Assuming you were gaming then, or even alive. I cut my teeth with Jumpman, Spy Hunter and some sort of balloon balancing on unicycle game (I can’t remember the name). This was on a Commodore 64. I graduated to Ultima III, which really opened my eyes to the future potential of gaming. Starflight and its sequel came and went, and then Balance of Power on my first IBM PC. Microprose helped me kill a lot of my teen years with games like Crusade in Europe, Pirates, and Apache Gunship, as did Origin with the Ultima series and New World Computing’s Might & Magic games. I also remember text based wargames from a Canadian company, focusing on WW2. I can’t remember the names, but I know one was about Kursk. Oh, and SSI’s Red Lightning and Pool of Radiance. Talk about classics.
If I had to pick one to experience again, it’d be either Ultima V or Pirates. Pirates was the game where I first experienced the wonders of EGA graphics. 16 colours, amazing.
I had a C64 and was a hardcore pirate back then, or rather, I copied a casette tape from a friend, with 400 games on or such. My favorite games there were International Karate+ and Invasion Normandy, an SSI game I think, which was bloody brilliant.
My favorite game of all time, per the tech level, came out during that period, too: Sun Dog. I’m sure it doesn’t hold up today (apparently the author is thinking about porting it forward to some modern platform), but at the time it was great. One of the earliest hybrid sandbox games that let you either do what you wanted or move forward with the story. Silly 2D space combat mode, but it was fun mixing and matching spaceship parts.
Pirates, Ultima, Zork, Wizardry, Maniac Mansion, Pool of Radiance (kicking off a love affair with the Gold Box games) an unhealthy amount of M.U.L.E. and Elite, and SimCity, of course.
My first gaming machine was a TRS-80 Color Computer. I fondly remember playing Donkey King, Cashman, Time Bandit, and Dragon Slayer all to death.
After that I moved up to an Amiga 500. I can’t imagine how many hours I poured into The Bard’s Tale II: The Destiny Knight, and then, of course, Dungeon Master.
That was an awesome game. Also: Montezuma’s Revenge.
I played all of the old step-based RPGs–Wizardry, Bard’s Tale, Might & Magic. Also loved games like Autoduel, Pirates, and the Infocom games. Starflight and the Ultima games as well, though I didn’t get into those until the early 90s.
I had many of the consoles in the early 80’s, and played a fuckton of games in the arcade. If my friends weren’t at my place paying the Atari, we were at the Putt Putt.
The 80’s where when I really got into computer gaming with my first DOS-based PC. I then got Starflight as my first PC game, and played the FUCK out of that. I then got any space game I could get my hands on. Star Command, Star Fleet, Elite, Sentinel Worlds 1: Future Magic and so many more.
Then I got my first flight simulator with Sublogic’s Flight Simulator shortly after Starflight, followed by Microrprose’s F-19 (which cemented my love for Microrprose) and other sims such as Red Storm Rising, F-15 and many others.
I also played all of the Sierra adventure games up to Police Quest 2, then seemed to lose patience for adventure games, but I have fond memories of playing many of these, especially Kings Quest 3, the first one I played.
So yeah, I played a lot of games back in the day. I plan on going through all the space games again soon, so that’ll be fun. :)
I had an Atari 8-bit, and it along with the Apple IIe lab at school were where I really discovered CRPGs, with Ultima 3 and 4, Wizard’s Crown and Eternal Dagger, Gateway to Apshai, Autoduel, Phantasie II, and Alternate Reality: The City.
I also remember enjoying a bunch of the other classics of the day, like MULE, The Seven Cities of Gold, Silent Service, Racing Destruction Set, Koronis Rift, and Mail Order Monsters.
Police Quest 2 is exactly the game where I lost interest in the adventure game genre. I don’t remember anything about it other than how frustrating it was. I’ve never gotten into them since.
I forgot Bard’s Tale. I used up a lot of graph paper on that one.
Don’t remember too much about my old C64, but I played the hell out of M.U.L.E. and some star fighter game.
On the PC, I started with Zork 1, Wizardry 1 and went from there. So that includes games like Mean 18, Ultima 1, Ancient Art of War, GATO, Flight Simulator 1.0, King’s Quest, Leisure Suit Larry and so forth. None of 'em would hold up today.
I had a C64 as my main gaming computer (I also had a scattering of very low powered microcomputers such as the Jupiter Ace, Oric and a BBC B). The old SSI D&D games were my favourites and I played a huge amount of Dune 2 and Civ when I upgraded to an Amiga 1200.
On C-64 I particularly remember Red Storm Rising, Ultima 2-4, F15 Strike Eagle, AutoDuel and Kampfgruppe. Of course there were many more.
My first PC games were Wing Commander 2 with the added sound pack and Ultima Underworld: II. And hundreds since. Of course I needed my first real joystick for Wing Commander and that was the Thrustmaster.
