What’s your “origin” video game? “I’m talking about the game that flipped that little switch in your brain and made into a life-long gamer.” Mine is Lode Runner. Reflexes + puzzles + constraints + make-your-own levels = hooked for life. You?
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Dragon Warrior for the NES. I had a few other games (Mario, etc.) before that but it was my first RPG, and I was absolutely hooked.
OG Simcity—although Wing Commander and X-Wing are close runners-up.
LodeRunner! Yes! Proving yet again there's a cohort of us wired up the same way. I'd love to find a version that runs on modern devices.
We had an Atari 2600 with some frustrating games (Q-bert, Frogger, Tanks, Pong, etc), and then Nintendo and a bunch of games. But i really thought Sim Ant on a laptop felt like the future. My first non-console game.
Galaxian, arcade cabinet version. Pong and Space Invaders were out before Galaxian, but the gray/black and white was boring. Color!
Final Fantasy for the NES. Felt like a nearly endless world with infinite secrets to discover.
Excitebike - similar reasons.
co-signing Lode Runner!
But also Pac-Man on the Atari 5200, and later Dragon Warrior & Tetris on the NES.
Oh, also Hero's Quest/Quest for Glory games on the PC (So You Want To Be A Hero, Trial by Fire, Wages of War).
For me, it was Star Control 2, released for MS-DOS in 1992. It had a vast universe to explore; mysteries to solve; resource gathering; customizable ship; customizable fleet; encounters with aliens that could be friendly, hostile, or in between; 2-player melee; great writing and music. It managed to be silly and serious at the same time. I still have the big fold-out star map that came in the box.
Total Annihilation was the only game I was really hooked on, with maybe the original (or very early) Warcraft being a close second (yes me'lord). However my wife made it clear long ago that gaming was never going to be a hobby of mine if she was going to be my wife, so that was the end of that. I did play Minecraft or Lego Star Wars with my kids when they were little but now that they are out of the house and I don't game at all (again).
The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis! It was a Brøderbund game in the 90s that was a visual series of logic puzzles. Great art, great voice acting, and minimal time pressure; it’s still pretty much my ideal casual puzzle game.
Prince of Persia, then Prince of Persia 2. Honorable mention to Warcraft 2.
I don't identify as a gamer because I've never owned any kind of video game system, only computers. But my origin game is Dig Dug on Apple IIe! And it tracks because I am obsessed with earth work and am often digging holes for plants and just plain pleasure because who doesn't like moving soil around with a stick and discovering slash annihilating grubbers in their patch!! 🐛
Zork I was the first game that absolutely hooked me. Galaga in the coin-op world, and Ultima III (on the C-64) in the RPG world.
Pick Axe Pete! on the Magnavox Odyssey² — a simplistic take on Donkey Kong. There were other touch points along the way that inspired going into design for screens (Zaxxon on Colecovision and Super Mario Bros on NES), but it all started on that Magnavox.
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