So how old are you people then?

[Lephys]

I remember playing the Hugo adventure games. They were graphical, and you moved Hugo around with the directional keys. But all the commands were still text-based. So you got to have fun puzzling out how to get Hugo to procure the item on the ground. "Take Cup... Grasp Cup... Retrieve Cup! PLACE HAND UPON CUP, THEN DEFTLY MANEUVER CUP INTO POCKET!!! AGGHHHHHH! *punches screen*"

 

I know, I know. I'm a young'un, and games used to be fully text-based, and played with punch cards, and I don't know how easy I had it.

Edited October 22, 2014 by Lephys

[Ieo]

What I remember most about the SSI Gold Box Dragonlance series is that my brother found exploits (like giving everyone the bracers of strength--or was it a girdle?--and equipping EVERYONE with a dragonlance, including the Kender).

 

Or in Vengeance of Excalibur, letting your party rest in a church forever during the 2nd chapter/act until they got to godly levels of faith, enabling Bors or whoever to instantly smite stuff. I think.

 

Games back then weren't really designed to avoid "degenerative gameplay."

 

And I realize only a mere 80-ish people have voted in the poll, but why is my age bracket in a trough...

[DanielCoffey]

I remember BBC B titles such as Chuckie Egg, Elite and Revs.. I had the BBC B because my parents worked in education so they were promoted heavily. I think there were Viglen Genies in the school with some sort of Pyramid mystery mummy game but I wasn't in the "nerd kids" group so wasn't allowed to play it.

 

The first computer I bought myself was the Amiga 500 with the extra 512Kb memory in that steel cheese wedge. There were so many good games for the Amiga and I wasted so many hours on Angband (roguelike). Little lavender leprechauns, anyone?

[Lephys]

Or in Vengeance of Excalibur, letting your party rest in a church forever during the 2nd chapter/act until they got to godly levels of faith, enabling Bors or whoever to instantly smite stuff. I think.

OMG! THAT GAME! MEMORIES!

[Ieo]

 

Or in Vengeance of Excalibur, letting your party rest in a church forever during the 2nd chapter/act until they got to godly levels of faith, enabling Bors or whoever to instantly smite stuff. I think.

OMG! THAT GAME! MEMORIES!

 

I actually screwed up that game the first time when I threw away the bottle cork. I was like "wtf is this junk?" *TOSS*. Then my brother figured out what it was for and I had to start over. :D

[Lephys]

I was too young to fully grasp all the nuances and such of the mechanics. But man... I just loved exploring around in it, and replaying it like 10 times until I finally beat it.

[Cantousent]

Any of you ol' timers remember Escape from Castle Wolfenstein?  In the original game, it wasn't an FPS and you were British rather than American.  Just like Wolfenstein 3D, you had managed to kill one of the Nazi soldiers and taken his pistol and had to make good your escape.  It was really fun and you could actually play cooperative multiplayer with one person controlling where the PC walked and another controlling where he shot.  It sounded good in theory, but it wasn't any easier in the long run.  Made for some hilarious moments, though.  So many old games.  I still sometimes replay the old Infocom games like Zork and A Mind Forever Voyaging and the like.  Fun times!

[Flow]

Any of you ol' timers remember Escape from Castle Wolfenstein?  In the original game, it wasn't an FPS and you were British rather than American.  Just like Wolfenstein 3D, you had managed to kill one of the Nazi soldiers and taken his pistol and had to make good your escape.  It was really fun and you could actually play cooperative multiplayer with one person controlling where the PC walked and another controlling where he shot.  It sounded good in theory, but it wasn't any easier in the long run.  Made for some hilarious moments, though.  So many old games.  I still sometimes replay the old Infocom games like Zork and A Mind Forever Voyaging and the like.  Fun times!

 

I remember the original Castle Wolfenstein on the C64. Not sure there ever was a game called Escape from Castle Wolfenstein.

 

http://wolfenstein.wikia.com/wiki/Wolfenstein_series

[Cantousent]

Yeah, that's it.  I thought it was Escape, but I guess it was just Castle Wolfenstein.  If I remember it right, there was a sequel where you had to return and sneak *into* the bunker and blow up Hitler or some such.  Then the whole 3D came out and I enjoyed those games also.  I was always a big fan of FPSes.  I still am for the most part.

[Vaeliorin]

SSI? The Summoning box is sitting on my bookshelf right here...

 

SSITheSummoning.jpg

 

I haven't met anyone else who's played this, though. And no idea what happened to our Champions/Death Knights/Dark Queen of Krynn SSI/TSR boxes. That kind of makes me a little sad.

I have the box for The Summoning sitting not 10 feet from me right now. I recall that I didn't particularly like it, however. Not sure why anymore, though.

 

Still waiting to see if anyone else has played The Summoning by SSI (or its prequel, which I didn't play).

I've been thinking about this, and the cover looks so familiar and I looked up the game and I seem to remember one with hand movements, but I'm like Karkarov, a little hazy on some of the stuff from that far back.

