Which game got you into CRPGs?

Darth Tagnan said:

Also, the phones of today can play games that are way more sophisticated and pretty than some of the best CRPGs of my youth

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many times i've wondered how i would react to seeing for example Witcher 3 as a kid (used to C64 graphics). The first reaction would obviously be that its a scam, its not a game but some kind of movie with life-like models, stop-motion or something, it would confuse the hell out of me …then when i realize i can control the character and go anywhere in this large world, that it's in fact a 3D computer game(!), well, i would probable have died and went to heaven on the spot.

vurt said:

many times i've wondered how i would react to seeing for example Witcher 3 as a kid (used to C64 graphics). The first reaction would obviously be that its a scam, its not a game but some kind of movie with life-like models, stop-motion or something, it would confuse the hell out of me …then when i realize i can control the character and go anywhere in this large world, that it's in fact a 3D computer game(!), well, i would probable have died and went to heaven on the spot.

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Haha, yeah.

My first recollection of a game was a "horse racing" game on the ZX-81.

It was a black and white title with something like 6-7 letters (A, B, C, etc) moving from one edge of the screen to the other in a randomized order.

You would bet money on the winner - and you'd win if your letter came first.

That was it!

Haha

I can play KotOR on my phone and have it run better than it did on PC at release - with full speech and everything!

Darth Tagnan said:

Haha, yeah.

My first recollection of a game was a "horse racing" game on the ZX-81.

It was a black and white title with something like 6-7 letters (A, B, C, etc) moving from one edge of the screen to the other in a randomized order.

You would bet money on the winner - and you'd win if your letter came first.

That was it!

Haha

I can play KotOR on my phone and have it run better than it did on PC at release - with full speech and everything!

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the first game i saw and played was Pong. I can't remember my exact reaction to it but it didnt exactly blow my mind yes seeing KOTOR and on a phone back then, wow, it would've been in the realm of fantasy and magic.

I honestly found both Pong and Space Invaders utterly amazing. Gimme quarters!!!

Gothic, followed by Morrowind and Baldur's gate 1 & 2. This was my entry level education to crpgs. I still love those games.

Althought it should be said that I had seen Baldur's gate on a friend's pc when it was released, but I never got to play those games then myself. I'd have probably loved them a lot since I used to play pen&paper DnD on saturdays with few friends. And heroquest was an other fantasy flavour tabletop game we used to play when we were kids… I loved lord of the rings and everything Tolkien wrote as well. Not to mention those conan the barbarian fantasy novels… So actually it is no small wonder that I ended up liking computer rpgs.

BG2 was definitely the first real RPG I played, and still sits in my top 3.

Darth Tagnan said:

So, which game made you into a fan of the genre and why?

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Well, my very first RPGs were

- Lands Of Lore 1 (remains unfinished to this day)
- Schicksalsklinge (the German original of Blade Of Destiny)
- Albion

But it was only the middle one which really got me into RPGs. It had so much "newness" around it : A new world, exploration, unknown reactions (of NPCs and of foes alike) … Plus, it was a story told. well, at least to some extend.

As I always say, I'm rather coming from the Adventure Games area, and stories are the most important thing to me. A game must have at least some sort of story, or it will bore me too no end, so to say - which Blizzard managed to do, altjough I was quite hooked there at one point.

I just wished people would long for stories as well - I'm seeing fewer and fewer adventure games these days, and humour dying out. No humour, please, it's intoxicating.

Gothic 1 was a real … new experience, but it was hard, harsh and grim. It had an interesting story, but I never managed to play it to the end.

Divinity 1 aka "Divine Divinity" was another game which had influenced me. But then I was already a member of the forums there. We started to write our own stories there.

It's kind of interesting to see that too much combat turns me off. The almost only games which I have finished to this days are all adventure games. I have finished very few RPGs.

Edit : My very first non-RPG games were

- The Blues Brothers (jump & run game)
- Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis (Adventure)
- Comander Keen IV & V (jump & run game)
- later The Secret Of Monkey Island aka MI1
- several demos, like the demo of Micro Machines 1 and of the Beauty and the Beast disney game

well … there were some more, but I don't remember them anymore right now …

Besides, I never had any computer prior to my 486SX25

Lands of Lore and Albion are all excellent games, well worth playing even now and great games to get inducted into computer gaming with.

Lands of Lore 1 and System Shock for me. Well yes, I had played Hillsfar, but that was Amiga ware.

Ultima I and Wizardry I… I had to fight to play 'em on my high school's Apple II during lunch hour and after school. Most of the time I just watched others have all the fun. Later I convinced my dad I needed a C64 for school, and finally got to finish my first RPG, Ultima II. It wasn't easy… just like in high school I had to fight to use it; my dad was hooked on Jumpman.

A combination of the Quest for Glory games, Elder Scrolls: Arena and Betrayal at Krondor. Played on an IBM PC that my dad got to take home from work. Good times!

I have an embarrassing story to relate about Ultima 6 on my C64 the year it came out (1990?). I bought it new full price (something like $30, a princely some back then for a teenager) from the same place I had rented my first RPGs a few months earlier. I was not familiar with any of the previous Ultimas but it seemed damn sophisticated and elaborate what with the 8 5.25" disks and cloth map and a little piece of black onyx included in the box that was suppose to represent the moonstones I guess.

During the course of the game I noticed these HUGE heavy pixels starting to slowly cover and darken my screen. I was convinced my 1541 disk drive (oh, and I had to eventually abandon Ultima VI on the C64, btw, because of all the slow loading and fucking TEDIOUS disk swapping) was starting to fritz out so I opened my drive up and rather sloppily applied machine oil to the rails. TOO much oil because every disc I inserted into it forever after came out with a big smear of oil on it (I apologize to Centsible Software and all the rented disks I returned with oil stains). Nothing changed. Still got those HUGE heavy dark pixels slowly covering and darkening my screen the longer I played. It was the day/night cycle of the Ultima 6 engine on the C64. Me dumb.

Sounds like some of the earliest DOS viruses to me ... :lol:

I did play a little Temple of Apshai but, frankly, it was horrible. Ultima 2 would be the first CRPG for me. I guess if you drop the C from CRPG it would be Atari Adventure (action adventure for sure - maybe even immersive sim).

(Way off topic but I just found this Adventure Post Mortem by Warren Robinett. Interesting to programmers mostly to see how he fit a whole game into 4K of ROM and 128 bytes of RAM. I expect the little RPGWatch tower icon in your browser tab uses about 4 times as much memory! )

I think my first RPG ever was Hillsfar. My parents got it for me for the C64; it came out when I was 8; think I was probably 9 or 10 when I got it. Didn't have any prior familiarity with RPGs or D&D back then so I loved it; especially creating characters for it. Of course in hindsight I know this is not a great RPG (more of a collection of minigames), and quite possibly SSI's worst game but hey I had no frame of reference so it was fun. Unfortunately I was never able to get the Gold Box games for my C64 (only had an opportunity to play those later on PC), nor do I think I got any other RPGs for it... But it was something I would play on and off for a few years until I managed to complete it for each class.

In the early 90s I eventually got consoles NES & Genesis shortly thereafter so next RPGs I played were JRPGs....

Alas, it wasn't until the mid-to late 90s, when we got a PC that I was able to play another CRPG... I think Fallout 1 and 2 were probably the two that really got me deep into the genre and of course by then I was old enough to really seek out games on my own... Though after moving out of my parent's place I went several years w/o having a PC again I was always looking for games like Fallout.

So I will say both Hilsfar and Fallout.