First games were in the arcades, as there weren't any consoles then, I am old. :-) Snake, Pong, then Space Invaders, then Asteroids, then Pac Man. Pac Man blew me away, it was the first one with colour, and I convinced my parents to buy me a computer, Hitachi Peach, 16k, 1 x 5.25" floppy drive, 6809 machine. Taught myself BASIC, then a bit of 6809 assembler, which led to a career in IT. Those were the days .. 🙂

@AndreaZzzXXX

5 ай бұрын

alomst the same path for me except my parents bought a 'clone' console with pong 🙂. My first computer was a Commodore VIC 20, I start with basic by myself and .... I still work on IT

@blucat4

5 ай бұрын

@@AndreaZzzXXX My best friend at the time (also still in IT) had a Vic 20, they were very popular. 1.5K of RAM. He managed to write a version of Space Invaders in that 1.5K. The Commodore 64 and then the Amiga were also great machines, I think there's still people using Amigas today.

"Moon Rocket Lander" on my dad's HP-97 calculator. it loaded from magentic card, and the 'display' was printed on a tiny roll of paper. the best part was, though: you could print out the program (on paper, of course).

A baseball game where you picked your players then it typed out a play by play of the entire game. It was played on an IBM 1620. I remember one guy saying "wouldn't it be amazing to see all these guys playing this game" I explained why this could never happen because the memory required for a single image was many times larger than the total memory on this computer. Now not only can you watch, you can control these players in hi-def on a sub $1000 computer.

@TheGreatAtario

5 ай бұрын

On a sub-$200 phone, to be honest

It's so nice you got these changing end of the year compilations that come just from technical reasons. These are fun. I wonder if Mike Pound was excited about Doom Sigil and Sigil 2? The "episode 5 & 6" for original Doom by Romero released recently. They were fantastic. I was thinking that was Matt Godbolt of Compiler Explorer fame and was really excited but couldn't find the episode to check if I was mistaken by the looks and way of soeaking.

@Computerphile

5 ай бұрын

It is that Matt, watch this space! -Sean

Mine was Cyclone, on the ZX Spectrum. :) A very cool game from 1984/5 with a very cool 3D look, search it and see, I was very lucky back then. It was on the same night my father brought our first computer home, and I got amazed how what I wrote appeared on the screen, and at that night we all played Cyclone on our very modern ZX Spectrum 48K connected to the telly, wonderful memories.

The first computer game I ever played was Mike Mayfield's Star Trek, on an ASR-33 teleprinter over a 110-baud acoustic-coupled modem. The computer on the end was a PDP running some variant of BSD.

The first computer game I remember playing a lot and really liking (eg. I sketched down ideas for custom levels on grid paper when I wasn't allowed on the computer) was Clanbomber. In that same era I also played Tux Racer and Big Red Racing and a few other games which I don't remember that my brothers installed.

@Computerphile, how about "What was the first program you wrote that you were proud of?", or "What was the thing that really made you _get_ computing?"

@Markovisch

4 ай бұрын

Everyone would answer "Hello world"? 😅

@frkn4754

4 ай бұрын

​@@Markovisch definitely

@MarianneExJohnson

4 ай бұрын

Who is proud of "hello, world"?!? I wrote a whole bunch of programs before I wrote one that I was proud of. It was a Pong clone for the Commodore PET, which I wrote together with a friend. He wrote the code that set up the playing field, tallied the score, and displayed the score in large numbers, while I wrote the code that animated the paddles and the ball, using an interrupt-driven routine in assembly language. That was something we were both proud of, and while I have of course written far more complex code since then, I remember that Pong game fondly. It was fun to write, fun to play, and it attracted a lot of interest and praise when we showed it off at a regional computer club event. :-)

My first computer game was Leisure Suit Larry on an old DOS computer.

@PKmuffdiver

5 ай бұрын

What a Riot. Loved the first one I played. Lol

First game was certainly pong (on a machine from Sears if I remember). First non-console game was an RPG game called Eamon on the Apple II. Got into programming because of a set of choose your own adventure books with coding puzzles called Micro Adventures. For example, you'd have to write programs to decode messages where the keys were shifted left to figure out your next choice. The solutions were in TRS-80 BASIC, but we only had a Time Sinclair 1000 so I had to learn to convert the code to work on the Timex machine.

