Poll: How Long Have You Been Gaming?

A report released at E3 has concluded what gamers have known all along: the Game Industry is booming, and more than a third of those who play games are adults. Even more are female, and a wopping 60 percent of all consumers are expected to be playing computer games of some sort within a decade. Some of us being old school (my first game experience was on a TRS-80 Level 1 machine), I thought it would be interesting to discover how long everyone else has been at this.
Australian IT

posted by monty · at 11:13 pm · filed under News

 

17 Comments (RSS)

My first PC was a Fujitsu FM-8. I had Decathalon. That was the early 80s. That was followed by an FM-16 an IBM XT and an Atari 2600 (still got it, still my only console).

;)

My first PC was in 1995 and my first PC game was Command and Conquer, but I had been playing the NES since about 1990, so that’s about 12 years. That’s quite scary not that I think about it, I’ve been playing computer/video games for over half my life.

Jeez…I think the first game I played was on my Dad’s old Commodore 64…had about 3 games for it, which was a racing game, an adventure game of sorts (couldn’t complete that sucker either) and an Olympics game.

My first computer was a Commodore 64, but that came long after the Colecovision which I had learnt to play before I learnt to talk =)

 Rowdy McSwaggers 6 years, 6 months ago

I remember playing “Tunnels of Doom” on the old Texas Instruments computer. Had to be loaded with both a cartridge and a tape. And “Bards Tale 2″ on the Apple IIe with orange monochrome monitor. Anyone remember the Sorcerers ‘Dreamspell’. i think the code to cast it was ZZGO. classic stuff.

I started back on the Coleco Intellivision. The games were very entertaining (especially Qbert), and the control pads looked like telephone receivers. From there I moved to C64, Amiga, and finally PC. Most of my favourite games have been on consoles, but I only got my first one (PSX) two years ago. The dance revolution series was responsible for that. :)

An interesting thing I’m noticing more with modern games is that some of the most popular titles are more work oriented. All of those online RPGs, Diablo, the Sims, are games where the player has to plan their character’s lives out, engage in a lot of (sometimes monotonous) tasks to work their way up the ranks, and operate within a trade driven economy. There is already an exchange rate worked out between Everquest currency and the US dollar. EQ players have a higher average yearly wage in real money than people working in China and India. Maybe in a few decades work and video games will find a middle ground, so that productivity tools in manufacturing plants and offices will function more like Online RPGs. Practicing your skill at photocopying may earn you the level of master duplicator. Secretary training courses will replace their generic software with such applications as Typing of the Dead. Workers will be promoted with special effects and a tune, after which they can allocate their hard points into the categories - vacation, raise, and company car.

Is the simple jump-right-in-no-strings-attached game heading for extinction? Probably not. There’s 4 huge consoles on the market, and a lot of people buying them. I don’t have a crystal ball, but I hope the gaming world stays diverse, and that the pie remains big enough for everyone.

I have been playing games since the Vic20 (1984). Just recently I have seen a lot of PcGamers join the ranks of console owners . The reason for these motives are mainly because of high prices for games which most often have more bugs than you can imagine. Plus the constant need for patches and patience. Also all different versions of WIndows do not help the situation plus the drivers you need to keep your system updated, not to mention the hardware too.

The PC game life is coming to an end unless prices drop and some uniformity can be seen.

A friend of mine had a C64 in the 80s. I loved The Ghost Busters game. But waiting for things to load off tape just sucked.

:)

Goonies on the C128 (or whatever the disk loading sequal to C64 was) was a cool game too.

The first gaming machine I owned was the mighty VIC20 - tape drive, 4k RAM, 20k ROM carts (allowing you to play Jeff Minter’s Llamasoft classic “Gridrunner”). Lovingly retyped the code from C&VG magazine for classics like Moon Patrol and prayed as you saved it to tape. Even wrote my own Pac Man using Commodore Basic. Still got the machine boxed up, though the tape drive is dead :-(

Also played plenty of Apple IIe - including the real Castle Wolfenstein, Bolo, etc. Moved on to Amiga, and now PC. My first console was a PlayStation though - very late into the console scene. Oh, other than a dedicated Pong machine for the TV.

My first gaming experience was typing basic games from a magazine into my trusty old Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Now those where the good ole dayz :-) then the real games started coming out like Jetpac, Jet Set Willy and Attic Attack ….

mmmm first pc here was a commodore 64.

then we moved to briz and got an amstrad 2080 (ya know the old 8086)

a little bit after that we got a nes - my bro won a drawing in comp of some sort. he and the other bro were married to the nes (and snes) for the next few years after that … :D

i was never sa good as either of them at sf2 or command & conquer

oh well lil bros do that to you :) memories :D

the TRS 8- was that box that tandy resold wasnt it? i believe its affectionate name was the Trash-80 :) gotta love that

Cheers

OH YEAH! karateka, Loderunner on the IIe and the classic wolfenstein were some of the first games (what i call) REAL games i played. Doom wasnt far off that, or ROTT. some good stuff there!

Man, that was a great game. The weaponry is still the best in any FPS I’ve played. Loved the hotbound sound bites too: “Ahh.. ya got me”.

Crikey… My earliest memories are playing the Dick Smith VZ 300 (or 200 perhaps) with green and black display, and playing pinball machines and the Mr Lo arcade game down at the local shop in Lake Conjola. Which came first, I’m unsure.

First console was the Sega Master System. The original release, where ‘compact’ was a wasted term. @;-) I think Teddy Boy was our first cartridge game, and Tennis was our first card game.

And ROTT still ownz my haus. Playing this multiplayer was deliriously exciting. “Where are yooou?” “Over heee-rreee” “GIMMEDAT!” And Excalibat = ultimate. And god mode. “MMMMmmmmmmm” And turning into a dog…

Meeeemmmmmoorieeeeeeeess…

Been playing games here since about 1978. First major memory was playing handhelds and Atari 2600.

Then it was a progression from Nintendo Game&Watch, C64, Arcade, NES, Amiga500, SNES, Goldstar 3DO, PSX, PC, N64, PS2.

Standout games from memory include The Last Ninja and the Microprose flight sims Gunship and F-19 Stealth Fighter on C64. Double Dragon 2 on the NES was good for its time also. NFS and Wing Commander 3 on 3DO were kick arse.

Wing Commander 3 was one of the best games I played. It took me a full week to get the thing to run (it need 597K of that ridiculous DOS memory to run, and also need a CD-Rom driver which took up just a few KB more than it should), but once it was going I was hooked for months.

Does anyone remember Red Baron (a fantastic WWI flight sim), BioForge an action/adventure about aliens etc. (still one of my Favourite Games™), and Robin Hood (a Sierra adventure that should have been cheesy but was actually atmospheric and intriguing)?

By the way, I stumbled across master game list, a simple little resource others may find interesting, though MobyGames (which all those links are to) seems to have it down as well.

hehehe looks like ROTT definitely wasted bigkidders time at one stage … if someone made ROTT-GL or somethng like that id play it all over again… otherwise … that pixelisation is just horrible :( *barf*

they have a DoomGL around somewhere so surely its possible?

or even better a proper sequel or something. soo much potential for a license i’m amazed noone has picked it up. if they can make DNF to follow up the original nukem (and THAT had heavy Rott influence in the soundbites if u ask me, dont remember now which was first tho) then surely a damn fun licence like rott can do with a freshen up and be popular all over again ..?

where aaareee youuuuuu … *waggles bat*
Cheers :)

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