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Hey there. I'm 42 years old and have been playing video games since drat near they have existed. I remember stealing quarters from my mom's purse and playing Moon Patrol at Chuck E Cheese. I used to walk over to Allsup's convenience store and play Xevious, Pengu, Defender, Yie Ar Kung Fu, and many others. My first computer was a Commodore 64 on which I spent way too many hours playing Ultima 3, Wizardry, and Bard's Tale, among others. As for consoles, I played the usual stuff on Atari 2600, Nintendo and Super Nintendo. After that I started having sex and went to college so it wasn't much of a thing to me any more. In the late 90s I got into playing Unreal Tournament and Quake 3 with some guys from work, that was fun. Lately I've been really into Borderlands 2. Tell me about your VG experience and how it has changed over time! 
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Feb 21, 2015 11:53
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My first computer gaming was on a 128K Spectrum +2. Though the first game I remember being interested in was one of those Space Invader clones built into a table; I can't remember if I ever even played it but I remember thinking it was the most incredible thing. That'd probably be around 1983. My family skipped straight from the Spectrum to the Megadrive and were absolutely blown away by the colours. The first time I saw networked gaming was a Quake game set up in the physics lab at university. Basically my gaming experience has been a constant source of 'holy poo poo they can do that now?' ever since I was a little kid. Now I spend a non-trivial amount of time playing daft little games on my iPad, which still feels like a bizarre machine of the future, because I am old.
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Feb 21, 2015 11:59
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Here are some of my dumb thoughts. I think there are 2 main reasons as to why video games where so much more fun when you were a kid. 1. Money. When you're 12 years old and you get a few pennies a week from your parents, buying a game is a pretty big deal. You have to scrimp for weeks and weeks, washing the family car, mowing the lawn and selling your sandwiches at lunch so you can buy that shiny new N64 cartridge you've seen in the shop window. Now when you're an adult with a job you can just drop hundreds of dollars on a Steam sale and it's no biggie. Each purchase doesn't feel anywhere near as significant when you can just have whatever game you want whenever you want. 2. Information. I think for me a big reason why games aren't as fun anymore is because before something I'm excited for is even released I already know absolutely everything about it. To the point where I may as well not even buy it because I've already seen heaps of game play videos and read all about it. It was way more cool when you where a kid and didn't have access to that info. All you could do was just look and the description of the game with one or two picks on the back of the box. So when you put it in your console it was all a surprise which made gaming way more fun. This is why I love how Rockstar handled the lead up to the release of GTAV. They just drip fed us with tiny bits of info keeping everyone keen for it. When a game just releases a bucket load of videos and info before it's even released I lose a lot of interest in it because I already know all there is to know about the game.
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Feb 21, 2015 12:19
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theyre ok lost a round of battlefield 4 earlier but its no big deal, had fun anyway Vitreous Rumor fucked around with this message at 12:58 on Feb 21, 2015 |
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Feb 21, 2015 12:48
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I know that when I get home from work and the gym, I want to spend the few hours left in the day playing online games with 14 year olds instead of being with my wife or family or really doing anything worthwhile i really like being with 14 year olds
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Feb 21, 2015 13:56
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My first gaming experience was when my dad brought home a PC when I was about 8 years old. It was this really simple, grey box with a MS Keybord and Mouse. I assume he got it from home. It had this massive CRT monitor, and everytime you turned it on it made this really loud Brrrrrt sound. I was actually scared for the longest time from that sounds, for whatever reasons. The first game I ever played was Freddi Fish. This child learned game where you have to solve puzzles and do minigames. It was actually really loving cool since the story and soltution are different every time you play the game.  After that we got a really simple joystick and Sinistar Unleashed. A 3d Spaceshooter with lots of flashy things, and you have to kill spacebugs. Good old days.
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Feb 21, 2015 14:20
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I played Parsec on the Ti-99a and now I'm single.
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Feb 21, 2015 14:44
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It's really loving weird that the gamecube is a "retro" system.
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Feb 21, 2015 14:46
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my first game was mario bros. and I always had to get my mom to beat the castle levels for me because Bowser scared the poo poo out of 6-year old me. now all I do is play Smash Bros. and beat up a level 1 Bowser for 9 hours a day to get cope with my trauma
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Feb 21, 2015 15:49
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videogames makes it hurt less op
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Feb 21, 2015 16:32
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I don't have any friends. Video Games are my friends.
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Feb 21, 2015 16:35
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Video games are a waste of time and for children but I am a manchild who will never amount to anything so really it's a perfect match.
