I’m pretty sure the first new game I bought was:
After having played 2 or 3 other Infocom games that friends gave me.
Yes, yes. Allowance money is your own money still, so it counts!
Awesome story.
The first game(s) I bought when I got my PC (ostensibly for the purpose of “studying” but really because I fell in love with Doom 2 in the computer labs, playing with my buddies) was two fold, and both were amazing games that I played on and off for years and years. I got them at the same time, the day I got my computer (which I had to take a loan out to purchase, back in the heady days of 1995).
SimCity
Project A is outstanding, Jackie Chan at literally the top of his form. Project A Part 2 is even better, featuring a kind of terrifying stunt that’s a homage to Buster Keaton.
I’m pretty sure that the first compiter game I ever bought was the original subLogic Flight Simulator for the TRS-80. Sort of like the C64 version posted above, but at lower resolution, and monochrome. It was barely playable.
Most of the cool kids had a gameboy, I had an Atari Lynx. I think the first game I bought was on that system, and was Chips Challenge that also played a lot better than the Windows Entertainment Package version. Another possibility could have been Desert Strike for the Lynx and it played a lot worse than the PC version.
PC game wise, the first I bought with my own money was Diablo.
Also, no regrets about the Lynx, it had some game titles that I still hold dear to my heart.
I almost didn’t. I bought most of my C-64 games from “Protecto” (a mail-order company with amazing catalogs). I wasn’t reading Computer Gaming World yet, so I mostly learned of games from the few reviews in COMPUTE! and based on what was advertised in it. Anyway, Protecto had descriptions of games in their catalog. The description of MULE emphasized its multiplayer. I was afraid it was multiplayer only and almost didn’t buy it. I was super happy when I did!
SimCity! In 1989 or thereabouts. I played it on a little computer with a black-and-white screen.
Mac floppy disk version. Didn’t play the awesome all voiced version until way later.
Also, having no internet and only a passing knowledge of the English language back then, it ook me several years until I finally was able to get through the damn clock puzzle.
It remains one of my favorite games ever.
That is some serious bait-and-switch.
Not that Zork isn’t a great game, but that cover art…
Much as it seems absurd these days that anyone would buy an Infocom game and not know what they were gettting, it does seem possible that someone might have grabbed the box and bought it without doing their homework.
“Hey Gladys, this game ain’t nothin’ but words! I’m calling the governor.”
Mine was probably SimCity at a school book fair. The clerk said it was educational, so my mother let me spend my book fair allowance on it instead of a book. It was a great game and all, but its educational value was dubious, only teaching kids poor urban planning habits like grid-systems, segregated zoning, and four-way intersections.
For me it was Chaos on the Spectrum 48k. Great game. I still haven’t bought the remake. Maybe I should get on that?
It was either Autoduel, Parthian Kings, or Bard’s Tale II for the Apple II+. I had so much fun with those when I was a kid.
Civilization. Saw a guy at work playing on his lunch break and the rest was history.
1985: my brother’s hand-me-down Atari 400 (thanks, John!) and a black and white tv. Walked into a computer store and plucked this new game off the shelf. I bought it because of the weight of the box and a enthusiastic salesman who told me I made a good choice. Still in my top ten list today.
Bought for my own money, or just played?
The first computer game I ever recall playing was (besides Paint on my fathers laptop that was black & orange, instead of black & white) was a scuba diving game for my tiny little (the screen that is, the computer around it was enormous) black & white Macintosh called “Mouse Practice”
And thus began my love for adventure games.
Other than that, I can’t really recall the chronology of things, but I played Atari at my cousins house, and Gabriel Knight at a friends house.
I think the first computer game I ever bought for my own money was some kind of horror version of Alice in Wonderland at a flee market in Russia. I don’t think I ever managed to install it though. Lol.
Edit: Thus being the first game I ever bought and actually played must be The Sims 1.
Wing Commander 2, and NHL hockey (weird, right?). Followed closely by WC Privateer2. I’d like to say that was the time when I suddenly gained a conscience and had pocket money to spend… but rather they were games that either my friends weren’t passing pirated copies around of, or that were video heavy.
My real decision to stop pirating had me buying Myth:TFL, Fallout, and Mech2:Mercs --which is also the first game I returned, for some weird audio problems, but also for some reason I was disenchanted with (not different in gameplay enough from MW2 maybe?) They would only do an exchange for me, given that I had opened the box, so I took the exchanged one from the guy in the PC aisle and turned it in at the returns, unopened, to get my money back. Guess it was the first time that loophole was used…