Originally Posted by danutz_plusplus
I keep hearing Josh Sawyer, the dude from Obsidian, praise that one. I tried it once, but could not get past the ancient feel of it. Or maybe I just wasn't in the mood to battle an old-school interface. Maybe when I'm retired.

The combat is pretty horrific. It was bad even in 1992. But most of the game plays like a choose your own adventure story with a purely text interface, so 90% of the game would age unusually well.

Hmm..believe I still have the original Fallout and Baldur's Gate. That's about it.

So 1990-1999 would be my answer.

Originally Posted by wolfgrimdark
Baldur's Gate first version I still have in a box. That is my oldest, so 1998.

I doubt if I still have the box, but I think I have the 5! CDs that the game came out on. I couldn't believe how many there were.

I remember Ultima IV had 8 floppies on the C64 and that you'd have to swap them every time you changed location. Lord British' Castle (load) Step outside (load) 14 steps to the town of Britain (load). This was considered normal and totally acceptable. It typically took 3-5 minutes to load the game on each swap too.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
I doubt if I still have the box, but I think I have the 5! CDs that the game came out on. I couldn't believe how many there were.

I remember Ultima IV had 8 floppies on the C64 and that you'd have to swap them every time you changed location. Lord British' Castle (load) Step outside (load) 14 steps to the town of Britain (load). This was considered normal and totally acceptable. It typically took 3-5 minutes to load the game on each swap too.

Ah, I remember that well, but back then I didn't seem to mind it. How far we have come!! Phantasie 2 was my first rpg for the C64 and QFG 2 my first for a PC. I never get rid of old games even though my PC no longer has a disk drive for floppies or CD's!!

Originally Posted by Corwin
Ah, I remember that well, but back then I didn't seem to mind it.

I don't remember it taking that long, but then again when I first got my C64 I used a tape drive, so maybe I thought the floppy drive was really fast in comparison.

I have a copy of Wizard's Crown (1986) from SSI on 5.25" floppies for the C-64. I thought i had a copy of The Bard's Tale (1985) but I only have the manual… the disks are gone.

Originally Posted by Shagnak
I don't remember it taking that long, but then again when I first got my C64 I used a tape drive, so maybe I thought the floppy drive was really fast in comparison.

I had Ultima IV for the C64 and I don't remember swapping any disks at all.

According to this website, there were two disks, front and back, divided into program, towns, Britannia and Underworld. https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Ultima…_of_the_Avatar

I still don't remember swapping disks. I got the game from one of my dad's friends so I didn't have the official disks for that one.

Dark lands in original box etc. from 1992

I wished it was earlier but the first time I really had a computer for myself for a longer stretch of time was the the summer of 95
It was a for the period a fairly top notch Mac and I was subbing for my ex girlfriend as the head of Smålands nation in Lund (kind of a sorority but not, we had at the time 3500 members but very little to do during the summer)
Anyway I traded a vinyl of Coils Horserotorvator (perhaps some of you might know that one, a wonderful record) for Might and Magic III: Isles of Terra and I was entertained all summer
Today the 1st pressing of that record is probably worth more but I had two ex and finally getting access to a computer and a rpg to myself was worth more

I had the keys to the office, the pinball machines and the beer, the pay was lousy, but with endless beer, pinball, M&M 3 and Civ I had a very good summer

I still have my Apple 2 copy of Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord, which I think is the first computer game I ever bought a legit copy of. (Leaving aside Atari 2600 game cartridges, none of which I think really qualify as RPGs.) The game released in 1981, but I'm pretty sure I didn't buy it until several years later, so let's guess 1985.

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
I had Ultima IV for the C64 and I don't remember swapping any disks at all.

According to this website, there were two disks, front and back, divided into program, towns, Britannia and Underworld. https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Ultima…_of_the_Avatar

I still don't remember swapping disks. I got the game from one of my dad's friends so I didn't have the official disks for that one.

I wonder why I thought there was 8 for some reason. Unless I'm mixing it up with one of the later games. Pretty sure I played 3-6 on C64 but could be remembering wrong. I was a teenager back then and am 56 now

Gosh we were such geeks even long ago. I had a Vic 20 for a couple weeks or months, C64, C128, Amiga..this may have been a friends. Atari was 2600 and 5600. I had an NES and a SNES. Then a Playstation. On the pc side I've owned all of the IBM's and their clones through the decades. AT/XT/Compaq/286/386/486/Pentium/Pentium MMX. I think that was the last computer that they even bothered giving a designation. Now they're just faster and faster and the focus has shifted from the mobo to the CPU, ram, vram and memory.

I've played games on all of them and rpgs since the C64. Not positive which was first. Quest/Colossal Caves/Zork/Rogue? All of it was cool, though my first interaction was Hamurabi, I think. That was before I even owned a computer myself. Played it at a museum in Oklahoma or Texas. Place called the Omniplex maybe? Wow nostalgia!

Originally Posted by crpgnut
I wonder why I thought there was 8 for some reason. Unless I'm mixing it up with one of the later games.

I'm pretty sure the Apple 2 version of Ultima V came on 4 double-sided disks, for a total of 8 sides. Maybe that's what you're remembering.

Oh, I didn't even spot the "8 Disks" bit, no wonder I don't remember it taking that long

Attached a shot of a few of the classics from my display shelf in my hallway. Included is Pools of Radiance (1988), Might and Magic 1 (1986), Bards Tale 1 (1985) and Exodus (1983). I also have a copy of Temple of Apshai which was originally released in 1979 and was the first crpg with true sprite graphics - however my copy is the c64 version which was released several years later in 1983. It's in storage in my roof as unfortunately I only have room to display the big name games across the last 40 years.

Several ones from the nineties including Lands of Lore, Baldur's Gate and Fallout.
Edit: Also Might and Magic VI.

Being born in communism gives you few interesting perks and skills.
As the country was made on corruption and smuggling, pirating was normal thing and someone buying original was considered stupid and would be mocked about it.
So I played commodore +4 from 1986, then commodore 64, then Amiga, then IBM PC 286, then pentium 133, then I got Intel pentium 2 klamath in 1998.
But first original game I owned was bought in 2000 (Starcraft and Diablo) on wholesale when my brother was in USA.

So it took 10 years for my younger brother to break the ice.
Still I have thing for pirate games and caught me more than once to download game from torrent while I have original in the library.

I've got some AD&D collectors edition for Amiga that has a bunch of games and they only produced 5000 of them. I think that was from early 90s. Not sure where it is, though, so I can't check.

Originally Posted by SirJames
I've got some AD&D collectors edition for Amiga that has a bunch of games and they only produced 5000 of them. I think that was from early 90s. Not sure where it is, though, so I can't check.

If you have this one complete and in pristine condition then this is a valuable and hard to get item as it was first AD&D compilation released by SSI and not later WizardWorks releases.
https://mocagh.org/loadpage.php?getgame=addlecollectors

I have an IBM DOS version, even more valuable as they produced only 3000 copies.

I have to admit I said goodbye to nostalgia and tossed my cds and paper rulebooks for Torment and BG2 earlier this year in a quarantine cleanse (I'm pretty sure they were too beat up to be worth anything to a collector).

And yet… I just placed a bid on eBay for the cloth map from Ultima IV, my true first love…