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Feb 21, 2015 17:37
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Big Mad Drongo posted:Video games are a waste of time and for children but I am a manchild who will never amount to anything so really it's a perfect match. Pretty much this.
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Feb 21, 2015 17:38
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I don't know about the haters. I have a very successful career, a nice family, go to the gym, run, cycle, travel frequently, lecture at universities, and yet my favorite hobby is playing video games - ever since I was a kid and played a Pong clone I was enthralled by them. In order to have time to play them, I barely watch TV (save for some Netflix shows) and I completely ignore random web browsing/social media.
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Feb 21, 2015 21:45
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 This was my first 'console'. My second was the N64  In between I played a shitload of PC games (mostly demos actually) that I cannot remember the names of any of, except Jazz Jackrabbit which owned. These days I have hundreds of games from Steam sales and I never play any of them because I can never decide
Good Lord Fisher! fucked around with this message at 23:31 on Feb 21, 2015 |
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Feb 21, 2015 22:59
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Almost 30 here. Started my gaming on a commodore 64 and various ancient PCs since I was able to walk. Always wanted a console, but didn't get one until the N64 and have had every console since until the current generation which I am waiting to get cheaper. Much of what helps me with being game lethargic like others mention is the fact that I am very cheap. I tend to not to actively read gaming news and will only buy games that I've heard good things about once they've hit that magical threshold of under $20 aud. So when I start it up, I generally have no idea what to expect and it can be a pretty rewarding experience. Case in point, Jazzpunk is currently $3 on steam. The only thing I knew about it was that it won Giant Bomb 'best style' award. It was nothing like I expected and was a ton of fun to discover.
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Feb 21, 2015 23:22
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I think my first game was some kind of Snoopy game on Windows 3.1. We also had Busytown which was great because it came on a CD and had voices. My first console was a TurboGrafx 16 that we got from my uncle when his kids got something new. Had tons of fun playing Bonk. We had tons of games in a box, but I think Bonk was the only one we really played. Then we got an Atari Jaguar from the same uncle. We played a ton of Kasumi Ninja (Mortal Kombat clone) with the blood turned all the way up and also this game which was a licensed Chupa Chups-themed platformer. Again, bunch of other games, but we only played those 2. Then I got a Gameboy Color in 1998, and played the poo poo out of Pokemon for years. And the James Bond Zelda-alike game. N64 the next year (but the clerk was really trying to push the just-about-to-be-discontinued SNES), my brother and I pooled our money together to buy one. We got Goldeneye and I think Lego Racers because my parents said we couldn't get 2 violent games. Played the poo poo out of those, though I didn't really get into single player Goldeneye until like a year later. I always either played multiplayer or watched my big brother do the single player. Kind of stopped with consoles after that, pretty much only play Civ on PC now. With both the Gameboys and the N64 our parents really never bought us games, so we really just played the same games over and over. This has conditioned me to be completely unable to cope with the massive catalogs of games available on consoles and PC right now, so I kind of just pick one game and play it forever.
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Feb 21, 2015 23:47
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Playing Red Orchestra 2: Rising Sun back when it was in beta. We were Japanese, playing on a trench-laden map, attacking US Marines. It was night, with one minute to go on the clock. We had pushed through to the very final objective point - But our commander called an Artillery barrage on it, preventing us from advancing. Remarkably he was a rare breed of commander, a competent one - He said to wait until we had 30 seconds left, then charge. The Rising Sun expansion has a "Banzai" charge power for the Japanese, that boosts your speed and health slightly, and iirc damage. As soon as the smoke cleared, a huge BANZAIIIII rang out as we exited the trenches. Everyone was screaming it via VOIP, the ingame avatars were all screaming as well. Fantastically atmospheric, the marines were caught completely off guard. We slaughtered them to the last man  Honestly one of the best gaming experiences to date. The closest sense of pure teamwork on a 16-player team that I've ever seen.
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Feb 22, 2015 00:21
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I like video games and spent a lot of my life playing them, way too much of it actually. It's kind of sad in retrospect. It disappoints me when people get really mad about video games though. They're supposed to be fun, not mad.
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Feb 22, 2015 00:24
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my mom and dad had a commodore and would take turns caring for me while they played their nerd game of choice (i was told it was called "ladybug"). they also did lots of drugs. an early memory of mine is my dad playing through Zelda and not knowing that it saved so he told none of his roommates to touch the NES while he was at work. he played through most of the game like this.