Made my own first game on the TI-99/4A in BASIC. Started with tic-tac-toe, but that was boring so it quickly evolved into a version of Asteroids, but that was very complex for BASIC code so I changed to my own early version of Scorched Earth (artillery simulator). Side note: Made an AI simulator on the same system, (just if-then Q&A). Submitted it to the school science fair and was disqualified because the local teachers wouldn't accept that I wrote it myself. They said my dad did. So teachers, give kids a break and credit for no-life learning skills they're passionate about.

@josh-rz3uq

4 ай бұрын

Teachers are generally morons.

The first game I remember in detail is Pocket Tanks on a classic Vista machine, white tower & CRT and everything. I would play against my siblings, fun times.

- Pong... of course. A lot of games that I forgot. But I remember Mindshadow on our Atari ST(That's not the gameconsole from Atari).

First game I remember was Elevator Action on the C64. I was in absolute awe. It was my older cousins C64 and I absolutely peppered them with questions which they were very patient to answer. I was 4/5 so this would have been 1986/87. I got a secondhand C64 for Christmas that year and the first game I played was Ghost 'n' Goblins.

First computer experience was „Summer Games“ from Epyx on a Commodore C64. My first ever PC game was „Zak McKracken and the Alien Mindbenders“.

First one I played was Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins for the Game Boy. The first one I remember seeing was one of the Sonic the Hedgehog games for the Sega Genesis. I also have distinct memories of watching my parents and babysitters play the 16-bit Microsoft Entertainment Pack games on our Windows 95 Gateway computer.

Everyone is talking about PC based computer games - the history goes back much further. My first two games were 1) Pong - on our home TV and 2) Asteroids - on a ray-traced screen in the Standford Student Union. This version had a star in the center that you had to orbit around and that made it quite challenging.

My first game is Pong on the Atari 2600. later was Pac-Man and Pitfall. They were simple but so fun.

Got my first computer in 1983. Apple IIe. So any number of Battlezone, Spy hunter, Lode runner, the first Wolfenstein. First console was an Intellivision. Utopia, Burgertime and many others.

Mine was Colossal Cave Adventure on a PDP-11 in 1979.

Huh, Matt Godbolt? Can't remember seing him on any episode. Is it still to come? 🙂

@Computerphile

5 ай бұрын

Yes soon -Sean

My mother bought an Atari 800 when I was very young, and the first thing I can remember playing on it was Galaxian when I was around 4 or 5. We had it hooked up to a little 10" black and white tv - I didn't even know the 800 could display color until I was about 8 years old and that little tv died and we had to pick up a replacement at a garage sale. I have that 800 to thank for my current career as a software developer - we had the BASIC cartridge on it and a few games we used it for loading from cassette. We didn't have a manual and I had to get my mom to load them for me because I couldn't ever remember what the command was, but I figured out in 2nd grade that if I typed in my math homework problems at the BASIC prompt it would give me the answers. I never looked back.

Mine were Pssst and Metro Cross on a locally produced Eastern European unlicensed ZX Spectrum clone sometime around 1993-1994.

My first game was Collosal Cave Adventure. Wasted hundreds of hours on it! But in the end I was carried off by the elves into the sunset.

The first game I played on the computer was Bagels, followed by Star Trek on an HP minicomputer with a teletype in 71 or 72, followed by Pong when it came out.

The first game I played was in my uncles college on a teletype connection to a university computer. It was noughts and crosses. It used a lot of paper! This was 1976.

@iabervon

5 ай бұрын

I think mine was probably adventure (Crowther and Woods) on a teletype to my father's work's mainframe. Much more beneficial to be able to look over earlier game sessions than a lot of other games. Funny to think that when I first wanted to scroll back, I had to unroll paper from the stick it was wrapped around.

So many ways to answer this. First video game: Pong. First computer game: Either Hunt the Wumpus or Star Trek played via school teletype via timesharing on a DEC PDP-11, when I was in eighth grade. First game played on an actual computer in the same room as me: Would have been one of several BASIC games from a book, hand-coded into a Commodore PET. First commercial, published computer game: One of several cartridge games on a TI-99/4A, the one we played most often was Parsec. First game on a computer of my own: When gifted with an Atari 520 ST in my mid-20s, I promptly went out and bought two games, Falcon (a flight sim) and Dungeon Master, so one of those. First multiplayer game: Isle of Kesmai on Compuserve. First graphical MMORPG: Everquest.

Star Trek 1969 of course. I played it in 1973 on Russian PDP-8 look-alike. It was little strange, because Finnish TV did not show Star Trek. What are Klingons and Warp Jumps?

