Which game made you a gamer, and what technology made you a lifelong enthusiast?

[Lyle K]

I’ve been gaming since the early 80’s and the C64!
The game the sucked me in and has kept me in the same genre is the Ultima series.
But many excellent RPG games have followed:
The Elder Scrolls series
Fallout series
Many variations of D&D
Too many to mention but I wish Ultima would come back!

 

[hrowder]

My first game? Crush, crumble, and chomp on my first computer a Franklin Ace 1000, which for you newbies to this era was an Apple II clone. It was also the first computer I modified by adding a card as large as a modern video card that had 64K of memory on it. Yes, that's 64K, not 64meg. I bought it at a computer tech show in San Francisco when such things were just beginning. However, that got me interested in "getting under the hood" and I forever after built my computers, including my first PC which used an AMD processor and video card. Does anyone remember Aces of the Pacific? One of the first games I modified and for which I bought rudder pedals, and throttle and stick hardware. "HOTAS" was the operative nomenclature for that. Then the original Star Wars game. After we played through it several times, someone online came up with a means of modifying it so we could get together and make up new scenarios and play them out. Lucasfilm who made the original game noticed us playing online but didn't stop us. Instead, they more or less congratulated us on making up new scenarios and introducing new ships (my contribution was an armed freighter and another that served as an "aircraft carrier" parked in remote areas of space to respond to incursions from the evil Empire!) When they came out with the next game, it incorporated many of the things developed by the fans online. Besides those I became a big fan of FPS games like the first Call of Duty and others of that ilk. I never played much online against other players after that, preferring single player experiences, having been soured to multi-player by trolls and louts who ruined those experiences for me, preferring to kill my character to get the chance to kill the "tank" guy in doom after I had weakened him. But I kept building my own PC's and modifying my single player games for my own amusement. I had fun. Now I'm 81 and don't play much anymore. I can't afford to keep up with the hardware demands anyway because of the costs. If I ever get out and buy a lottery ticket and win, maybe I'll build another full on game machine and get back into it.

 

[Funluvncriminal]

BF1942

Desert Combat mod! Those mod makers got hired!

 

[mi1stormilst]

Originally it was my Texas Instrument TI-99/4A that I bought with paper route money at 10 years old from a bargain bin at Sears. Then for almost a decade I forgot mostly about tech due to skateboarding, weed and getting married young. Then I bought an HP computer with an Intel Pentium II 266 MHz for over $3000.00 (1997). A short time later after having discovered PC gaming and forums I went and bought a Voodoo 3 2000 AGP card and put Quake II into hardware rendered mode...BAM!

 

[wiyosaya]

What game made me a gamer was Wolfenstein 3D. What made me a tech enthusiast was building a 21" Heathkit Color TV in 1975.

 

[MSakis]

StarGlider on Atari ST

 

[Raytrace3D]

Wolf 3D, Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Doom, Doom 2, Unreal, Unreal Tournament '99, MechWarrior 2 (NetMech), Warcraft 2, StarCraft, Rise of the Triad, Duke Nukem, Decent, Freespace 2, NASCAR '94, Shadow Warrior, Return to Zork, Myst... lots of games.

 

[Gezzer]

My first serious 8bit was a first gen Atari 800, and I played most of the 8bit classics on it. I was reaching a point in my early 20's were I was ready to move on. Work, life, all that stuff was cutting into my play time. That was until I picked up a copy of the classic Ultima IV Quest of the Avatar on a whim. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_IV:_Quest_of_the_Avatar

It was unlike any of the games I'd played before. Less about reaction time and more about strategy and tactics. Plus the story just blew me away. So I tried to set aside time to play, and it took me a couple of years. But when the end credits finally rolled I felt a feeling I'd never felt before, and I've been chasing that feeling ever since. Some have come close, but none have done it quite like U4. So I continue the search...

 

[Stoly]

Arcade classics such as Ghosts 'n Goblins, Ghouls 'n Ghosts, Final Fight, Splatterhouse and the whole beat' em up family (Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Soul Edge, ...) made me a gamer.

Then came my first home console, the Mattel Intellivision, where I spent countless Sundays playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (terrific game) and a few other titles. My first PC, a 286, turned me into a computer-obsessed nerd, which I still am to this day. On the 286, I used to play cinematic platformers and a few CRPGs such as Eye of the Beholder. After putting my hands on a Pentium 4, my obsession finally became Diablo II. After that: Half-Life 2, and Prince of Persia SoT, and....

Then came emulation. Being able to properly play the original Ghouls 'n Ghosts experience made me cry.

And I could go on for thousands of pages :-D

You could say the intellivision was ahead of its time. It was my first console, not that many games compared to the 2600, but many of them were quite good.

I had the intellivoice accessory. Star Base 1 under attack!!!

My neighbor also had one, so we bought different games so we could share. We played together most of the time anyway.

 

[Luscus]

Ultima Underworld, Syndicate and Dune were my first 3 games that hooked me into games, I have seen how these 3 games spurred a myriad of copy cats that I have followed. I remember not going to sleep and not be able to get up and pee, just one more second, just one more level.....

