First computer you used to play games

BillSeurer · December 8, 2010

figment said:
Read through your code for kicks and heck its mostly readable and even has comments for the more complicated functions. Not enough for me at the moment to fully grasp what is going on but very cool never the less.

I can't quite figure out what the code does because I haven't used BASIC since 1984 or so. I tried running it using MS Basic on a PC but there are all kinds of errors.

The game was supposed to be you were in charge of a space station defending Earth which was under attack from a fleet of ships. The ships came in from different directions and you had weapons and shields that only covered certain arcs. You could do a limited number of actions each turn: rotate the station, shoot, do repairs, scan (the enemy ship locations were hazy due to cloaking), etc.

I'm so glad that they got rid of numbered lines and goto statements in modern languages as they could be a major pain in the but if you didn't leave enough numbers in the code between statements it could be more of a pain that I just would make a 'subroutine' and goto some high number at the end returning where needed.

I managed to destroy my chess program when I was in college by auto-renumbering it when I wasn't in the "BASIC subsystem". It just re-did the line numbers without changing the GOTOs and GOSUBs. Sigh.

blatantninja · December 8, 2010

Mine looked a bit different, but same thing:

First real computer was:

Philistine · December 8, 2010

First computer I played on was a terminal for the school mini ( I don't know what model - I was 11!). First of my own was a ZX81 when I was 13. Built it from parts and screwed up the soldering so I had to send it away to be fixed. Followed it with the Spectrum, then CBM 64. Logically would have gone on to an Amiga, but P&P games were more attractive at that point in my life. I didn't get another computer until I got my first PC in '96.

dteowner · December 8, 2010

We had Pong (first electronic game in the house) and bought the assembler programming "game" for our Odyssey2 console (technically first computer in the house). I spent a lot of time with a neighbor's TI-99 and the TRS-80 at school as well. The first "traditional" home computer we had was a Zenith with an 8086 chip.

BillSeurer · December 8, 2010

The video game systems don't count! There should be a separate thread for that.

shaf · December 8, 2010

My first Gaming Computer was the C64 followed by the C128 and then the Amiga 1000. ( The Home build ELF II doesn't count because it wasn't a gaming system more a Microcomputer programmer for 1802 code.)

bkrueger · December 8, 2010

Playing moon landing on a programmable HP65 Pocket Calculator in '75 or '76.

Lemonhead · December 8, 2010

I think this was the first computer that I played games on in 1987. My dad brought it home from work and the rest is gaming history. (my own.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_3270_PC
We had an upgraded version with a CGA monitor with 4!!! colours. All in the purple/grey/black range.

booboo · December 8, 2010

C64 back in 1983. Also played on ZX81 at friends (and sneered at their paltry sound ;-). Got a IBM 8088 system (yeah, with no hard drive) much later when I started at varsity, but that had horrible monochrome (Hercules) graphics and that put me off games for years. Eventually bought a fancier PC (286 or 386, can't recall) and discovered DOOM (wow! I thought then), and then got back into games..wasted far too much time since then!

KasperFauerby · December 8, 2010

booboo said:
Also played on ZX81 at friends (and sneered at their paltry sound ;-).

That would be... no sound

HiddenX · December 8, 2010

Apple 2 /PC XT/ C64 / Amiga 2000 / Pentium 60 / ... PCs since then

crpgnut · December 8, 2010

Vic-20 followed by the C-64 were my first owned machines. I'd been playing on school computers before that, but I can't remember what brand they were. Probably an early XT or early Apple. I think my first game was a text adventure at a science center in Oklahoma. I played it while visiting my grandpa. I believe it was called Hammurabi's Law or something like that and you basically controlled a village and your job was to keep the village alive until the next year. I remember I set the center's record for the most years but had to leave before I failed the game because my Mom got hungry

Who knows if my memory is correct though. I figure I was pretty young.

Okay, I actually found a link to it on Wiki. Incredible!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamurabi

Zloth · December 10, 2010

Apple ][+ ... when my parents bought it, I pretty much devoured the manual. One week later, I was a pretty good Applesoft programmer and could even do some simple stuff in machine language. Call -151 for the win!

So who is dis'ing GOTO? I still use that command! It's rare, but once every year or so I run into some logic where it's easier to just jump out of it instead of trying to make it politically correct.

Of course, there can be such a thing as too much.....

PRINT "Instructions lost. Good luck."

Oh hell's bells....

pibbur · December 10, 2010

A programmer had moved to the US with his family. One day his little girl was out playing, when one of the boys got angry with her and yelled at her: "Go to hell". The girl came running, screaming, into their house. "Daddy, he said the ugly word. He said GOTO!!"

Maybe an oldie, but I still like it. A modern version would be something non OO or non functional?

Toff · December 10, 2010

My first console was Pong also.

My first computer was an IBM PC jr.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PCjr

Fear my 4.77 Mhz and 64 kb of memory.

BillSeurer · December 10, 2010

Toff said:
My first computer was an IBM PC jr.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_PCjr

Fear my 4.77 Mhz and 64 kb of memory.

Actually the PCjr has some better-than-normal hardware for the time. IIRC it had enhanced audio capabilities and improved graphics. They had special versions of some games to take advantage of it (King's Quest for instance).

DeepO · December 10, 2010

Or ZX Spectrum+ maybe, I´m not quite sure.
Fav games were Tir Na Nog and Head Over Heels.

skavenhorde · December 10, 2010

Blatentninja and I had the same stuff:

First real computer was the C64.

First console was Pong

Icefire · December 10, 2010

This was my first, but it was an earlier model I believe. A whopping 4k of memory, and a tape recorder for backups.

Cthulhufan · December 12, 2010

Apple ][ / C-64 / *long break* / 486 / everything after

Both the Apple ][ and the C-64 were great but the C-64 definitely had a lot more staying power due to the extensive catalog.

First computer you used to play games

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