What game got you into PC gaming?

Esperahol

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You never forget your first - so what was it? My first real PC game was Doom. I have a thing about horror as I may have mentioned once or thirty times. I still love that game so much. That said what was yours and what made it special for you?
 
Wow.. I don't even remember what my first PC game was. There were so many games that I used to play on the PC way back when. I first started playing games on the Commodore 64 computer, back in 1983. The neighbor was my dad's friend, and he constantly hooked us up with tons of free games. My dad just had to buy the blank floppy disks... the old, big, flat, black, thin, floppy disks. The kind that you could flip over and use the other side. We literally had several hundred games on that. Just tons and tons of games. We had some "master" games, that you'd buy at the store. But we also had tons of "blank" disks that our neighbor would cram like 5 to 10 games per side on. Then he'd type the name of the games onto a sticker and then put a label on them, so we knew what games were on what disk, and what side of the disk. So yeah, I had tons and tons of pc games, growing up. I was 2 years old when I first started playing on it. So I can't remember exactly what I played on it. This was a couple of years before the NES came out. But I don't remember the names of some of the games that I played in the early years. They were mostly little kiddy games.

However, here are a few that I can remember, off of the top of my head...

Aliens
Batman: The Caped Crusader
Commando
Altered Beast
Q*Bert
The Great Giana Sisters
Ikari Warriors
Rambo: First Blood part 2
Moon Patrol
Popeye
Defender
Kung-Fu Master
California Games
Karate Champ
Karateka
The Hulk
Ghostbusters
Gauntlet
G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero
Transformers
Frogger
Dino Eggs
Ducks Ahoy
Choplifter
Congo Bongo
Pac-Land
Buster Bros
Paperboy
Pitfall
Who Dares Win 2
Summer Games
Winter Games
Test Drive
Space Harrier 1 and 2
Skyfox 1 and 2
Raid on Bungeling Bay
Skate or Die
Road Blasters
Load Runner
Rygar
Spy vs Spy
Spy Hunter
Star Fox (not the Nintendo game)
etc.etc..

I had a ton of Commodore 64 games. Way too many to list. Also, I can't remember the names of some of them, tho I can picture the gameplay in my head.

That said, all of these games came out before Doom. Which I played on the newer computer that I got, in the early 90's. Even Wolfenstein 3D came out before Doom. There were some other games on that computer that I played too.

But yeah, as for what game got me into PC game.. gee.. I couldn't say. I've been PC gaming for so long.. since around 1983, that I can't possibly remember which game I played first. I had so many games to choose from, and played them all on a regular basis, that I don't know what came out before what, or what I played first, or anything like that. So I can't say for sure. But I can say that I have been playing PC games for longer than the NES has been around. So there's that.

If I had to pick one that was "special" or that I remember the most.. it would probably have to be

Aliens..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=YKq1b9CzToE

or Batman
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=2EhPUvEx7DE

I was addicted to the music in both. In Aliens, I remember restarting the game just to hear the opening song again. That, or I wouldn't press anything, and just let it run. Good times. My favorite level, by far, was the second level, where you had to maneuver the marines through the maze of platforms, and get them back safely to the vehicle. I played it so much that I had the whole map memorized. I could immediately cycle through the characters starting screen, perhaps move them a screen or two, and know exactly where I was, and the exact path I would need to take to get them "home" safely. Of course, there were several paths that got you back to base. And I knew all of the different directions. A lot of the area's looked alike, but you get used to what screens should be next to what screens. Like I said, I got really, really good at it.

I liked the first level too, mainly for the music. It was a flight sim, where you had to fly through the rings. If you miss ONE ring, you lost. And what made it hard was that sometimes, during some turns, the controls were such that you had to pull hard in one direction, and then immediately pull back hard in the other direction. And if you missed it by a fraction of an inch, boom, you lost. You had to have your timing down right on some turns.

