Hello everyone! I am new to our community so I am hoping to do this right.
I have been a gamer since I was in my teens (I am 56 now!) and I remember spending countless quarters in arcades and then begging my dad to get me a game system for Christmas. I never got an Atari or Mattel Intellivsion, but as a sophomore in high school, I got a TI99-4A personal computer for my holiday gift. I quickly learned a bit of coding and was enthralled by the cool video games (Parsec, Hunt the Wumpus), much to the point where my dad decided that I was spending too much time working on the computer and took it away from me.
Well long story, short, I never gave up on my love of video games and when I worked a now defunct company called Egghead Software, one game really altered my life. I believe it was called Ultima Underworld and I think this was the first true first person perspective game for a computer. I simply could not believe playing a game in first person. So cool. Then came the shareware version of Doom and of course the rest is history. To this day, I still love FPS and I try my best at Call of Duty.
I did play WOW for many years, but in the past couple of xpacs, I have lost interest. Raiding used to take up a lot of my time much to the frustration of my amazing wife, but even playing casually, I did not find any more joy in it. I am not sure if MMOs are in my future though I have tried Final Fantasy and Guild Wars.
Recently, I just finished Elden Ring ( with help!) and I loved almost every second of it. I have about 180 hours into it and now I am simply waiting for the DLC. I am looking forward to Lord of the Fallen and I am hoping it is good.
What classic or even archaic games made a difference in your life?
I don’t know if I count or not, seeing how I processed your application. Welcome to OTG! I had both the Atari and Intellivision. I loved Dungeons and Dragons on the Intellivision. I didn’t play games on my pc until my son-in-law bought SWTOR for me as a Christmas gift. Some gift he wanted me to play with him…
I play wow now and I love it again, I left during shadowlands because I was tired of it and didn’t like the way Bliz was treating it’s employees. I figured that when I heard the buy out from MS and the upcoming XPAC of Dragonflight I would give it another try. I am glad I did. This is the best XPAC ever. You should give it a try.
For me…It all started with Ultima 3. I can remember sitting with my best friend from highschool in front of his Commador 64 playing ultima back in the mid 80’s. Clear in my memory as if it was yesterday. Every day after school, it was ultima. We lived and breathed that game. Still to this day, I can play that game series and it brings me right back to that same moment in my childhood. It gives me that same feeling. A feeling I would have 1 more time…
Now were things turn interesting . I can still hear his mom yelling across the house that “We were never gonna amount to anything, playing those video games”. Little did she know those words and that passion for games would just keep growing in me.
Until 1 day in the mid 90’s, with 2 months left to go with college. I saw it. The game that would change everything for me. Well back then it was just a “tech demo” my roomate from college just started working on. But It was unlike anything I ever saw before in a game…
I watched as these little cave men he was animating ran around the screen. Collecting wood from trees. Hunting deer and bringing the meat back to the camp fire. It seriously blew me away. And I knew right then and there. This was gonna be “the game” of all games to me. It was gonna be so huge. All I wanted, was to be a part of it…that game I speak of was called “Dawn of Man”.
…well until we choose Microsoft to be our publisher and decided to changed the name to “Age of Empires”.
With that said…I will say…Age of Empires (1, 2, 3) really did impact my life…Past, Present and Future
Yours truely,
Sean “LordSoth@ES” Wolff…aka Seanifer
I can remember some specific games and specific systems/platforms that had a profound effect on me.
The first real PC my family had was the Amiga 1000. My dad got one and I remember playing my first PC games on that system. I played Silent Service and Arctic Fox a lot. Later I got the SSI Gold Box DnD games and the Eye of the Beholder DnD games and thoroughly enjoyed those games.
Later we upgraded to a Windows PC and I remember the original Diablo and Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight as being my favorite games on that system for quite some time.
My first MMORPG was Everquest, but I didn’t play it for more than 6 months. After that I started playing Asheron’s Call and that was the first MMO that got me really hooked kept me playing for years. That game in particular will always be close to me because that is the first game my dad and I played together. In the beginning we shared one PC when we started playing, but I got a job in high school and saved up for my own PC and then we were able to play together…barely because this was back in the days of dial up modems still so there was plenty of lag and disconnects because out poor modem could barely handle two PC’s playing an online game at the same time back then.
