I had the Atari VCS (which they then renamed the Atari 2600). I got really good at Missile Command. It was like the arcade, but only had one launcher point instead of 3. Yeah, PacMan sucked on the Atari.
Then I got a C64. And hours upon hours of typing the compute code from books or magazines in, then saving them to cassette tapes.
When 5 1/4" disks came along, finally much better games were available.
>LOAD "$",8
Summer Games, Winter Games, Summer Games 2, World Games, Pit Stop, PitStop 2, Racing Destruction Set, Bards Tale and many more. I also did my school computer assignments on it, then would goof off in class.
Edit: Oooh, Beachhead - good call!
__________________
"The problem with any ideology is that it gives the answer before you look at the evidence."
—Bill Clinton
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance--it is the illusion of knowledge."
—Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, former Librarian of Congress
"But the Senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity"
—WKRP in Cincinatti
I had the Atari VCS (which they then renamed the Atari 2600). I got really good at Missile Command. It was like the arcade, but only had one launcher point instead of 3. Yeah, PacMan sucked on the Atari.
Then I got a C64. And hours upon hours of typing the compute code from books or magazines in, then saving them to cassette tapes.
When 5 1/4" disks came along, finally much better games were available.
>LOAD "$",8
Summer Games, Winter Games, Summer Games 2, World Games, Pit Stop, PitStop 2, Racing Destruction Set, Bards Tale and many more. I also did my school computer assignments on it, then would goof off in class.
Edit: Oooh, Beachhead - good call!
Yup, I started with the cassette drive with the one hour loading time, then moved to the 5.25 drive. I remember that the best way to get around copy protection when you wanted a game was to copy the game to disk with a piece of hacker soft and then notch the disk.
I had all of those games.
I also remember that I had the Commodore dot matrix printer that was incapable of doing dropped small letters like p and q so you had to write a piece of software that compressed 9 and used that instead.
I also remember buying the gaming magazines and typing in endless lines of numbers in order to get games.
123 434 566 343 221
125 546 778 326 126
and so on for hundreds of lines.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
One of my all-time fave PC games was Sierra's Leisure Suit Larry series, just for pure cheese value alone. Their titles were priceless ... LLL In The Land Of The Lounge Lizards, LLL In Pursuit Of Love (In Several Wrong Places). Larf.
Yup, I started with the cassette drive with the one hour loading time, then moved to the 5.25 drive. I remember that the best way to get around copy protection when you wanted a game was to copy the game to disk with a piece of hacker soft and then notch the disk.
I had all of those games.
I also remember that I had the Commodore dot matrix printer that was incapable of doing dropped small letters like p and q so you had to write a piece of software that compressed 9 and used that instead.
I also remember buying the gaming magazines and typing in endless lines of numbers in order to get games.
123 434 566 343 221
125 546 778 326 126
and so on for hundreds of lines.
Yeah, I had one of those printers. I was actually thinking about that the other day. A guy at work was trying to look for a font to emulate the output from a mainframe output, and when he showed one to me I thought it looked like the old Commodore print.
A lot of my after school job money want to buying that C64 and 1541 drive.
670 PEEK 45432 ; POKE 54676,32
680 GOSUB 900;
690 ON z GOSUB 540, 560, 600;
Followed by a bunch of "SYNTAX ERROR ON LINE 670" (which weren't bad, they were easy to fix) or the dreaded "SUBSCRIPT OUT OF RANGE"
All to get a crappy game, that you would only play for 1/10 as long as you spent typing it in.
I remember paying $25 for 10 single sided disks. Of course you then get a hole punch to notch the side and turn it into double sided disks.
I think I may still have my old C128 & 1571 drive in my parents basement.
__________________
"The problem with any ideology is that it gives the answer before you look at the evidence."
—Bill Clinton
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance--it is the illusion of knowledge."
—Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, former Librarian of Congress
"But the Senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity"
—WKRP in Cincinatti
Was the first video game I ever owned, and have not played it in probably 15 years, yet I still remember to get 30 lives:
up up down down left right left right B A start. (Select start for 2 players, as my brother always wanted to play too!)