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Feb 22, 2015 00:42
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The saddest part of getting older is knowing that one day a game will be announced that I want to play but I'll be dead before its release. Technically that could happen anytime, but with age it becomes certain. That's why I work out. Don't want to miss next-next-next-next-next gen.
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Feb 22, 2015 00:58
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The first video game I played was probably Albert's House. You could move through the house and click things. Each room was a static image, you'd move by clicking doors, and you win when you find Albert in the back yard. This would have been in 1991, I think, on the brand new Macintosh Classic computers at school. Shortly after that my family got an Apple II from my uncle, who'd just bought a newer computer. It had a few games, but most of them didn't seem to work properly. I had more fun writing my own programs in BASIC. In the early '90s, some of my friends had Segas and Ninetendos, and one friend had a computer that could run games and got Doom when it came out. One of my aunts also had a computer with games on, and had Jones in the Fast Lane and Civilization, neither of which I cared much for at the time but like now. She also had Commander Keen 6 and Reader Rabbit, which I played a lot of. Shortly after that we got a second-hand Atari 2600 with a whole lot of games, and I played that near constantly. Mostly HERO, Chopper Command, Kung Fu Master and Summer Games, but there were a bunch of others. After that we got an old IBM compatible running DOS 6, and we had a few games on that, including Links Golf and Legend of Darkmoon. The Atari and the Apple II were both more fun. Around 1997 we got a newer (but still second-hand) computer that ran Windows 95, which finally replaced the Atari as the most fun, then in '98 I started highschool and discovered the internet. Technically they'd gotten internet access at the primary school the year before and I had used it a few times, but no one there really knew what to do with it. But in highscool I discovered MUDs, (specifically Discworld MUD) and ended up playing that for years. At first I had no internet at home as I'd stay for hours after school, often with a few others I'd gotten into it. I don't remember when we got the internet at home, but I do remember that I'd still stay late at school for some time because we only had the one internet-capable computer at home and I have three siblings, but sometimes before year 11 I got my own computer. I finally quit Discworld MUD in 2012, but for several years had just been using it as a glorified IRC channel. More recently I've been really into the Saints Row and Blackwell games, but I play a lot of stuff now because Steam sales make it really affordable to try stuff out, even if you end up not liking most of it. Now I'm going to play some Skyrim.
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Feb 22, 2015 04:31
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Wow I am amazed at the number of people who grew up on old video games too! This makes me feel good. Did anyone else play the original Bard's Tale?
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Feb 22, 2015 05:46
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My dad set up a one-peice Mac in the basement and that was my first access to games. Played some Brickles, "played" the Macintosh tutorial about making folders and moving the mouse, and died a bunch playing Dark Castle. Oh yeah. Dark Castle.
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Feb 22, 2015 19:19
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cthulusnewzulubbq posted:My dad set up a one-peice Mac in the basement and that was my first access to games. Played some Brickles, "played" the Macintosh tutorial about making folders and moving the mouse, and died a bunch playing Dark Castle. I remeber the first time I saw a GUI was at a Montgomery Wards Macintosh display. I was utterly fascinated that you could move things around with the mouse and do things without using a keyboard at all.
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Feb 22, 2015 20:32
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gnarlyhotep posted:Wow I am amazed at the number of people who grew up on old video games too! This makes me feel good. On the Commodore 64, no less. My father worked for the university of GA in the 80s, and GA had pretty well standardized on the C64 so we got one. Over the years as the C64's star faded, the state surplus warehouses got us access to cheap used C64 junk; Every peripheral imaginable, and half the time when folks ditched their old C64s, boxes and boxes full of floppies went with em.
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Feb 23, 2015 02:22
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cthulusnewzulubbq posted:My dad set up a one-peice Mac in the basement and that was my first access to games. Played some Brickles, "played" the Macintosh tutorial about making folders and moving the mouse, and died a bunch playing Dark Castle. Dark Castle, man. That game was a nightmare to control. I remember constantly falling on my face because the character couldn't handle six inch drops.
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Feb 23, 2015 02:48
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chairface posted:On the Commodore 64, no less. My father worked for the university of GA in the 80s, and GA had pretty well standardized on the C64 so we got one. Over the years as the C64's star faded, the state surplus warehouses got us access to cheap used C64 junk; Every peripheral imaginable, and half the time when folks ditched their old C64s, boxes and boxes full of floppies went with em. 12 year old me is very envious of you
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Feb 23, 2015 07:07
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Some of my best memories of playing video games were taking my N64 and Xbox over to my friend's house and playing Perfect Dark, Mario Kart, and Halo all day. Good times.