Like I said tho, I loved the second level. In the video, it's right around the 6:15 mark. What I liked about it, was that it was suspenseful. I mean, I was like 5 years old when this game came out. And sometimes you would have several guys "flash red", meaning that the aliens were attacking them. You could switch back and forth between your men at any time. But only the guy you were controlling would move. Everybody else is just standing still. In the video, if you see a platform that looks like it's over nothing, that's the "normal" area. If you see the places with all of the different shapes and designs around the path, that was considered "the nest", and alien attacks were more frequent in the nest than in the normal areas. In the normal areas, the aliens could only come from the same direction as the paths, just like you. However, in the "nest" areas, they could come from any direction. If you had two marines meet up with each other, and be on the same screen, they are automatically "safe", as long as they are on the same screen together. So they don't need to be back at "base" to be safe. They won't ever get attacked, as long as they stay together. However, you can only move one at a time. So when you move one to the next screen, both could potentially get attacked at the same time. It does happen. Also, the longer you take to beat the level, the faster and more frequent the alien attacks come. So the quicker you beat it, the better. If and alien happens to get one of your men, you have a limited amount of time to get another marine onto the same screen. If you can make it to the same screen, you'll scare them off and save your fellow marine. If you don't make it in time, you character dies. When your guy gets caught, the flashing red screen stays a solid red. Solid green means that they've made it back to home base.

If you don't know your way around, it can all look the same, and you can get lost easily. Luckily for me, I played it enough to know my way around. And getting around was fun, as I loved the alien sounds, and the sounds of the gunfire. Also, I have the "click, click, click" of the walking ingrained in my head too. In fact, even today, my dad, who used to sit and play the game with us (we watched the movie when it first came out, so naturally, the game came next. Even at that age, for us). Anyways, even my dad, to this day, when he see's me or my brother play a game today, always refers to this game, and says, "man, they've come along way from 'click, click, click'", as he moves his fingers in a walking motion. He remembers this game well. That's his favorite reference when comparing modern games to older games.

I never liked levels 3 or 4. Level 3 there was absolutely no way to save everybody. The aliens that were coming were always random, and they always screwed you by making multiple aliens fast enough to get past you while you deal with another one. It was ridiculously. hard. If you didn't pass the 2nd level with a "perfect" 4 out of 4, you were going to have a tough time getting passed level 3. At the bottom of the screen, on the left side, you'll see a door with a squiggly line forming in it. That's supposed to be when they are trying to cut open a door while the aliens attack. So you have to defend your marines, while waiting for them to finish cutting through. If the last person dies, you lose. Game over. In the video, he almost got a game over. It was close. And he went in with a perfect. That level is not easy. The next level, level 4, can be just as bad. He made it look easy, but the "aliens" are random. It's supposed to be when you are maneuvering through the air ducts in the movie, after they attack the base. But you are just a zippo lighter going through tunnel maze. I never cared for that level. It was easier than level 3, by far, but sometimes still tough, as aliens could just randomly spawn all around you, and converge on you, leaving you no where to go. Each Alien takes away a flame. There was only one in the video, but they encircle the zippo, and each hit takes a flame away, until there is no more.

The next level was my second favorite level. Level 5. The difference between level's 2 and 5 is that level 2, there are 4 marines in a particular maze. The maze is always the same, however, the starting positions for all 4 marines is always different. Sometimes they are in the very next screen over from each other. Other times they are as far away from you as you can be. In Level 5, it's a completely different "map", that has the same look and feel. However, in level 2, it was all about survival. In level 5, you are Ripley, and you have to try and find Newt. The path is always the same, so once we found her, we got used to trying it over and over again, until we had the exact path memorized. You could get lost if you don't know your way around. We did, a lot. But we soon had it memorized, just like level 2. However, they also give you flares, which you can drop, and then use that to help you find your way back. But the biggest difference, besides the flare, is that not only is there now a time limit (there was an unlimited amount of time in level 2), but now you could run out of ammo (you had unlimited ammo in level 2). Once you ran out of ammo, you could only walk. You couldn't attack. And if time runs out, you die, as the place blows up. So this level was tough at first. Especially when we didn't know where we were going, and had to constantly fend off aliens. Sometimes, getting past the queen was tough, as she can be fast some times, and block you. Once she gets you, it's game over. But this was another level we would replay over and over again.

