haha My first "true" full game, in box, original and not from gaming magazine was 10 years after my first PC (referring to the 386). Heroes of Might and Magic 4 (yep, 4), finally seemed to be what I always wanted HoMM to be, heroes actually fighting, units that can travel without heroes, jumped on that (as just about everyone else jumped away - and I get that, changes are a problem, maybe they should have started another spinoff like that instead), remember how baffled my mother was, why would anyone pay that sort of money for a game when you can just get it from this or that guy for little more than the price of a blank CD. But nothing was actually paid for it, since it was bought along with parts for my 4th computer (5th if you count the Spectrum), first one I actually built from parts myself, after the store had left me waiting 2 months for the CPU and it suddenly became available just as there was a big price drop announced by Intel, and when that was mentioned to them they went yeah, well, uh, there's been a discount, but we can't do a refund for the amount, get some stuff worth that much instead, and it was game and new keyboard and speakers if I remember right (may it be this keyboard I'm using again now, while the one bought just shy of 2 years ago is getting repaired? not sure... then again, may not have been kb+speakers, but one of the two and a floppy drive, as I had at first planned to reuse that from the old one, not sure anymore, 2 of these 3 anyway). Anyway, for the first games actually legally purchased, paying for them directly, you have to skip some 5 more years, when I finally got around to getting NWN Diamond, Morrowind GOTY and a package with PS:T and Soulbringer (I just wanted PS:T but couldn't find it alone). Can't recall which came first, know they weren't all at once but it was days or at most a few weeks apart.

The first one I played with was a C64. But the first one I owned, bought with my own money, came much later. That was a 486 DX2-66

I concur. Also, Swashbuckler.

The first encounter I had with computers was a bank of [i]b]Challenger microcomputers, at school. An analogue cassette tape (streaming) storage system, with half the PCs (model 1P) commanding 1kB of Random Access Memory, though the others had a whopping 4k! My first game was one I designed (called "Lazer Zap") on one of these machines. A downscroller, (printing lines of stars to avoid in my designated "ship", which moved laterally), it used the character string graphics (lat half of the ascii table in a font). I added all sorts of nuke buttons.

A 64kB (including the language card supplemental 16kB) Apple //e was my first possession, twin 135mm floppies (poor B:\, no love for you anymore ): and a mirco-jackhammer used to scare reams of perforated paper into ink-stained documents, a dot-matrix head-banger. Ah, perforated paper, where art thou now?

Actually, my parents tested my enthusiasm about six months previous, when they rented one for a week. Turned out the supplier had (intentionally?) installed the disc controller in slot five, so the boot command PR#6 didn't work … until I decided to actually move the controller into the one, two, three, four, five —that's not right— six, yeah, sixth expansion slot in the motherboard. Only took a few hours to make that gamble.

There was a really cool Star Trek game I played on the rental all night (and day) long. The object was to calculate the correct ballistic angle, shooting phaser blasts and photon torpedos at ascii grids, where a K was a Klingon (obviously) and that bleep-n-click Apple sound. (Remember "Flight of the Bumblebee" played on the Apple speaker? Some sort of music synthesizer …)

Obviously there was Load Runner (how much time did I waste on that!), all 150 levels. Never really liked Choplifter, though the arcade version was worse. A platformer called Miner 2049 (wrap-around sunnies FTW) kept me amused. And that one with a kid jumping over pyroclastic jetsam, avoiding the volcanic vents. I liked that one. Sammy Lightfoot?

I spent most of my work experience at a real estate company playing the original Adventure ("Plugh").

A cracked copy of Ultima ][, to edit the exe to add tassels and whatnot (spell reagents). Use the pirate ship exploit to create bridges between the continents in alternate time zones (instead of attacking a hostile pirate, try to move onto it, then a new ship is miraculously instantiated; rinse, repeat until sufficient boats exist to create a pontoon bridge; don't forget to kill the pirate ship when you're done :)

I also recall some Art of War games (a naval sequel, as well), played for kicks on the Compaq luggable (before laptops), whilst doing work experience at Computerland.*

The first PC was a 386, IIRC, for university. I bought a colour dot matrix printer with it (hardly used it). Leather Goddesses of Phobos was an Infocom game on that. Started to lose interest in computers. Didn't really play any games for a decade.

* Years later, a friend actually retrofitted his (486, I think) into one of these cases. If you have seen one you will remember it: the keyboard folded up to seal the case, concealing the original 9?-inch amber-screen.

edit: right bracket, thou accursed nemesis!
edit2: it was a Challenger 1P at school.

It was an IBM 5160 no name clone, it had 512KB RAM, 2 double side 5" ¼ 360KB floppy drives, no HD, CGA and ran at a frequency of 4MHz which doubled with turbo by pressing Ctrl + Alt + + to enable it and Ctrl + Alt + - to disable it. Had DOS 2.0, also came along with a dot matrix Sakata 132 columns printer, a monochrome green phosphor monitor branded Thomson and a keyboard, 1986 circa and I still remember it like it was yesterday.

The software and the games it ran were pure magic to the young me.

> be me, 1981
> own an apple ][+
> 48k ram, monochrome screen
> 2 floppies. what's a hard drive, lol
> ultima I, and the cosmic balance (space sim)
> type in greentext format just to be different because yes, this topic has come up before

Atari 1040STF

The keyboard clacked like train tracks. The mouse was blocky and uncomfortable. I'm fairly sure we had an older Atari at some point but the one I remember is the one with the built in 3.5 in the side of the keyboard. The on switch was also in the keyboard and naturally it had a color monitor. The F keys were huge and looked like //// across the top of the keyboard, and it had a few different characters than modern keyboards. Kind of fascinating how different keyboards became over the last 30 years.

The only program I remember the name of for sure was Kidztalk and it would read off whatever you wrote in the same computer voice Hawking used. It was just a basic word processor for kids with a couple of quirks like that. I don't think you could even save files for it. It was very interesting listening to it try to pronounce key smashing.

There was another game I used to play was labeled "HERO" on the disk we had. I've tried to find again on the internet but as far as I can see not even a screen shot of the game I played is out there. It was a top down, have-to-get-through-the-rooms-with-traps type, and there were a lot of enemies to fight and you had a list of spells you could use to get through, plus there were secret passages and rooms. The hero sprite was dark blue and had a sword in one hand. At the end was a princess you had to bring back all the way to the start area and she had a blond head and was light blue. The thing about the game was if she died enroute or at the starting area you had to go all the way back to get another so you could have a dozen princesses along the route.

There were a bunch of other games but none I can remember the name of and they're a bit more difficult to describe. I've been trying to find lists of games that were available for Ataris but keep coming up short, but there's a chance some of them were programmed by friends of my dad's.

My brother played the D&D type games that came out for it. I never got beyond the mummy.

The last time I turned the Atari on a few years ago it showed nothing but a blank screen. That was kind of sad.

And you replied to it before too :)

My first computer-like device was this one. But it never really worked and was more of a novelty.

My first actual, programmable computer was this one.

Edit: oh, and of course this was my first computer game. And it was even multiplayer! (if 2 players count as 'multi')

Well, wouldya look at that! This calls for a special sort of response; see attached.