 

[CapNemo72]

My first thing that brought me to this was not a game. I didn't even knew they existed.
It was just one day, among the comics and magazines that some kids brought to school was one called "Computer World". After I finished with comics, I started checking this since I always loved technology.
I red it probably everyday until new issue came and I asked my mother to give me a money to buy it.
Six months later I got Commodore VIC20 wit huge 3.5Kb of RAM.
And I think I played JetPac or something like that the most.

That things decided my carrier and what I will do in my life.

It followed with C64, then Amiga A500, A1200 (first local multiplayer in F/A18 flight simulation with my friend). On PC, It was Battlefield 1942 that introduced me to actual online multiplayer.

 

[Schiavelli]

The first Diablo back in 1997, and all the franchise later.
And my first 3D GPU, the Voodoo 2 with 8 Mb.

 

[ActualViking]

So many games, so many years.

The hardware:
I started out in the 8-bit era. A neighbor had a TV game thing with variations of Pong, then there where hand held units (one unit = one game with maybe two difficulty levels), the local arcade and then home computers. First a ZX81, then a ZX Spectrum, a VIC20, A C64, a ST, a Amiga and then PC's (which were so expensive back then).

The software:
Lots of arcade games, on arcades and versions of them on the home hardware. Then proper games made for the home hardware. Stand outs: Underworld, Elite, Fort Apocalypse, Lotus Esprit Turbo Challenge, Flood, Stunt Car Racer, Need for Speed, Microsoft Flight Simulator, Fighter Bomber, Sports Car GT...

The game that really took me from being a serial casual gamer to hard core was Unreal Tournament. That game took me to buying better hardware* and better internet connection**, so that I could be more competitive on-line and I would likely have been a pro gamer had the world of pro gaming existed back then.

*Fast PC, best possible GPU and high quality monitor... First a Sony 17SE and then the legendary Sony GDM-F520 (21" CRT able to do 2048*1536 when most made due with 800x600 or 1024x768 on a 14") - that Sony cost me $1.700 back then, in 2026 money that is more than $3K.

**Forget 33.6K dial up, the real deal was ISDN = 2x64Kb lines with 1/3 the ping time of dail-up.

After Unreal Tournament there has been lots more, but never one game that was a daily thing for two or so years. Life happened, as in work, mountain biking, women, a morgage, cars... so much less time to game.

With less time, but more money I did combine PC gaming with console gaming. Going after specific games to maximize fun per hour. The biggest game these last years has been and is GT5, then GT6 and now GT7 in VR.

Sometimes I do retro stuff, either using an emulator on the PC or actual old hardware like an XBOX or my PSP. But many of those games of old are better in memory than re-playing them. I find I remember the best bits and has sort of forgotten the tedious parts, the primitive graphics and so on Still, there are classic titles that do hold up, one is Unreal Tournament [AGUT]

PS. Somehow I forgot Terminator Future Shock. First game I played with mouse-look, seamless outdoor/indoor areas, vehicles you could drive/fly and the sound track from Terminator 2 that sounded amazing with my Roland sound card.

 

[Luay]

I started in the Arcade with Galaga, Dig Dug, Dragon's lair, Mario Bros. in the early eighties, but the MSX is where I truly became a gamer. Konami's Vampire Killer (Castlevania), Metal Gear, Nemesis 2 (Gradius) were my daily obsession through childhood.

Mario Bros. 3 eventually brought me to Nintendo, but it was upgrading my PC from a 386 to a 486 CPU in the early 90s that made me a lifelong tech enthusiast. Suddenly I could replay all the Sierra adventures, LucasArts point-and-clickers, Monkey Island, Dune 2, and DOOM, at proper speeds with better graphics.

That experience, of boosting my own hardware and seeing the difference it made, showed me how gaming and technology go hand in hand. That's when I knew that this was my calling, and that I was never meant to be in cars, bikes, on the streets, or in dates, or any social thing really until my late teen years.

 

[Win7user]

What is with the posting of the novels in this forum? LOL

 

[Aranarth]

Hmm..

Well I loved tanks, pong, and pacman on atari. back in the 80's

But to really turn me into an enthusiast? Playing wolfenstien 3d on a 386.

 

[Athlonite69]

Decent I & II along with Tyrion and Blake Stone

 

[Julio Franco]

Thanks everyone for sharing and commenting, I'll be bringing back the WOF about once a month with more interesting topics for the community to dig into.

 

[toddylad]

B C's quest for tires is one that sticks out, though Shamus was one which had me drawing out maps for the levels

 

[Raytrace3D]

The game that really took me from being a serial casual gamer to hard core was Unreal Tournament. That game took me to buying better hardware* and better internet connection**, so that I could be more competitive on-line and I would likely have been a pro gamer had the world of pro gaming existed back then.

Dude I can so relate to this. I was ranked in the top 500 on NG World Stats for Unreal Tournament. I raked in over 3.2M kills on Facing Worlds alone. lol Those were the days.