Pitfall on an 8088..an ascii character is falling downwards and you have to catch some symbols while you have to avoid the walls. Now thanks to this video i feel in want to play blockout again.

I feel so old. Pong. Followed by Tank Attack. Both on very early Atari systems. Then when I got a computer: Monster Maze. The first game I got addicted to was probably Manic Miner on the Speccy.

Scorched Earth on my parent's 386. Amazing game still today.

1987 Giana Sisters on the C64, not only a game but a long journey into computing and anything related to, it is my passion and became a way of life till now. 👾

Mine was The Incredible Machine on MS-DOS. Later on a few family members, including my parents, started playing Quake which captivated me so much I later started creating levels for, before discovering Half-Life. I have invested much of my time in those classic FPS games that came out of the 90's era.

The first game I played was probably some pong clone console I played in some east german youth camp during the late 80's but also the only east german arcade machine "Polyplay" that had various different games. One of the games was the usual pac man clone "Hase und Wolf" ("hare and wolf" based on the russian cartoon series "Nu, pogodi!"). That game and various other clones of western games (like Lode runner, Sokoban, Boulder Dash etc.) I also played at school on the east german Z80 based (powered by an unlicensed Z80 cpu clone U880) home computers KC85. But I never owned one of these myself. My first computer at around the early 90's was of course a C64 and the first game I bought and played on it was "Sailing" from Activision.

I love asking my guests that question, cause I own an FPGA Mister and can pull it up and see their reaction.

2:22 I had the same problem with A Link to the Past as a kid! Didn't know English, had no idea what any NPC was saying, and the one thing you can't just guess is how you unlock the bird.

Paratrooper, Karateka, Badstreet - all in one day in very short sessions, it was local computer club in 1990 and the room was crowded with kids eager to play on !!!COMPUTER!!! 😀

Born in '99 here. I remember playing Arctic Adventure, Balloon Fighter and Ice Climbers in my uncle's modded NES

My first game was Thro' the Wall on my Sinclair ZX Spectrum in 1982.

First game I played would have been a text adventure game on an Acorn Electron called something like magic colours or colour magic or similar, which may or may not have been commercially available. First definitely commercially available game I played would have been either The Addams Family on the Atari ST (which we had at home), or Martello Tower on the BBC Micro (which was at school).

"Duck Shoot" was demonstrated to our primary school class on a Research Machines 380Z around 1979 - The most amazing thing i'd ever seen !!!

The first game I played myself was pong. The first game I wrote myself was an Araknoid clone. ETA: first PC game was Blockout; my teacher let me play it on his personal PC when I was done with my assignment. Thanks again Roel for guiding my interest in the PC and now my job as a programmer.

Pitfall. My oldest brother got an Atari with a few games. I was under 5. Pitfall is the only one that's still in the memory bank. First computer game was an old dos Star Wars game where you fly an x-wing, y-wing or a-wing on missions. Don't remember what it was called.

Snipes for Novell. My dad set it up and it even had multiplayer with multiple computers.

i think mine was from encarta encyclopedia it was a puzzle game and u had some matches like the ones u light for a fire and i played it while learning new things and the first game i installed myself was hercules.... and what i had to do was to change the installation from the cd-rom to the actual hdd. i figured it out myself i was very proud lol.

Late 1975 early '76. Wrote a text-only artillery battle in Basic on a teletype, written to punched paper tape, before then going on-line via phone+acoustic coupler to York Uni's Elliott/ICL 4130😀

My memories from back then aren’t particularly in order. We had a NES with a pirated cartridge with 300 games on it so basically any nes game may have been it. We also had an Atari and my abiding memory of that was, I think Nebula. Definitely started with an N. It was a frog working up a rotating tower and avoiding enemies and then there were bonus levels in a submarine. Definitely remember Prince of Persia on cousins’ computers. The one on my dad’s computer was PSI5 and that’s the one I always go with because it made no sense to me but my brother was “really good” at it (read: understood a game loop)

Pong for me, then The Hobbit on Sinclair Spectrum... damn I am old :)

I remember playing Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt on the NES, though I don't know if those were the first games I played. I also remember playing a couple of kids' PC games, "Putt-Putt's Fun Pack" and "The Time Warp of Dr. Brain". But later on, I specifically remember when my friend got an N64, and seeing Super Mario 64 for the first time with its 3D graphics blew my mind. ...and yes, Pokemon, lots of Pokemon 😁 That Pokemon Red/Blue/Green/Yellow music is burned into my brain in the best way.

