Classic video games you played

[Keropi]

Two questions for everyone:

1. What classic video games did you used to play back in its heyday?

2. Which ones were you fairly good at?

In middle school my friends and I used to play a lot of Asteroids, Space Invaders, those black and white car racing games with the oil slicks on the track and that submarine torpedo-the-ships game.

In High School we played Berserk, Missile Command, Star Castle, Galaxian, Defender, Stargate, Donkey Kong, Moon Cresta, Scrambler, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Pole Position, Frogger and Tempest.

I was only fairly good at three classic video games:

Tempest - I wasn't great at this game, but I was able to get past the blue, red and yellow levels. I wasn't able to get much further into the next level though.

Pac-Man - My high game in Pac-Man was 2,176,000. Unfortunately I couldn't go any further into that game. It was around 11:30 PM on a weekday and I had to go to school the following day so I just threw the game with two men left.

Ms. Pac-Man - I was able to get a high game of ?235,000. With Ms. Pac-Man I guess I was just able to see the monsters patterns subconsciously in my head. Unfortunately I never got that same feeling from playing any other non-Pac-Man related game.

I think my friend said he was able to play Stargate until he no longer felt like playing. Geez. I was never good with that game - Too hard!

Anyone ever play Robotron 2084? Now that was a crazy/hectic game. You never had any time to rest playing that one!

[EOC]

classic video games

When you say classic, do you mean like pre-NES... like never ending Atari Pitfall or post-NES like everything after classic Bubble Bobble?

[Keropi]

I mostly had arcade games that came out 1989 or earlier in mind, but if anyone wants to talk about any kind of video game that came out more than ten years ago that's cool too.

My arcade years were around 1976 to 1986 and I rarely hear talk from that time period anymore. Too far in the past I think.

Those fighting games came out after my time so I've never been very good at playing those.

I was suprised to find a multi-classic arcade game standup machine in a theater lobby one day. I never got to play Ms. Pac-Man on it though. It's been some years since I last seen an old Ms. Pac-Man machine since they all went bad and got removed from public view. I stumbled on an original Galaxian standup machine in Hawaii about five years ago and shocked by that find.

[hanaeleh]

Hmmm... Coleco Vision or Atari?

I was pretty good at Donkey Kong... and even better at Frogger... but I did get high scores on Space Invaders and Pole Position at the arcade games.... I was better at Pac Man than I was at Ms. Pac Man, though. I loved Centipede... that game rocked.

There was one game that my brother and I used to play all the time... Jungle... *something*... you had to swing from the vines, jump or duck under boulders, and jump over the native at the end to rescue the girl. We spent hours on that game. There was also a tank game we'd play... just search around looking for things to blow up. Wheee!

We had a ton of games we'd play on our Commodore 128, too... I loved the motorcycle racing game... but don't know the name of it.

[Keropi]

I was never good at Donkey Kong. In just about all versions of that game I did badly. My timing was so far off. Even clearing the first screen was not easy for me. The only version of Donkey Kong I could play was the Texas Instruments TI 99/4A computer game version. I did fairly well with that version, but the game kept locking up when I was doing very well and it would tick me off. The TI 99/4A always did have that problem with the cartridge slot.

That jungle game sounds familiar. Was that on the Atari 2600? It sounds very familiar.

My friend and I spent all summer in 1983 trying to master that Enduro driving game for the Atari 2600. To think how much fun we had looking at those square blocks on the screen move.

That Tank game for the Atari 2600 was great. We always tried using that bug of hitting the wall so that we could reappear someowhere else on the screen.

[Marauder]

I played Dig Dug like crazy on my Dad's old Atari 2600. Besides that, I never played anything more old-school than TG-16 (which was an AWESOME system) or original Gameboy. Tetris and Bomberman were a couple games that just made you dream about them . I picked up Tetris on Gameboy Color when it came out and managed to get to the 27th level on one amazing streak.

[EOC]

I played Dig Dug

Dude, Dig Dug rocked... but I played that on my IBM PC XT... (model 2 of IBM with 2 floppy drives). Man I was hot shit. Remeber those days of pcs with no hard drives.... dayum.

I like the simple games, they were more challenging then these new ones. Everything is about graphics now... people have forgotten about simple gameplay.