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Feb 23, 2015 07:29
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Got you beat by one year gtep; 43. I started around age 9. About 7-8 of the neighborhood kids would head over to the mall arcade once a week. That was all the standards; Pacman, Donkey Kong, Digdug, Pole Position, Defender, Tie Fighter, etc. The Atari 2600 was the first console everyone got. I got so good at Asteroids(which isnt saying much) that I eventually played with my feet/toes. My sister was the champ at Pitfall. As a teen we got one of the original Compaq "portable" computers. That led to a lot of Zork, and Basic games. A friend and I tried our hand at our own text based RPGs and they were pretty fun. Later came a Nintendo. College wasn't much, could not afford anything, nor had the time. First PC after college brought Mechwarrior games, and LAN parties with Quake and Unreal games. Ultima Online was the first MMOG. Got addicted to those for a few years. Nowadays I still play a fair amount. Mostly in the winter when it gets cold out, and a lot of friends and family are out of town for the season. I still squeeze in an average of an hour a day during the summer though.
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Feb 23, 2015 07:32
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i use video games as a crutch but im having a good time so far
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Feb 23, 2015 07:36
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My first were I think.... A-10: Tank Killer by Dynamix, Ultima VI by British man, and Quest for Glory by Sierra I think?
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Feb 23, 2015 07:38
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I grew up in a house with two brothers and a sister. We played games a lot together since it was one of the few common interests we all had. Started with the N64 and moved onto the Gamecube, so we mostly played Nintendo stuff. This was awkward because my brother and sister really preferred FPS games, which the Gamecube did not have many of. One of the games we played the most as kids was loving Geist, an extremely mediocre game about ghosts and guns. You could possess a missile and crash into your opponents face with it though, so it did have some merits. Eventually we got a 360 though and from then on it was mostly playing games on that. Now since we all played games together, something we experienced was the death of local multiplayer. Used to be that tons of games had great local multiplayer so we had lots of fun. As internet play became more prominent though, games focused on local multiplayer less and less. Many games local experience was sorely lacking, or it just flat out didn't have any. It was expected that if you were gonna play with multiple people you would just be doing it over the internet. As a result, we played together a lot less. Now its been ages since we all played a game together. VVV Oh I forgot about 007 Nightfire. We actually played that a ton too, it was pretty fun when you had the hidden characters unlocked. Not sure if that game was actually good or if its just nostalgia combined with not having anything better at the time. Internet Kraken fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Feb 23, 2015 |
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Feb 23, 2015 07:44
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Internet Kraken posted:I grew up in a house with two brothers and a sister. We played games a lot together since it was one of the few common interests we all had. Started with the N64 and moved onto the Gamecube, so we mostly played Nintendo stuff. This was awkward because my brother and sister really preferred FPS games, which the Gamecube did not have many of. TimeSplitters 2/FP and, uh, 007 Nightfire were about it for FPS multi on GameCube, yeah. Metroid Prime 2 if you were feeling sassy. My parents had an Atari 2600 and I've been hooked ever since I was 2 years old. Dragonfire, Frogger, Frostbite, Q*Bert, and several other games were my big introduction. Eventually we sold that and my dad brought home an NES with Super Mario Bros., Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, and the NES version of Q*Bert since my mom liked it on Atari. My mom would let me rent a game a week from the grocery store (remember that?) so that's how I experienced a big chunk of the library, Donkey Kong Classics being the first one I ever picked out. I also had a few neighbor kids who were slightly older, and not always the greatest friends at the time, but introduced me to Contra and Castlevania II and several others. There were also a liquor store and a bowling alley just down the street from us which, along with the rare visit to Chuck E. Cheese, were my way of keeping up on arcade games through the first several years of elementary school. I didn't play as much of them, obviously, but I remember Vs. Super Mario Bros (my first experience with that game in any form), Mario Bros., Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Sly Spy, Lifeforce, Bubble Bobble, Violence Fight, Plotting, Growl, Toki, Rampage, 720, Roadblasters, Super Off Road, and so on, and a bunch of others where I remember a few details but haven't been able to match a title to them. Later, when we moved, the 7-11 next to my middle school was pretty much the only place I saw arcade games for quite a while, but I remember playing Time Killers and seeing a Neo Geo and Super Street Fighter II come in there. After that, arcade games were kind of a rare sight for me. The Game Genie blew my goddamn mind when it came out. I remember thinking it was bullshit when some kid in 1st grade started talking about the Super Nintendo