The thing that got me started loving games wasn’t a game or electronic. It was these a choose your own adventure books when i was in elementary. I dont know if any of you remember those but I read and reread ever one of those i could get my hands on.
Those where the books that started off in the first chapter and had you pick between a set choice of pages to continue the story. You could change the stories depending on what you picked.
Then later on there where computer games that worked the same way. I played them on my aunts Macintosh.
My change your life moment came in the original EverQuest. A friend from my college days had got me hooked on EverCrack as it was called back then when I was alone in a state far from home. I met new friends online and joined a guild. One evening, while helping two groups worth of guild members farm mobs, there were two of us healing with an excellent monk that could easily solo pull the mobs for the two groups to destroy. With only occasional healing required, I started chatting with the other cleric. That conversation lasted thru the hunt and went into the old chat channels that were available outside the game after we logged. Our chatting continued for several more hours and then switched to the telephone. From start to end, that first conversation lasted over fourteen hours. Zamarena and I met in person later that year, and were married the following year. We have been married over twenty two years now and still play MMOs together.
sooo, I’ve played a lot of games in my past, all fun in different ways. None of them have really “impacted” my life. I’ve been playing FFXIV for the last couple of years, it’s the only game where the story actually brought tears to my eyes. There are certain cutscenes, to this day, that if I watch them, It get me all choked up. great story, lots of non-toxic fun…
Wizardry I on 5.25" floppy was one of the first PC games I ever played. It pretty much cemented a lifelong love of FRPGs. I suppose it was an obvious matchup, given I was already an avid reader of SF&F.
WoW has a place in the pantheon as my first ever online and multi-player game. It definitely affected my lifestyle long term, in both good ways and bad. I’ve been primarily playing MMOs (too much!) ever since I found it, and I cherish the many friends I’ve made online over the years.
I can’t say FFXIV has impacted my life, but it sure raised the bar for me wrt to games. I would now find it hard to play a game long term that can’t make me laugh, cry, and care about the characters the way it has.
Good morning all!
WOW! I love reading your posts and thank you. So many great memories from what you have written. So here I go…
Wizardry on floppy disks! Ha! Yes, those were the days. I remember playing Falcon 3.0 and a game called Strike Assault from Orgin where you had to constantly adjust your DOS memory settings to free up RAM so that you actually run your game. This was on the old Intel 286, 386, and 486 machines where you could manipulate your base memory.
Maybe it is one of my many character flaws, but I have never got into Final Fantasy and my sincere apologies. I really do not know why. Millions of players love the series, but for some reason, I can’t seem to bond with it. But Final Fantasy is legendary and will continue to do well.
I never played Everquest but a few of my friends did and I know they enjoyed it. I really loved SWTOR before all the crazy monetization took over and there was a game called RIFT from Trion that I really enjoyed. I could not get into the LOTR or Star Trek MMOs. Though from reading Lorantell’s post, I do need to give WOW another go; I think I miss it. What server do we have for our guild in WOW? I could transfer my character there.
There was a great game on Intellivision that involved naval battles that right now I do not remember the name. I am loathe to simply look it up, but it involved strategy in aligning your ships and starting the battles.
The classing Gold Box D&D games…yes! I remember playing Pool of Radiance and my dad, again getting angry at me for not studying enough. Those games were just a joy. I remember one called The Magic Candle which was a great dungeon crawler.
With FPS, I remember games like Heretic, Hexen, Rise of The Triad, and of course, Wolfenstien.
A friend of mine from the distant past had an Amiga and I thought Altered Best was purely special. I used to sell the Sega Genesis and Turbo Graphx 16. In my basement somewhere, I have a Sega Dreamcast and Playstation 2.
Finally, I think the King’s Quest series from the old Sierra Online was classic though at times I felt they were a bit too difficult. I know they recently remade Kings Quest for modern machines. Age of Empires is also an amazing series.
I am starting to play BG3 and Starfield. The former so far seems amazing but Starfiled, in my limited play at the moment, does not seem to fulfill all the marketing hype.