It must have been Thro' the Wall (breakout), which was on the bundled ZX Spectrum cassette. A friend had a Commodore 64, I remember Loco from there at about the same time.

Adventure on a VAX, mid-70s

The first game I remember seeing at a store was the original version of Pong but that was not a computer game. The first games I remember playing was Adventure and Hack. I played the (Crowther and Woods) text game Adventure via a LA36 Decwriter terminal connected via an acoustically coupled modem to a computer somewhere. Probably a PDP or Dec machine but I don't remember what it was. Hack came a short time later but was played off the same computer but this time via use of a VT series terminal. I think it was a VT100.

It was a best of Arcade collection on my dads power pc probably around '98 or '99, the three I remember were missle command, defender and galaga (or galaxan). Then we got a n64 and starfox took over my dad completely.

Oldest one I remember playing was the Hitchikers Guide to the Galaxy text based adventure on Atari 800. After you got stuck for too long it would lock you out and tell you were stupid!

My first game was Robot Karel. A programming game where you instruct a robot to move around a 3D isometric space and place tiles and blocks.

Age of Empires 2 and Pilot Wings were a couple of my favorites

I think it was Star Trek on a 6502. Or, The Wumpus, whichever came out first.

Not sure if it really counts, but Rogue, which spawned a whole genre, is the first one I remember playing. First more graphical one I can remember, which I still play from time to time, would be Ultima IV.

I remember getting the lion king not sure if that was my first game. Also remember some of the very early f1 games. Also had a very early flight simulator as well.

StarCraft brood war, Absolutely floored me I played every second I could. I learned how to build a PC out of spare parts just to play more when I was 10.😂

1979, either a (Fortran?) Star Trek simulator on a PDP-11 or a Lunar Lander game on a TRS-80 Model 1. Can't remember which was first.

Would battleships, or lunar lander on my dad's TI-58 programmable calculator count? if so had to manually key in in the example assembly language listing and had translate numbers returned on the 7 segment LED display into ones own graphics, using graph or squared paper. Otherwise it would be one of the ampack games that came with amstrad cpc464. Probably Roland in the Caves.

My first computer game was the text based ADVENTURE which I played on my work PDP-11 (RSX11M) in 1978 I think though it might have been later. It was brought back from a DECUS conference.

First computer game was Super Mario Bros on the Commodore 64 but the first PC game I really got into was King's Quest IV by Sierra Games

Space Monster in about 1980 on the Philips G7000.

hunchback on my dads dragon 32 was the first game I remember playing.. I must have been around 3 maybe 4

I was a wee tot in the 1980s, and at home we had an old AT&T 8085/8086, booted DOS 2.0 (ish) from 5.25" Floppy disks. First computer game I ever played on that machine was an old Sierra game called Donald Duck's Playground, and yes, I can still hear that annoying 2bit background music in my head just thinking about it...

For me, the first one was some of the microsoft entertainment pack ones. Probably ski free. Or minesweeper. I enjoyed both of them greatly. If there was solitaire in 3.1 it may have been that too.

Wizardry was the one I played a lot as a kid on the Apple ][+. I loved that game!

hmmm earliest I remember: MSDoS Bomberman, Diskworld .. or Sega Genesis Sonic 1-3, Dr.Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine (= sonic themed Puyo Puyo), Pitfall, Alien Storm. Played the heck out of those games finshing them all many times (except Diskworld iirc, that was too complicated for young me) Probably a few more I don't remember and not sure which of those was my first.

My first video game was probably the tank game on Atari 2600... or maybe asteroids. I'm not sure anymore. The one I REALLY remember was when my parents were going to a party at a friend's house and dragged me along. The friend had a nice computer with Doom. I can still remember how completely blown away I was. I've been primarily a PC gamer since then.

Blimey I feel old, Ping Pong, early/mid 1970s, the first arcade machine... But then loads of Commodore Pet games and everything since, so actually that's great!

'Duck Hunt', Nintendo NES.

Moonlander on a DEC GT40. About 1974.

My first PC game was Skyrim bought by an aunt for my birthday back when it was new and shiny lol, probably Tony Hawk Underground for consoles

My first memories are my brothers Sega Master System with Action Fighter or Super Mario Bros 3 on NES as that's what my cousins had. Though I more fondly remember our first pc a pentium ii with some ati video card, i played lego creator and tie fighter on it.