God bless Konami
I was totally going to correct you before reading this line. I must have always been playing two player as well because the 'select' is firmly engrained into that memorized sequence.
And H&L and Ozy, I'm with you guys as well. The last console I owned was a regular Xbox that I played maybe 100x after owning it 3 years. Tony Hawk 2. The last game I ever learned. Just can't get into games anymore.
But if you sit me down in front of an N64 with WAYNE GRETZKY 3D HOCKEY NINETY EIGHT!! or give me a SNES with Zelda or Marioworld, I'm happy.
Hell, on NYE this year my sis had a little party and one of her friends brought a working NES. We played Super Mario until we were too drunk to play anymore. It was awesome.
I loved all the old Sierra games, but was particularly enamoured with the Space Quest series. The 3rd was my favourite.
Chrono Trigger is another awesome blast from the past.
Usually the worst NES games were the ones based off movies. They'd just try to sell them based on the movie hype -- TMNT, Top Gun, Karate Kid, and my most hated of all Back to the Future. That game was just plain awful.
Yeah, I had one of those printers. I was actually thinking about that the other day. A guy at work was trying to look for a font to emulate the output from a mainframe output, and when he showed one to me I thought it looked like the old Commodore print.
A lot of my after school job money want to buying that C64 and 1541 drive.
670 PEEK 45432 ; POKE 54676,32
680 GOSUB 900;
690 ON z GOSUB 540, 560, 600;
Followed by a bunch of "SYNTAX ERROR ON LINE 670" (which weren't bad, they were easy to fix) or the dreaded "SUBSCRIPT OUT OF RANGE"
All to get a crappy game, that you would only play for 1/10 as long as you spent typing it in.
I remember paying $25 for 10 single sided disks. Of course you then get a hole punch to notch the side and turn it into double sided disks.
I think I may still have my old C128 & 1571 drive in my parents basement.
Man I loved my 128 which I bought after I retired my vic 20 and c64 and just before I bought my Amiga.
I remember it had 3 modes, the 64 mode, the 128 mode and the CPM (I think) mode.
I also remember that any programming involved memory paging due to the fact that the Commodores could only recoginze 16 k of memory at a time.
I also remember building a massive superbit map for a game and being frustrated because the machine could only display 8 two colored sprites at a time.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Without a doubt, River City Ransom and Double Dragon II. Two best games as a kid when I was growing up, I must've rented them each about 100 times.
Sometimes I still play River City Ransom.
Hell, my avatar is from that game.
River City Ransom is awesome. I've always liked your avatar. Beat up punks, take their money, and then buy some food. Stone Hands and Dragon Feet FTW!
The other game I'll add is Tecmo Bowl (which was awesome compared to any previous football game), and its successor, Super Tecmo Bowl. STB is one of the greatest games on the planet; I also have Sega Genesis version as well (Super Tecmo Bowl III).
The Following User Says Thank You to tvp2003 For This Useful Post:
NES
Legend of Zelda - an instant classic.
Contra - up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, b, a, b, a, select (if two players), start
SNES
Legend of Zelda, a Link to the Past - Best game of all time, but the following deserve a shoutout
Madden Football - the first
NHLPA Hockey - the first
Got an Atari in 1983 and it was the best moment of my life until my Mom and Dad bought me a freakin Sega Master System instead of a NES in 1987..."facepalm"
__________________
The Sun's not Yellow..it's Chicken.
One of my favorite games on the old pc bar none was Star flight and its sequel Star Flight 2. One of the first open ended quest games with a massive galaxy and a great story line
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
The Following User Says Thank You to CaptainCrunch For This Useful Post:
__________________
"The problem with any ideology is that it gives the answer before you look at the evidence."
—Bill Clinton
"The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance--it is the illusion of knowledge."
—Daniel J. Boorstin, historian, former Librarian of Congress
"But the Senator, while insisting he was not intoxicated, could not explain his nudity"
—WKRP in Cincinatti