Finally, there was the last level. That level wasn't hard at all. Just keep the queen away from you, is all. Keep sideswiping her until you bring her health down, and then grab her and release her. Fairly easy. Level 3 was thee hardest level. That was the deciding level of that game. Levels 1, 2, and 5 were my top 3 favorites. 2 being my favorite, followed by 5, because it's similar, but harder, and then 1, because it's different than the rest, and has good music too.

So yeah, if I had to narrow it down to just one game, I'd probably say this game. I have more memories of play this game than any other PC game. Even tho I had been playing PC games for a few years before this game was even released. So it wasn't my first, but it is the one that I remember the most. So there's that. Enjoy the video's. The two that I posted had the music that I listened to the most. I never beat the Batman game. I never fully knew what to do. I kind of just aimlessly wandered around until I died. But I did it because I enjoyed the music. Good times. Enjoy.
 
I started with Quake 2 at a very young age. Used to LAN it with my dad in the good old days of Windows 98.
 
My first PC games were the Humongous Entertainment games. I'm not sure which one I played first, but throughout my childhood, I played Freddi Fish, Pajama Sam, Spy Fox, and Reader Rabbit games. They've been the epitome of my childhood gaming years, along with random demo downloads from Yahoo games and mostly console gaming.
However, I never had a PC good enough to run anything beyond flash games, so I turned to my SNES and GBA.
It wasn't until last year that I really got into the Steam game spirit and started playing PC games over all else(sorry Nintendo!). It was because I got a gaming laptop for my birthday. My boyfriend had bought it for me so we could play together.
The first game I played on my new laptop was L4D2. From there, I went from a 4-game library to a 160-game library today.
 
The first game I ever played (alone) on the PC was Wolfenstein 3D. My father showed it to me and that's when I started PC gaming.
I don't even like FPS games (which I didn't know back then). I can honestly say I evolved a lot since then, and changed my tendencies. Now I mostly play platform and RPG games, and you'll rarely see me play FPS, RTS and MMOs.
 
In the beginning, sadly, just a lot of really bad flash games. Later on I think Minecraft was the first real PC game that actually got me into it. The feeling of using a computer as a normal gaming system like an Xbox or PlayStation felt so odd at first but it really grew on me. I'm mostly a PC gamer nowadays so I guess I owe it to Minecraft and all the terrible flash games I played to shape the gamer that I am today.
 
You won't believe this, but it was Sims Bustin' Out. I know, I know. "But GamerPerson! Sims Bustin' Out was for the Playstation 2!" Yeah, well, there was a reason for that.

After playing Bustin' Out, I was surfing on the net one day when I stumbled across talk of Sims 2 coming out and all the new things you could do.

'Kids finally growing up? Moving out of the house? Making your own favorite characters from other games?! Sign me up!', I thought. So, imagine my surprise when I got the game...But it was for the wrong system. That's right, I got the one for the PS2 and I was disappointed.

'This can't be the right one! Where's all the stuff they promised?!', thought I. Well, to put it bluntly: I screwed up on looking at the one for pc. Oops.

So, it was fixed after I got it for the Pc...Of course, I didn't KNOW that you needed the base game and brought a stuff pack thinking it was the same. Double oops. Finally, when I got the Sims 2 for Christmas, all was right with the world and I was a pc gamer for Sims, and other things, ever since.
 