I remember renting a copy of Pilotwings 64 from Blockbuster. It was a fun game.

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on SNES was my first in the early 90s.

My first games were on ZX in 1992: River Raid, Lode Runner, Batty (Arkanoid like)

I don't remember the name of it, but it was on my dad's Mac Classic (the OG 1984 model). You picked one of like four or eight characters (I liked one of the two(!) robots but I can't remember if it was the mostly-white "good" one or the mostly-black darth-vader-looking (or at least that's what I see in my head *now*) "bad" one), and then you went through a maze to do... .stuff? I remember once my dad's coworker brought HIS over and they got them connected somehow (in the late 80s, so probably AppleTalk or some precursor) and his kid and I played a VS round. I'm pretty sure you could shoot bombs, too. (Edit: having now watched some of the video, that "Monster Maze" game looks REALLY REALLY REALLY similar but mine was definitely on the Mac Classic. Maybe a port or derivative?) First one I _really_ remember was MYST. I beat that game with exactly *one* hint that my dad found on some BBS for me; had to do with the trick to the elevator in the Mechanical Age (or, as I called it, "the gear world"). I'd played other games before - you know, number munchers, oregon trail, other edutainment titles like that, plus my friends had consoles like the SNES so I'd gotten my LTTP and SMW on - but MYST was the first one that *I* completed. Holds a special place in my heart, that one, even if it DID get usurped somewhat recently by Outer Wilds. :)

The Settlers 2, on a MS DOS computer 🙏

Oregon Trail, on a Teletype Model 33 connected to a MECC computer

It is scary how many of these games that I have played. I probably never knew the name of many of them.

Police Quest series and Hell: a cyberpunk thriller

First game I recall, Space Invaders 👾 Console, Donkey Kong. First FPS, Wolfenstein. First network PvP, Warcraft

You could ask the first programming language people used (and why)

@derdilla98

5 ай бұрын

Favorite language was last year iirc

Pong on the TRS-80, or maybe Taipan. I don't recall which came first.

First computer game: Star Trek on a Teletype terminal (110 baud) remotely attached (phone) to a mini or mainframe computer of a local school system. Everyone you asked is so young! 😂

Eventually I realized I can age people from their answers! Are they all professors? So good to see some younger professors there! Btw just realized that everyone looks so ageless that I need this trick to figure out if they're late 30s or 50!

+1 for Blockout!

Tic-Tac-Toe on a mainframe with no monitor. The game was played with keyboard and printer. In 1973.

My 1st would have been on the original Atari (my cousins had one, and we visited them) in the late 70s or early 80s. Probably it was in the pack of games you got with the base system. Might have been Pitfall.

Hmmm... It's a very good question.... My fist game was probably space invaders or a pong on an intellivision clone. However the first computer game i really got into was Snapper, a pacman clone on the Elk.

A game I recall with an effect similar to the t-rex one mentioned is Skull for the ZX Spectrum, kind of scary and impressive in all its limited circumstance. But I never ever managed first person games, I just get lost immediately...

Mum went into major debt to purchase an Olivetti 286 running DOS to do an accounting degree, My brother was right into it and wasn't long before we were both playing Leisure Suit Larry

@Computerphile

5 ай бұрын

Very similar story in my house, my mum also borrowed to buy an Olivetti 286 for university and someone lent us a floppy of Leisure Suit Larry! -Sean

doom still holds up! and there's been 30 years of new levels being made, some of the best ever in just the last couple years

11:12 Someone have created portals to the hallway on background

The first computer game I played was Poker on a PDP-11 in late 1975 or early 76. The games library on that machine had about 30 games including Hammurabi (a game like Oregon Trail meets Civilization) and The Tower of Hanoi. The first game I owned was one I wrote in BASIC around 1978, a guess-the-number game much like the old game Mastermind but instead of colours I used 4-digit numbers. The first game I bought was The Sands of Egypt. I never got much into action or FPS games favouring adventure and puzzle games. I'm not against playing them, but I am against using anything but a PC for games. I'm currently addicted to Terraforming Mars.

My first games were Moria (1983), Hack (1984), Castle Adventure (1984), Kingdom of Kroz (1987), and ZZT (1991). Now, I am into game like Oxygen not Included and Rimworld.

My earliest game I remember was duck hunt on the NES, then Yoshi's Island on SNES