[In_Gabriel_We_Trust]

I used to be a master in Kung Fu, playing Kung Fu Master.

And you also had on of those first Olympic Games games where you had to hit buttons like crazy.

[Baakay]

Wheee!!

Can you say... PONG?

God, I remember how excited we were when Pong showed up among the pinball machines at the "family arcade" area of one of our local places. Too cool.

The very first game we had was Star Trek, which the spouzal unit entered into our Radio Shack TRS-80 bit by agonizing bit ... I think it was in Basic, but I'm not sure. The machine used a cassette tape for memory. Seriously. But we played Star Trek a whole lot.

I also remember freaking out the guy at the local computer store when we went in and asked if they had any game software and he looked at us like we had suddenly developed second heads. "Games??" Ok, so our machine ran CP/M as its operating system. On that one, I ended up playing this ascii-graphic game called Ladder until my eyes were crossed. What a blast.

I think our first PC clone was when we got Dungeon.

And of course asteroids, and yes I can't remember the name of the jungle game either. Atari was fun. Pitfall! was that it?

[Cloud]

""? Was it?

[Baakay]

I think it was, Cloud. Thanks for asking.

[Cloud]

My pleasure.

[shellie]

Wheee!!

Can you say... PONG?

Yeeeaaaah, Baakay! I knew you were my kind o' gal!! heeheehee! I was afraid to say Pong for fear that all the youngsters around here would DIE that someone was so ancient to have thought Pong was the best thing since sliced bread! Yep, that's me. And when we got that first version of Frogger (I believe the frog looked more like a box! ) I think my grades fell because I wasted all my time playing that fast-paced thrill-a-minute adventure! eeeheeeeheeee! (Sad really!) Last time my parents visited, my dad said he still had the Atari and the game cartridges out in the shed. I might have him bring it up next time they come, just so my kids can crack up at the things I used to think were high-tech fun!

[jcaliff]

We had an older computer thing of my dad's, but the first real video game system we had (and still have! I wonder if it still works) was a Coleco Telstar Arcade console. No, I didn't remember the name of it, but some quick online searching for a triangular console with a gun and steering wheel helped me find it.

http://www.freewebs.com/ultimatevideoga ... ration.htm
Scroll down to about halfway down the page and you can see it.

http://www.pong-story.com/coleco_arcade.htm
This is an even better page...

We had the first three of the four games listed. I never did figure out what the difference between the bear hunting game and the regular shooting gallery game was. And the only difference between hockey and tennis was the color of the background - hockey was blue, tennis was green. They were both just Pong clones. Handball was the same, but it had a wall to bounce the ball from instead of having players on each side they were both on the same side. Of course, later we got an Atari 2600, and we played it to death. My favorite games were Yars Revenge, Centipede, Q-bert, Keystone Capers, Pitfall (I couldn't LOSE! The trick is to go left instead of right. If you go left, than even if you can't get across, when you die the character falls down to the left so you can skip the difficult screen!), Pole Position, and a spooky game of hide and seek called Sneak 'n' Peek. I still have the 2600 at my parents' house - it still works, too, although I had to replace one of the cords that a mouse chewed on.

[Keropi]

And you also had on of those first Olympic Games games where you had to hit buttons like crazy.

Wah! I remember thse games!

What about that old X's and O's black and white football arcade game where you roll that huge trackball like you were rolling for your life?

Anybody ever play that old ?Space Wars arcade game with old black and white vector graphics where one ship looks like a Constellation class tarship and the other looks like a triangle like a Star Destroyer?

The very first game we had was Star Trek, which the spouzal unit entered into our Radio Shack TRS-80 bit by agonizing bit ... I think it was in Basic, but I'm not sure. The machine used a cassette tape for memory. Seriously. But we played Star Trek a whole lot.

Was that that old Star Trek game that you played on a multi-layer grid? I had the sequel "3-D Star Trek" on my TI-99/4A. I played that movie game "Poltergeist" on a TRS-80.

Pong wasn't very fun playing by yourself. It was a lot more fun when you played with someone else. Breakout is a lot more fun playing by yourself. Or maybe I just played Pong too often with people that were my parents age. There aren't too many parents that can keep up with their kids at video games.

Anyone ever play Qix? That was that game where you had to draw off half of the screen before getting hit by that moving Qix line.