  I need better button mashing skills. 

Missile Command is a favorite of mine.  I also enjoyed playing NARC on the NES.

[jamus34]

My dad's factory used punch cards for some purpose or other and they were my preferred note card well into grad school.

I am a world master at Tapper. @me.  In undergrad, I once played it for several hours straight and only quit when the thing rolled the score over.  People bought me beer for the effort.  Kind of meta.

I stink at it!  I need better button mashing skills. 

Missile Command is a favorite of mine.  I also enjoyed playing NARC on the NES.

Didn't the original tapper game have a lever (like a beer tap) that was used?  I miss those old cabinets  with specialty controls. John Elway football was another one with the spring loaded passing stick

[FarAway Sooner]

I forget if Space Invaders came out before that trackball football game or not, but I loved both of them.

The first computer game I ever played was Space Warp, on my best friend's dad's TRS-80.  The first computer game I ever owned for myself was Temple of Apshai for the Commodore-64.  But Telengard was way better and kicked its ass when I got that six months later.

The two best floppy disk hacks were hole-punching to get a double-sided CD and taping over the copy-protect cut.  Or was that a read/write protect cut?

Nobody's talking about their first mobile game, but I was a wizard at the original article:

[ArizonaTank]

SSI's Kampgruppe - I paid $45 for it new in 1985

YouTube of Gameplay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYM_6i0PecI

[DennisS]

Yeah. Code wheels and codes in the manual were very common back in the day.

I played Microprose F-117 so much I had the aircraft recognition check nailed without needing the manual. I remember making cheat sheets for Gunship 2000 by copying the manual pages with the codes on them and literally cutting and pasting together my own quick reference.

The GoG and Steam versions of F-117A have the requirement for checking the recognition manual. Can't remember which one was really needed..one was not. I ended up buying them both, just to get past the copy protection. Some aircraft were simple..the A-10, AWACS, etc..but a few were not.

[DoctorQuest]

I have the GOG version and it bypasses the copy protection very nicely. I was reminiscing about my original floppy disk version.