Name your first.

[dud]

I'm curious. Name the first game that drew you into PC gaming, not your first game that you played period. I'm looking for that title that hooked you into a habit that (with some of us) may take 10% or more of our lives.

I'll start. The game that hooked me was the original M.U.L.E by Ozark Softscape. At the time I thought it was just ... unbelievable. I started playing it in 1983 on an old Atari 800 computer with three friends (the old 800 had four game ports on the front). I loaded it into memory with a cassette tape drive ... that is until I spent $300 (in 1994) on an 88K floppy drive (yay!). Load times decreased from 3 minutes to 10 seconds!


Well, what was your first?

 

[Genx87]

Secret Weapons of the Lufftwaffe in 1992. Followed by Doom.

 

[Zenoth]

Diablo II

 

[Malladine]

I have to say probably Populous in 1989 was the first officially "PC" game. At least the earliest that really stands out.

Technically though the Amstrad CPC 464 (equivalent to the Commodore 64) was a few years prior to that maybe '85 or so - on that I played Rockstar Ate my Hamster, a game like R-TYPE and a Tolkien game, among others

Ahh the memories

 

[Malladine]

Diablo II

holy crap really? I feel old.

 

[dpodblood]

Can't recall exactly, but it was games like Jazz Jackrabbit, and Hocus Pocus.

 

[Martimus]

I think it would be Space Quest 3. It was the first game I played that I really enjoyed on the PC (I think, it was a long time ago, and my memory has never been good).

 

[rcpratt]

Starcraft. I guess I'm young.

 

[veri745]

Doom and Panzer General

Can't recall exactly, but it was games like Jazz Jackrabbit, ...

Definitely played this one. The Freeware version came on my old Acer. P90 w/ 2MB RAM FTW

 

[Rhezuss]

Baldur's Gate, the first of the series.

Awesome game!

 

[BlueWeasel]

Quake 1

What got me hooked was playing it on the office LAN after work and GLQuake pushed me to get my first dedicated video card (16MB Voodoo Banshee).

 

[acheron]

Probably Castle Adventure.

 

[ayabe]

X-wing and Ultima VII

But I had a Vic20 and C64 before that, lots of Beachhead and GI Joe.

 

[Ika]

probably Raptor: Call of the Shadows.

 

[Maximilian]

Starcraft demo.

 

[CPA]

Some PvP tank game back in 1982. Came on a cassette table, the cassette player was plugged into the computer. Friends and I would play that whenever we could at school for the next two years. Also, there was a crossword game that you could create your own crosswords.

At around the same time, I begged my mom to buy me an Atari (I believe it was the 2600 model). There were two games that grabbed me - the 3 on 3 football game and Indiana Jones. I was so hooked and insistent on beating Indiana Jones I actually wrote the company about a place I was stuck at. They ended up sending me a fold out map of the Indy world, hints to the game and a couple other things. It was pretty awesome.

I also remember a racing game. The track was straight, left to right, and the other cars were in the same spot every race, so it was a matter of just memorizing the car patterns and timing your move. the gamemaker had some kind of contest that if you beat a certain time, photo'd your time and sent it in you would get a prize. Sure enough, I was able to beat the time, but I could not get our Polaroid to take a picture without the TV screen either washed out or a bright flash on the pic.

 

[dpodblood]

probably Raptor: Call of the Shadows.

This too! Very tempted to buy the Win 7 compatible version from GOG.

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/raptor_call_of_the_shadows_2010_edition

 

[KeithTalent]

The Bard's Tale. I was very poor when I was a kid, so had no computer myself, but in elementary school I started playing this at a buddies house and got absolutely hooked. I'd head over there every day after school and play on weekends; I was good enough friends with the family that they would let me in to play even if my buddy was not home. :$

Good lord I loved that game.

KT

 

[akugami]

Console: Super Mario Bros. NES.
PC: Ultima 3.

 

[Homerboy]

I played lots of games beforehand, but the one that knocked me back in my seat and I said "OK... PC gaming is simply amazing" was X-Wing. That game, wow....

 

[Feneant2]

The Bard's Tale.
KT

You and me both my Bard's Tale brother! We had borrowed the game without the book so we were stuck at the place where it eventually asks you a question to answer from a book for years until we finally figured it out.

After that, the other games I've always loved the most that really got me into gaming were the old SSI games in the late 80s and early 90s.

 

[acheron]

This too! Very tempted to buy the Win 7 compatible version from GOG.

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/raptor_call_of_the_shadows_2010_edition

It runs fine under DosBox, I found my original registered version on an old hard drive and played it earlier this year.

 

[skace]

I think it was Moria... not sure. I've been playing video games on a PC since I was a baby.

Sorry, misread the question. However, I've always been hooked... I just kept moving from 1 game to the next. Doom was the game that made me build my first computer though as opposed to using the family computer.

 

[Worthington]

Wizardry (the first one).

Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord

 

[AstroManLuca]

I played a lot of old Mac games but the one I got most into was Escape Velocity by Ambrosia Software. Got it on a CD that came with one of my dad's magazines. I played that game nonstop for years. Lots of people made plug-ins for it as well, new scenarios that either changed little things or sometimes replaced the entire galaxy with a new one.

Played a lot of EV Nova when it came out and it was fun as well, but it didn't have the same appeal. Also, very few major plug-ins were ever released for Nova. It was much more flexible but also a lot more complicated.

Oh, and X-Wing and TIE Fighter. Got the X-Wing Collector's CD-ROM one year for Christmas and the TIE Fighter one the next.