 

I also agree that pong was dreadfully boring, but it was a step.  There was a really old game that was so simple it's laughable now, but kind of addicting back then.  You started with a set amount of grain and a set amount of people.  You planted grain and stored some in granaries and had a certain amount you fed to the people.  Your population would grow, and you had to figure out how much to feed the people and how much to plant, plus rats could get in and eat your grain out of the granaries, so you couldn't hold a huge amount and you were never sure how big a crop you'd get.  I think it was called Kingdom or something.  Nothing but text where you'd input the amounts at a blinking cursor.  lol  Sounds like work now.

 

I believe it was called Empire. If it's the same game I'm thinking of, I spent many an hour playing it as a youth. Now, I agree, it seems like work. Can't even begin to imagine why I thought it was so great. Edited October 23, 2014 by Vaeliorin

[nikolokolus]

First Comp: Ti-99/4A

 

First cRPG: Tunnels of Doom

 

First proper Tabletop RPG: (Mentzer Basic)

 

God, I feel old.

[Ieo]

 

SSI? The Summoning box is sitting on my bookshelf right here...

 

SSITheSummoning.jpg

 

I haven't met anyone else who's played this, though. And no idea what happened to our Champions/Death Knights/Dark Queen of Krynn SSI/TSR boxes. That kind of makes me a little sad.

I have the box for The Summoning sitting not 10 feet from me right now. I recall that I didn't particularly like it, however. Not sure why anymore, though.

 

Ooh!

Well, we were forced to buy the clue book because of the number of mazes. So, so, so many freakin' mazes. Teleporter maze. Sewer maze. Obstacle-course-with-traps mazes. It's not like there were in-game clues to help us, so the teleporter maze especially was entirely trial-and-error, about the stupidest design there is!

[malolis]

I think I'm at the young end of the spectrum for this group. I first played Baldur's gate when I was 7 and kept myself amused just in Candlekeep for hours and hours.

[Rahkir]

I'm on the lower(est) end: 22. The first computer game I played was Sammy's Science House in 1995. I remember because my dad would show all of his friends (a group of electrical engineers/techs) that I could start the computer by myself, always followed by, "And he's only 3 years old!" First non-educational computer game I played was gauntlet, but the first one I really remember playing is MDK2 in 2000, which I never finished because I found Baldur's Gate not long after (a few years after it released, I think, but I grew up in the middle of the woods so we were behind on most things). My first RPG/favorite game as a child was Shining Force on the Genesis around 1995/1996, so I was partial to RPGs before I found BG. Good memories!

[Cantousent]

Funny moment recently.  A long time ago, my sister used to love this British TV series called "The Tomorrow People."  I saw it recently on Netflix and thought, "wow, that's an ooooold series."  Turns out there was an American Remake a few years ago.  lol  ...And that's not the only series we Americans have lifted from the Limeys.  Castle Wolfenstein was originally Brit until id made it distinctly 'Merican!  Okay, I'm a tad diminished in capacity now, so it might not be as funny as I think atm.  As an aside, I see we actually have someone in the 16-20 yo crowd.  Niiice.  We were starting to look like a Vampiric cabal for a while, all these ol' bastards.

[Bartimaeus]

One of two 16-20s, apparently - kind of depressing, as I feel old already! I also fall into the 11-15 years of PC gaming. My first PC games were Age of Empires 1, Baldur's Gate 1, and Diablo 1, at roughly age 5.

Edited October 24, 2014 by Bartimaeus

[Sensuki]

Funny moment recently.  A long time ago, my sister used to love this British TV series called "The Tomorrow People." 

 

I remember that from the 90s, it was about bees and had Christian Tessier and Kristian Schmid

[C2B]

 

Funny moment recently.  A long time ago, my sister used to love this British TV series called "The Tomorrow People." 

 

I remember that from the 90s, it was about bees and had Christian Tessier and Kristian Schmid

 

 

Remake. Originally from the 70's.

 

Though I have no idea which one Cantousent means.

[Cantousent]

70s.  I didn't even know about the 90s remake.  Sounds like they recycle it every twenty years or so. 

[Lephys]

70s.  I didn't even know about the 90s remake.  Sounds like they recycle it every twenty years or so.

Well, at least they're minimizing their carbon footprint, right?

[Flayeriv]

26. Not that old. I'd probably say I really started being a gamer somewhere between Baldur's Gate and the original X-Wing flight simulator game.

Man those games were fun.

[Lephys]

Ohhhh man! Forgot about that game, too! I played the crap out of some X-wing vs. Tie Fighter.

[Namutree]

24 years old.

[Ieo]

I still find it incredibly weird that there are people in the 20-29 age bracket who are looking for an old school iso experience. Really thought the age bell curve would be solidly in the mid-30s or something. But the sample size is still super low, so...

[Lephys]

I still find it incredibly weird that there are people in the 20-29 age bracket who are looking for an old school iso experience. Really thought the age bell curve would be solidly in the mid-30s or something. But the sample size is still super low, so...

Heh... When I was like... I dunno, 7ish? My friend's brother was beta testing the original Fallout. When I saw him playing it, I kind of fell in love with isometric RPGs. That was the first one I saw, I think. I didn't get the play any of the IE games until a little bit after they had come out. I never physically owned them, but my friend had every single one of them, so I played them a good bit at his house when I visited.