I wasn’t subscribing… and you made me remember why, just now: I had forgotten it, but I enjoyed enormously going to the book store to buy them. At the beginning of the month, seeing them all lined up… Ah, the memories!
Here, they were more general magazines, covering pretty much everything, even consoles and computers at once oftentimes. When they decided to go specializing, around 1993-4 I guess? I stopped reading them.
My story is pretty similar to @peacedog’s. The first game I ever owned was Wizardry (1).
My parents bought a slightly used Apple IIe from a neighbor who was upgrading. I think it was 1984, I was about 10. My father worked in technology, so we always had a simple computer around (TI-99, etc), but this was the first Apple we had at home. It was essentially mine.
It came with a clear plastic bag full of software and some manuals. In that bag was Wizardy. It opened an entirely new world to me. 34 years later I still enjoy fantasy role-playing games, whether on a computer or at a tabletop.
I don’t think I did much more than read the manual back-to-back a hundred times, made dozens of characters, and attempted the first level of the dungeon over and over. I may have made it to level 2 a few times. My primary memories are the first hallways, those random encounters, and the first room or two.
But those memories have stayed with me to this day. :-)
It ignited an interest in computers that led to me a career in technology, that has allowed me to travel the world. Every dollar I have earned as an adult, every dollar that has supported my own family, can be traced to that first computer and I would also say to that first game.
Thanks, Dad.
And if that is cheating because its not my own money then I can submit the equally awesome Darklands, which I bought myself when I was in High School. :-)
Overlord circa Christmas 1991 immediately after getting a PC in the house for the first time. I was in my mid-teens and this box called to me from its perch on a shelf at Radioshack. I had to pay half the sticker price and my parents chipped in the other half provided that I installed the game using ‘Keyboard’-only mode so I would get practice in using one.
That game (aka Supremacy) had a great tune.
While my first games were on my parents’ TI-99/4A, the first game I remember buying with my birthday money was Gary Grigsby’s Reforger ‘88, for our Apple IIc. I distinctly remember ripping open the packaging in the car, reading the manual, and thinking “I have no idea what any of this really means”. Still played the heck out of it until the grognard in me fully emerged.
Mine was this game for the VIC20 called Rescue at Rigel…