I find my inspiration for game ideas from the simple building blocks of old-school games and expand on them. For those of us who are new to coding and need simple projects to learn from besides the Section game primers, what did you first enjoy playing?
PacMan on my Atari 2600
(followed by Pit Fall and Battle Zone)
I took the personal computer route (no gaming consoles), with a lot of āsharedā games between us kids.
Atari 2600 -> VC20 -> C64 -> Amiga 500 -> Amiga 2000 -> 386 PC -> 486 PC
Edit: PacMan was the first game I owned. But I remember playing Pong and Asteroids on some kind of tv console with a weird little controller, my dad owned. The controller just had a button and a knob, no joystick.
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From 4-7ish, I played an Atari 2600 and an original NES. Other than that, a couple C64 games around that time, and some old DOS based games from 7 to 10, then I jumped into the playstation era.
Recently, the oldest game Iāve played in the past year or so thats not a rehash of something like Galaga, is Diablo 2.
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Iām sure I canāt remember exactly what the first game I ever played was, but I do remember my first experiences with computer games. I remember tagging along with my dad when he would go to the pub to drink with his mates. I would keep myself occupied playing the table-top games like Elevator Action and Time Pilot. Some of my other favourites were Gauntlet, Double Dragon and Bubble Bobble.
When I first started playing PC games (many years later), I remember Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Commander Keen, as well as games like Ultima and the Dungeons & Dragons franchises.
More recent (old) games that will forever have a place in my heart will include Unreal Tournament 2004, Hitman Blood Money, Deus Ex, and Morrowind.
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Is this a sneaky way of finding out how old we are 
Mine is Horace Goes Skiing on the Spectrum 48K+ which came free with it. Simple ski down slope, left and right controls to hit the flags. Second game, Breakout. Again, left and right control. Simple yet perfect first games to keep a child happy for hours and hours.
The game that I really fell in love with during that era was Batman, the isometric game based on Head over Heels. Even today, that game is the perfect balance of gameplay, and logic puzzle solving and if was ported to the mobile platform, I am sure would be quite a hit, today.
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Hehe yea that was pretty much my initial forray into games, and getting SInclair User mag on a Friday and spending all weekend typing it in 
Survival was the other game I got free with my ole 48k.
But my first recollection of games were back when I was a bairn and my cousin got a TV_Game system where the controllers were twist dials, and it was black and white, all it had was variations of pong, tennis, badmintonā¦ but they were all the same lol
but thats all given me an appreciation for striving to make things simple, entertaining and enjoyable, sort the core game out and the visuals can come at a later date.
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Iām glad this post got transferred. I remember playing the PONG clone on the Atari and a handful of other games. I loved Tetris, especially the original Russian version. I am a math guy so the appeal was stronger than other games. I remember my dad hiding the Gameboy so I wouldnāt be playing it all the time.
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the first game i actually remember playing is Command and conquer Tiberian sun but i was too young and never really finished it,but the first game i played to the last piece/mission was Red Alert 2. (and actually got me addicted to gaming 
)
so if i were to say iād say Red Alert 2
it is definitely one of the best games out there until this day. any other hardcore RTS fans around ? <3
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I think the first one was Outlaw on the Atari -
And then Knight Lore was my favourite for a long time -
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I would have to say my oldest game I remember playing on my own computer was Garden Wars on the VIC-20. I had several other games for the VIC-20 as well.
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āAdventureā
Iād love to share some cute little images, but this game just didnāt have any images. Hahah! No, Iām not quite old enough to have been around when it was new, but when computers were just beginning to be a thing, i did play this on one of the old 5-inch floppy discs.
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Ha! One of my favorite memories as a kid was watching my dad play the ORIGINAL Command and Conquer game! (To which Tiberian Sun is a damn good sequel!). C&C introduced me to the RTS genre, and is one of the key reasons I became interested in game development.
Your taste in games is superb. You sir, have my approval. 
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First video game I ever remember playing was Pong on a cocktail cabinet in 1979.
Now I kinda want one of these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTBcxr9KBuQ
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First video game I remember playing is Centipede in a local pizza shop. When I got a Vic-20 at home I played a lot of Demon Attack and Omega Race. That was about the time I started to learn programming also.
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My first game, somewhere when I was 5 I thinkā¦ Tanks and Contra on āPegasusā (kind of pirated Nintendo Famicom back in Poland)
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My parents had an Atari, so I think Pong (clone) may be the oldest Iāve played.
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The first game I remember playing was tennis on a machine that plugged in the back of the TV.
The first computer game was Frogger, on the family Commodore 64
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Pretty sure pong was the oldest, but the game I most remember playing was kaboom on the atari. Other games of note were asteroids, Pac-Man, Galaga, missile defender etcā¦
I also had a fogger gaming watch (yes there were āwearablesā back in the 80s lol)ā¦and the king Kong game and watchā¦and the one where you squirt pesticide on plants lol
The oldest computer I had was the little known coleco āAdamā ā¦it went bankrupt about 6 months after my Dad bought it and we couldnāt get any software or games lol. The adam was an interesting machineā¦for example you had to have the printer plugged in because it was also the power source. my favourite game on that was one where you were a dragon and had to fly around and save your eggs. I canāt remember the name of it though but at the time I thought the graphics were the best in the worldā¦but then compared to the atari anything was awesome 
The next oldest game would have been gun ship on the commodore 64. God I loved that game. About 15 years ago I installed an emulator and played it ā¦it killed all my fond memories lol
From there I became a console fan. Got the Nintendo, SNES, Gameboy, Sega mega drive, Playstation 1 and 2, wii and wii u. I kind of lost interest in the console market when the Xbox first hit the scene and only got the wii and wii u for my kids to play nowadays when I game its on mobile or pc. My pc gaming focused on FPS starting with doom, doom 2, duke nukem, quake and then I became obsessed with unreal and UT99. Lost interest in UT when they introduced vehicles and lost the plot IMO. Good to see the new UT is an updated homage to the original tho. Havenāt really played it much though been too busy with other stuff lately
Edit: also.played WOW for many yearsā¦and prior to that ā¦back in the early to mid 90s I played a MUD ā¦multi user dungeonā¦text based multiplayer game. Canāt remember the name of the one I played thoā¦uni is all a bit of a haze for me lol
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I think the oldest game Iāve ever played must have been Zork. Zork is 36 years old now.
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I found the dragon game for coleco vision / adam computer. It was called wing war 
While hunting for it I also came accross some other games that were blasts from the past 
Pitfall
BCs Quest for tyres
Boulderdash
All great fun 
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