Anyone remember an amazing space game that I think was called “Star Control” by the old Interplay company that was eventually bought out by EA. And of course…one the greatest space combat games ever made ( aside from the legendary X-Wing and Tie Fighter) was Wing Commander!
Anyway, thank you for the great conversation and the trip down memory lane…wow! I look forward to more!
Thank you!
Rambios1967
(Sorry for any typos…will do a better of job writing next time!)
Well for me my first game that hooked me wasn’t an MMO, or an RPG; it was Earl Weaver Baseball. A few friends would get together and made teams from players from as far back as the 1800s, we made a league, held a season and then a Championship.
My first MMO was Everquest, a coworker kept telling me about Ultima Online and all the fun she and her boyfriend had hanging out with people, but that game just didn’t pique my interest. so into Everquest I went as noob as a noob could be. I walked around checked out a few things and decided to leave to seek my fortune and fame. As I left, I saw a message on my screen from a Fippy Darkpaw, shut up, what kinda name is that…hey what is that running towards me, oh cool it’s Fippy, let’s go say Hi…it was then I met my first “boss” as Fippy proceeded to pound me into mud. And it was shortly after that I met my first person in game, a seasoned chap, who took me under his wing, gave me some gold, outfitted me, and just taught me all about the game…heck I even changed classes after this and Belittle the Halfling Druid was born…he would later found Belittle Airways, and would port people all over the globe. He also had a distant cousin, Kno Nuttin, the roleplaying sarcastic Froglok Shammie, who was good for little besides cracking jokes on people…it’s funny the things we remember, I can’t remember any of my current toon names in games, but remembered my 2 mains in EQ from probably 20yrs or more ago
Heck, after that, I am unsure how many games I have played, I easily lose interest in the current crop, but have an active ESO sub
Hi Thestache!
You brought up another great memory…sports games. Yeah, I used to play Earl Weaver baseball…it was terrific.
I used to work a retail video game store called Babbages ( named after Charles Babbage, the creator of the difference engine). We sold video games and game systems. Well, one year, a game called Tecmo Football came out and everyone went crazy over it. We would get at least two dozen calls per day from customers hoping the game was in stock. It got so bad, the when we answered the phone, we first had to say: “Thank you calling Babbages. We do not have Tecmo football in stock. How may I help you.” Then our automated message said something similar.
One piece of history for me. I met the original programmer for Madden football. His name is Mr. Robin Antonick ( check spelling). Well, one evening he walked into our store and asked me how Madden Football was selling. I told them our customers loved it and it sold well. He then said that he was the main coder and showed me his ID that matched the credits in the game! It was cool to actually meet a video game creator!
My first computer game was Pirate’s Cove on the Commadore 64. Then Zork. My first online game was Ultima. That game changed my life. 9 years of living in a cut throat, dog eat dog world outwitting players using exploits, clunky game mechanics, and making a vending empire, but I met my best friend, who is still playing with me 20 some odd years later. Got my ex wife into Ultima and she took over and got all my vet accounts in our divorce. lol. She is still playing. Wow took my family the next step up. My elderly mother and younger brother started playing. We gamed as a family for the next 8 years. The face of gaming has changes drastically over the decades, but the same charms keep me playing. Something challenging, something fun, but something do with other people who enjoy this like I do. The future? I would like to imagine its still me and my best friend getting into mayhem, doing goofy shit, and meeting new folks. The formula has worked flawlessly. I just hope that retirement home has good internet or there will be hell to pay.
Cool post. Im a lifelong gamer too…age 43. There were some games and toons that moved me. Znarflock the Froglock… Paladin of Mithaiel Marr. (if I remember right) from EQ ,y first 3d MMO. I played Ultima online before. Then of all places, a reaper in Forsaken World…that is shut down now. I went back and found an old Valentine message from a contest and saw old friends a month before that happemed. Then, I sat on the server for 24 as it shut down with a few others to say goodbye.
Wow! I hardly ever write in the forums but this topic hit me.
I have been gaming since I was a kid. I think my first game was Apple Panic on an Apple II+. I never was a fan of console games. I remember playing Larry Leisure, Police Quest, and Space Quest a ton! Moved on from there to strategic games from SSI, some of these were text-based or with basic hexes as a map. Oh! Who can forget playing text game adventures?
