Can you remember...

[doodab]

Various Atari console games, my uncle had one.
VIC 20 game called green meanies I think. Wrote my first programs on that as well.
I had a binatone tv game as well, an orange thing with two joysticks and about 10 games on it.

[bless 'em all]

We had 'TV games' that pre-dated computer games. Basically a knob you turned to move a paddle (or set of paddles for football) up and down while the ball bounced backwards and forwards. We had the lightgun for Skeet too, but that stopped working after my sister dropped it. Took it to the tip a couple of years before ebay took off, and saw one going for a fortune!

My Dad bought one of those for my sister and I - I do remember my Mum going nuts over how much it cost.

I had a ZX Spectrum 16k (we were too poor for me to get a 48k). I bought one from ebay and excitedly showed it to my son - has was not impressed.

[NickFitz]

ping pong in the pub in Bootle when I was 17.

A cabinet that was 5 feet high and 2.5 feet wide

Same here, but it was in the arcade on the pier at Fleetwood. We used to go there for summer holidays when I was very young (in the 60s) and in the early-mid 70s we were up in Liverpool visiting family, and our parents decided to take us up there for the afternoon. I still remember my brother rushing up to me, telling me I had to come and see this amazing machine that was like playing table tennis on a television!

As I believe I've mentioned before, the UK cabinets were called "Ping" because of the connotations of the word "Pong" in British English; and my brother rather irritatingly adopted the habit of shouting "Ping!" whenever he achieved something like kicking a ball past one in the back garden for quite a while afterwards.

Still, a little over ten years later I had my revenge: I was actually doing my dream job of writing computer games, albeit for a minuscule salary, whereas he was stuck miserably in an extremely lucrative position in the legal profession.

Ping!

[hyperD]

First game I played was at school on a PDP-11/23 called Dungeon, or DUNGEO, a text based adventure game. It was probably what got me interested in IT and learning VAX assembler and FORTRAN. Here's a text file of the original game.

Later we had an Atari 2600 console for Space Invaders:



Then I got a BBC micro and played Elite non-stop!



Now it's multiplayer Left For Dead 2 where you can kill zombies with a guitar!

[NickFitz]

First game I played was at school on a PDP-11/23 called Dungeon, or DUNGEO, a text based adventure game.

That's a good point. The "Ping" anecdote I posted above must date from a summer between 1972 and 1975, because from September 1975 I had access to the school's PDP 8/e, and thus a plethora of Teletype-oriented games.

[eek]

That's a good point. The "Ping" anecdote I posted above must date from a summer between 1972 and 1975, because from September 1975 I had access to the school's PDP 8/e, and thus a plethora of Teletype-oriented games.

73-75 because it was only released in June 1972.

[d000hg]

The first computer game you played?

Don't remember the name but it was where you controlled a logo-esque cursor moving around and drawing a line, on top of a starfilled background - if you hit a star or your own trail you died so the aim was to go as long as possible and fill the entire screen up.

Like the motor-bike game in tron but single player.

This was on an Amstrad 1512 which was the first computer I had access to.

The first game I remember being amazed by, also on the 1512, was the original Prince of Persia.

[hyperD]

And some sort of tank game in a pub. Which I didn't play much coz I don't like paying money for that sort of thing.

Battlezone?

[Scrag Meister]

Money Run on the PET.
Defender on the BBC B.
Hero on the C64, along with Way of the Exploding Fist, Hovver Bovver and Revenge of the Mutant Camels.

Back in the day when Jeff Minter ruled.

We were cutting edge at one point with a Binatone console with various Pong like derivatives.

[original PM]

Same here, but it was in the arcade on the pier at Fleetwood. We used to go there for summer holidays when I was very young (in the 60s) and in the early-mid 70s we were up in Liverpool visiting family, and our parents decided to take us up there for the afternoon. I still remember my brother rushing up to me, telling me I had to come and see this amazing machine that was like playing table tennis on a television!

As I believe I've mentioned before, the UK cabinets were called "Ping" because of the connotations of the word "Pong" in British English; and my brother rather irritatingly adopted the habit of shouting "Ping!" whenever he achieved something like kicking a ball past one in the back garden for quite a while afterwards.

Still, a little over ten years later I had my revenge: I was actually doing my dream job of writing computer games, albeit for a minuscule salary, whereas he was stuck miserably in an extremely lucrative position in the legal profession.

Ping!

NO way! My grandma lived in Fleetwood spent many a happy hour on the pier and also the ferry boat arcade fruther round the bay.

But my first computer game was on an Acorn Electron - pretty sure it was Felix in the Factory.
Happy days!