Classic Arcade and Video Games

[happyfilmluvguy]

Video games have become so popular within the last decade. They've also become so advanced that they try to take realism to a new level. But video games weren't always so advanced, full of secret codes and cheats, and originally they didn't even have a handheld controller.

When I was in middle school, there was an arcade just a couple blocks from my house. It's still there. I used to go there every so often and play the big boxy 80s arcade games like Mortal Kombat, Street Fighter, those alien shoot em' up games, and the everloving pinball. At home, I would play Super Mario Brothers, Mortal Kombat, WWF Wrestling and Super Pinball on my Super Nintendo. I never had very many games. I rented more games than I owned. A friend of mine had hundreds of them, though.

At the pizzeria, I'd play Packman on one of those horizontal systems that looked like a table and had little yellow, white and and red buttons. The console had two games, Packman and Space Invaders.

I was never much of a video game person, even though I had a 3 different consoles over the years. But those classic games I once played at the arcade and pizzeria I'll never forget. As much as I enjoyed creating my own wrestlers on my N64, or skateboarding around as Tony Hawk in his first Playstation game, there was just something about Super NES and the arcade that I enjoyed. I still need to get a new Super Nintendo.

So what games do you still play or remember playing, where and on what? Even if you remember PONG, you were there to see the beginning of a gaming era.

 

[zaika]

i'm not a hardcore gamer...or even mildcore...but i like games and have played video games on and off since i was a tiny tot.
gosh...i remember playing games on my stepbrother's atari. pong, of course, and what was that alien game? invaders or something? sorry...I can't remember. [ETA: space invaders??]
i spent a lot of good saturdays at the arcade playing all sorts of random games...pac man, pole position, whatever new flashy one was there, various pin ball machines. i didn't really have a favorite.
at home when we got our first computer, a Tandy (LOL), we played this game called Zilfeed. it was a pretty decent space game for 1989 home gaming.
then when we actually got an SNES, i was all about Mario and Zelda until my brother took over and claimed the danged thing for his own! for N64 i really enjoyed 007 Goldeneye...not to mention Mario and Zelda, of course. hehe.
i still have my SNES with the games, but my N64 is lonely as my brother sold all the games. i also have a Playstation 2 and play Tony Hawk, FFXII, God of War, GFA: Vice City, Kingdom Hearts, and my guilty pleasure...Lord of the Rings. hehe. i also have all those old arcade games on one disc, so that's fun.
my brother has a super sweet gaming computer that he buildt, so when i'm in his neck of the woods i take over and play HalfLife 2.
fun thread!!

 

[Diamondback]

Anyone else here remember the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A system? Games like Car Wars... all in graphics so craptacular they make the original NES look high-resolution?

I actually keep the DOOM Collector's Edition and Quake II (still looking for Q1 and its expansions, thinking about just cheatin' and buying straight from Id) around for nostalgia-trips, and still play a little StarCraft and original Command & Conquer and Red Alert every now and then...

 

[happyfilmluvguy]

I almost forgot about old computer games. I had an Apple IIGS and I had a few games on those large and small floppy disks. There was one that was a medieval game where you chose to be either a knight, a wizard, a peasant or something else and you went around a maze to try to free the princess. You could shoot these fireballs at ninja looking men dressed in black. I have spent years trying to find out what that game was called but no luck.

 

[Feraud]

But video games weren't always so advanced, full of secret codes and cheats,

Actually, they did have cheat codes!

Back in the early 80s after Pac Man came out I got my hands on a cheat code booklet. I studied the patterns then made all the quarters back I lost to friends.

My favorite old school video games at the arcade were Asteroids, Space Invaders, Missle Command and Tron.

 

[happyfilmluvguy]

ah. Sneaky programmers.....

 

[zaika]

Actually, they did have cheat codes!

Back in the early 80s after Pac Man came out I got my hands on a cheat code booklet. I studied the patterns then made all the quarters back I lost to friends.

My favorite old school video games at the arcade were Asteroids, Space Invaders, Missle Command and Tron.

oh yeah! asteroids! that was a good one. i sucked royally at tron, though.

 

[zaika]

Anyone else here remember the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A system? Games like Car Wars... all in graphics so craptacular they make the original NES look high-resolution?

I actually keep the DOOM Collector's Edition and Quake II (still looking for Q1 and its expansions, thinking about just cheatin' and buying straight from Id) around for nostalgia-trips, and still play a little StarCraft and original Command & Conquer and Red Alert every now and then...

my dad loved DOOM

oh...and i mustn't forget about MYST. when we got our Mac Performa in '96, i spent many evenings playing that one.

 

[Diamondback]

my dad loved DOOM

~IDDQD[enter]
IDKFA[enter]
~
got BFG?

lol

 

[zaika]

~IDDQD[enter]
IDKFA[enter]
~
got BFG?

lol

lol lol lol
sadly, i never played. so...i have NO idea what all those letters mean.

 

[Diamondback]

Okay, for original, Doom II and Ultimate Doom, tilde opens/closes the console screen.