I cannot remember its name for the life of me, but my first ever PC game was a children's game whose plot involved wondering around a planet of civilized dinosaurs, collecting parts from them to be recycled so as to repair a crashed spaceship. Also, the dinosaurs had horrible glitched vocoder voices (think of the opening to the NES' The Adventures of Bayou Billy). It sounds like a particularly odd episode of Doctor Who, but was much less cool than it sounds. (I suppose that I might have played The Oregon Trail or the like even earlier in grade school, but I cannot recall.)

My first "proper" PC games, a year or so later, were the latter entries in the Commander Keen and King's Quest series (more specifically, King's Quest VI-&-VII).

Eventually though, I discovered DOOM in junior high and had my mind blown as to what a PC game could be!
 
While its name is lost to me, the first ever PC game I REMEMBER playing was a kid's game in which you could draw and play a game like scrabble. I clearly remember a bunny that used to tell you your scores and I think it even had a couple of puzzles...but of course, this was a good 10 years ago, so I can't remember much.

The PC game that really hooked me into gaming was GTA Vice City, around 6 years ago. It was the first open world game that I had played and combine that with the GTA effect and I was wasting a good amount of my time on it. A few months later my friend introduced me to GTA SA - I vaguely remember seeing a Stretch, and running after it. The graphics used to seem so good back then, but the current-gen games put those to shame.
 
The thing that got me hooked to PC games was Warcraft 2. My brother got the game right on release day, and being a good little brother I spent a lot of time spectating him, while he played it. My brother wasn't really into RTS games, so he lost interest pretty quickly, and gave the game to me. At the time I was like 4 or 5 so I didn't really understand what I was doing, but it was fun. I played it everyday and somehow even ended up beating the campaigns. 2 Years ago I decided to replay the game, and it was as good as I remembered. I also used the opportunity to play the expansion, which I've never played when I was a kid, and god, even with all of the Warcraft 3, Starcraft 2 and even Dota experience I've collected over the course of the years, the expansion was still mad hard and incredibly unfair.
 
I played age of empires 2 and I was hooked. After that I bought Galactic Battle Grounds and then eventually Age of Mythology. For the first time I had seen the power and depth of what they PC could do.
 
Well, I got into PC gaming back in the MS-DOS days. Around 1987 to be exact so I'm a bit of a veteran of the early PC gaming scene. Games that I enjoyed on the PC back in those days were Alley Cat, Arkanoid, Qix, Thexder, Silpheed, Test Drive I & II, Kings' Quest, Leisure Suit Larry, Space Quest and the Police Quest series. It was an exciting time for sure but I gradually start losing interest in PC gaming around the mid-90s. Windows and the overwhelming dominance of FPS & RTS games on the PC turned me into a dedicated console gamer.
 
Don't forget about Oregon Trail. That was an addictive game back in the day before windows came out. Then there was that turtle game where you gave the triangle commands like forward 20 and so forth. That is what started the gaming that we know today.
 
The only PC games I play are The Sims games; and I tend to play them a lot more on the consoles anyway.
 
The first one that really launched me into gaming? Heroes of Might and Magic, the original 1 / 2/ 3 (Complete Editions) by studio 3D0 before they went under. That must have been 95? 96? I knew it was when I was hanging out with my old friend named Dustin, and we played away on his computer. Hot seating it, then playing a game of monopoly.

If not that, we both were playing the very first real MMO, Ultima Online, pretty hardcore. It was so open, and so free. Everything that came after felt closed off in comparison. I got addicted to it headlong, building my own house and decorating it in the middle of nowhere as well as having an estate to sell in a popular area for money and income while I adventured. This to a young teenage boy was exactly what I wanted - exploration, freedom to be what I wanted, not class restricted.

Still remember my Taming Archery Mage to this day. A dragon pet, chain lightning and flurry of arrows. No PVP ever got by me unless I had my pet stabled.
 
There were a lot of games but strategy oriented ones in particular.
 
My first Real game on PC is Age of Empire, wonderful Game
 
My first ever game I ever played was on my father's pc (bomber man) then I got into theme park and then years down the line the Sims.
 

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