Then came Ultima II, III and IV, the quest of the avatar, one of my first open-world and best games I have ever played. Then started playing Wing Commander up to WIng Commander Privateer, which if possible I would probably play again today. Then the MMO’s hit in and the gaming industry just became so ample that its hard to pinpoint specific games. Some of my favorites would be Neverwinter nights, Star Wars galaxies, Ultima Online, Diablo series, Fallout series and probably a whole bunch more that ill remember once I finish this post. Be well all, keep on gaming!
Hi NekoGami. Great to meet a fellow gamer. I am not familiar with the first couple of games that you mentioned., but yeah, I never did get to Ultima Online. I feel that all these great memories everyone is bringing up really shines on our amazing hobby and the worlds we have visited!
Thanks!
Rambios1967
Hello Soykym.
Thanks for posting! Yes, I did forget to mention that my first computers in school where the old Apple 2s. I remember being granted the opportunity in high school to setup brand new Apple 2es in our computer lab and then playing a game called Karateka and then eventually the Prince of Persia. I did spend some time with Zork and that was a great experience.
I am glad you brought up Wing Commander as I still have fond memories of it along with Privateer. I think the final iteration was a game called Wing Commander Armada. I thought it was very cool that the legendary Mark Hamil was featured in the WC game videos.
Thanks!
Ramabios1967
Although I thought about the game, I have not recalled the game’s name “Parsec” for at least three decades. I spent hours playing it. I started my IT career on the TI 99/4A by learning my first programming language: BASIC. I remember that storage was only limited by the amount of cassette tapes you had on hand. I can recall the sound of the tapes being played back.
I, too, downloaded the shareware version of DOOM from a BBS. I think I was using a 2400 baud modem.
When you mentioned Egghead Software, it brought back memories of time spent there looking a Lotus 1-2-3, Symphony and the wonderful games of the times. Wow! What a trip down Memory Lane you afforded me.
Thanks.
Hello PsiOpsDad. Thank you for bringing back more memories and to meet a fellow “TI99er” I also learned BASIC on my TI99/4A and my dad got me the Extended Basic cartridge to improve my programming skills. This was before he took it away and when it finally stopped functioning. The TI99/4A if I recall had a true 16 bit processor and I also remember using my cassette machine to store files!
I am also happy to hear that you remember Egghead Software and thanks for bringing up Lotus and Symphony. We were big sellers of Ventura Publisher, Corel Draw, Norton Utilities, PC Tools and the original Quicken. One of our biggest sellers was the screen saver program called After Dark. When DOS 5.0 came out, then Windows, and MS Access 1.0, our stores were flooded with customers. The holidays were of course the best times! It was amazing to see all the boxed, shrink-wrapped we inventoried and sold during my time there. It was a great place to work, but the company was not managed well at all. Thanks to your post, I am now really going back into my memory trying to remember old games and application software.
I remember that. It was revolutionary. It did things on the PC that has not been seen before. I could waste a lot of time just watching the screensaver.
I got my TI-99/4A after October of 1981 and once the computer bug bit me, I’ve never been cured.
You are right. In fact, if I remember, it was the first true 16-bit processor for the commercial market at that time. Do you remember the magazine that was dedicated to the TI-99er community? I looked forward to each edition.
Hello PsiOpsDad,
Yep…I remember the old magazine. I would get it now and then and work through the program listings. It was a really cool magazine and dedicated to that machine.
Do you recall the two other personal computers that were popular at that time: The Tandy Radio Shack TRS-80 and the Timex Sinclair? One of my friends had a TRS my dad once brought home the Sinclair.
I remember my dad bought an IBM 286 and at that time, a company called Microprose was releasing some serious simulation games (including F117 Stealth Fighter and I think a game called Red Storm Rising). Another great naval simulation was Harpoon. I spent countless hours on these simulations and war games.
Welcome to OTG! I had both the Atari and Intellivision. I loved Dungeons and Dragons on the Intellivision. I didn’t play games on my pc until my son-in-law bought SWTOR for me as a Christmas gift. Some gift he wanted me to play with him…