IDDQD turns on "Degreelessness Mode"--God Mode.
IDKFA gives you "Very Happy Ammo"--all weapons and full ammo.

BFG is Big F[reak]in' Gun, kills everything in your line of sight except the biggest of evils with one or two shots...

Too bad HL2's your only FPS of choice, it'd be interesting to team-up in one of the others. (I personally like Unreal Tournament 2004 for its model choices, I usually favor Agent Smith from The Matrix or the title character from the Hitman: Codename 47 series--even in-game character models look better in well-tailored suits...

 

[~*Red*~]

FROGGER!!! We even got one of those mini ones for Christmas, oh, 20 or so years ago...And Pole Position was my favorite to play at the arcade. I remember at thsi one movie theater we used to go to every Friday, they had a Trivial Pursuit video game and you could choose to be one of maybe 4 or 5 people and I would always choose to be the Valkerie...I would save all my quarters for the week to play that game. Good memories...

 

[ScionPI2005]

The first computer game I remember playing was Tetris back on the 386 computer my dad got back around 1990. I can remember playing Nova 9 shortly after that. It was a shooting space type game with nine planets you had to visit and destroy the enemies.

I have many memories of my childhood playing various adventure game favorites as Alone in the Dark (the original from 1991), the Zork series, Tex Murphy, the Lucas Arts classics, and many others. Basically from the age of seven to the age of eighteen, my dad and I played at least two or three computer games a year on the weekends. Definitely good memories there.

 

[DeeDub]

IDDQD turns on "Degreelessness Mode"--God Mode.
IDKFA gives you "Very Happy Ammo"--all weapons and full ammo.

You can also use IDFA to get all the weapons and ammo, but not the keys, (the K in IDKFA.)

I started playing the X-Window version of Doom for SGI in about 1993. I'd usually start at the end of the work day, thinking I'd play for a few minutes, then go home. About 9 pm or so, my wife would call and ask if I was ever coming home. Oops!

I got Doom 3 a while back. It's a beautiful game, but much more complicated than the first two. (The movie really captured the look of it, I must say.) So I go through all the levels of Doom, then all of Doom 2, then repeat, year after year.

BFG is Big F[reak]in' Gun, kills everything in your line of sight except the biggest of evils with one or two shots...

Oh Yes!

 

[DeeDub]

So what games do you still play or remember playing, where and on what? Even if you remember PONG, you were there to see the beginning of a gaming era.

In the early 1970s, I spent a lot of time with friends at the local pool hall. In addition to eight ball and bumper pool, we spent a lot of time playing pinball. Then they installed a game with a TV screen in a bright, metal-flake, fiberglass case. The game was called Computer Space. We spent hours playing that game. We spent even more money. Pinball machines cost a dime then. I seem to recall Computer Space cost more, but was better for competition.

To compete in pinball, players take turns. Computer Space let you compete side by side. Rather than just winning by earning a higher score, you won at Computer Space by annihilating your opponent and spreading his molecules through interstellar space. Much better way to feed your inner Klingon!

Later, there was a car racing game in which you're looking down on the track. You drive against a friend and/or computer opponents. That was followed by Pong. Neither of those was as fun as Computer Space.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Our local drugstore got a Pong machine somewhere in the mid-70s, and I can remember people simply standing in front of it and staring -- they'd never seen anything so astounding in their lives. Which, I guess, tells you something about the kind of town where I grew up.

 

[nyx]

The first computer my family ever got was an Adam. lol It had games that loaded by cassette--a favorite was Buck Rogers in the the 21st Cenury. It would also take cartridge games. The only one I remember was Fraction Fever (you picked out the correct fraction as your character hopped on a pogo stick). I used to spend hours typing codes in from computer magazines, only to have them not run because of one line error. :rage:

But my all time favorite old game--which did NOT play on my Adam--was Joust. A friend of mine's stepdad worked for an arcade, so she always had old games in her basement, both pinball and video, and we spent hours playing Joust. Good times.

 

[PrettySquareGal]

Back when I was naughty teenager I used to cut class, smoke cigs and hang out at Mariella's on E 70th Street in NYC and play Ms Pacman. My high score was over 200,000.

I also played Dig Dug, Elevator Action, Rampage and lots of Q-bert (high score almost 300,000).

I had Atari, too.

 

[Jack Scorpion]

Back when I was naughty teenager I used to cut class, smoke cigs and hang out at Mariella's on E 70th Street in NYC and play Ms Pacman. My high score was over 200,000.

I also played Dig Dug, Elevator Action, Rampage and lots of Q-bert (high score almost 300,000).

I had Atari, too.

I wish we'd been friends.

 

[Dominic]

Started with Mattel's Intellivision, played just about every game cartridges. Then moved to Texas Instruments TI-99/4a which I still have, still functional and for which I still have some programs on cassettes and cartridges. Then made the move to PC and played just about every game between Wolfenstein 3D to Half-Life Episode 2.