being in development. Of course it came out and then was all I wanted. My grandfather was a fairly early adopter, actually, and brought it to our house with Super Mario World and a golf game, which was quite a step up graphically from Atari Golf or even NES golf games. The next time I got to play it was a few sweet minutes with SMW, Donut Plains 1, at Circuit City while visiting my great grandmother that summer. I didn't want to leave. Finally, that Christmas it arrived in our house, with Super Mario World and Super Play Action Football, which is a pretty bad game but it had a cameo from Mario on the coin toss and that made me happy. Plus you could name high school teams and choose their colors, which was always fun to abuse. Also the theme song was , as was the Mode 7 football pass in the intro. It was only 4 years later that the N64 would arrive, but those 4 years seemed to encompass a lifetime.I rented Family Dog more than once. I could be a dumb fuckin' kid. Giant loving banners for Donkey Kong Country at Toys R Us. Oh My GOD. Super Mario 64 at Toys R Us. Oh My GOD. Nester's Funky Bowling at Toys R Us. Huh. Wasn't he in Nintendo Power? I remember the VB on clearance for 30 bones at TRU and I almost got one and some games, but decided against it. Kicked myself for years, still do a little, but I got a decent bundle on eBay a bit ago. Don't play it much because I've got nowhere to put the drat thing (and I need to get the inevitable video problem fixed since it started to happen), but Galactic Pinball is cool and I love how powerful the speakers are. I never subscribed to Nintendo Power as a kid, though I wished I did, but had a handful of issues, including the Super Mario Bros. 3 Strategy Guide, quite possibly the greatest picture book of all time. When I was in middle school I noticed the 100th issue of NP at the grocery store checkout stand I had to have it, and that was the start of my subscription, which lasted from then through most of the N64's reign. It was basically the last era where there'd be pages of maps for games. Reading walkthroughs of games that turned out to be lovely was actually pretty enjoyable, experiencing some of what the game had to offer and making it a better game in your mind than it actually was, whether you ever played it or not. That's probably the last time in my life where games still felt like magic. Alright that's enough for now. Maybe chronological isn't the best way to handle this, or maybe I need to pare things down more or put some of this poo poo in a journal somewhere else. There are significant (to me) bits that I passed over thinking I could keep this a manageable size. Might switch to bullet points if I make another post in the meantime.
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Feb 23, 2015 08:29
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I also loving loved Rogue Squadron 2 on the Gamecube and I'm really disappointed that nobody has ever gotten it playable for the emulator. 
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Feb 23, 2015 08:33
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Who else remembers your parents renting games for you? My mom and dad rented games based on cover art. They picked a few turds out of the lot (more than one of those multigame carts disgraced our NES), but they also rented Mega Man, Dragon Warrior, Balloon Boy and Destiny of an Emperor. I replayed Destiny of an Emperor a few months back, and I think it's still a ton of fun. Now we have a glut of games, but I miss wondering what mom or dad were going to bring home on Friday night.
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Feb 23, 2015 09:17
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Standing carousels full of floppy disks at the store were cool.
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Feb 23, 2015 09:48
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Started playing games on a Spectrum ZX, I have a vague memory of a spaceman jumping around on platforms. In two colours! Green and black! Then it was early PC games like Paperboy and one about gorillas that threw exploding bananas at each other. That last one took patience. The Atari phase happened then when I was old enough to load games myself. I have a distinct memory of a few games like Golden Axe and Onslaught (which I never got to finish as my older brother accidentally wiped the floppy disk it was on). Later I returned to PC gaming and spent much of my youth on Civilisation 1, Frontier: Elite and Duke Nukem. I've always tended to play something to death, trying to find every single thing in the game to be found. I also usually stop close to the end however. Not sure why I have an issue with finishing them. Abandonment issues perhaps? I watch plenty of LPs of games but never games I plan on buying. Not knowing the plot is important to me. Rap Three Times fucked around with this message at 13:43 on Feb 23, 2015 |
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Feb 23, 2015 13:41
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Rap Three Times posted:one about gorillas that threw exploding bananas at each other QBASIC Gorillas. It came free with DOS, along with Nibbles (which I still think is the best version of Snake I've ever played).
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Feb 23, 2015 14:02
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I spent like £400 on a new 3DS and half a dozen games, possibly in a bizarre attempt to recapture my child-hood, and now I'm having buyers remorse so hard it's making me a bit sick inside. Monster Hunter 4's pretty good so far though.
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Feb 23, 2015 14:13
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