OT-What was your first computer simulation

[wdolson]

ORIGINAL: nashvillen

Star Trek on a teletype machine with a local community college on that yellow teletype paper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_(text_game)

I never played that, but I heard of it. One guy I worked with had a co-worker back in the day who was addicted and he wouldn't accept the Klingon's surrender. When the Klingons tried to surrender, he would keep attacking until they were destroyed. My friend edited the code so if you didn't accept surrender, Spock would shoot Kirk for violating the Geneva Convention. His co-worker got really angry.

I don't know for sure if it was my first wargame, but I came across a DOS, text based game that I think was influenced by Avalon Hill's War at Sea. It had ships in the Atlantic squaring off in gun battles. It was very primitive. I think I downloaded it from a BBS.

The first games I played were the text based games from Infocom. A lot of people played Zork, which I never had, but I played several of the others. I just came across the boxes for Leather Goddesses of Phobos, Bureaucracy, and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy the other day. I never finished Bureaucracy.

I started buying AH computer games just before the demise of the company. The graphics are very primitive, but they had excellent game engines. I have trotted them out from time to time to play them again. Last time I did, I had to install VirtualPC and a very old version of Windows to get them to work. They won't work natively on any of the NT based Windows (Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, etc.)

Bill

[drw61]

The first one I remember playing was USAAF

[btd64]

Not sure which one was first or the names, But one had a very good Veitnam game and the other was a M1 tank game. I think it was called M1 Tank simulator....GP

[Lokasenna]

Hrm. Going way back here.

I played "Red Baron", a DOS game, in 1991-ish. Very fun, but difficult to play at a friend's house.

Then I played Falcon 2, a combat flight simulator. At least I think it was Falcon 2. This was back in the days of AOL, and you could get it through AOL... as well as Air Warrior 2, which I later bought on CD-ROM.

Then I bought this game which I believe was titled "Empire 2", but all google comes up with these days is Age of Empires 2, which is eff that. Empire 2 was a hex-based strategy game, and very customizable/modular. You could play WW1 scenarios, Battle of Jutland, the battle between the British and the Spanish Armada, Civil War battles, etc. - all using the same system! That game was/is amazing. I see it as very much a precursor to the type of game we have with WITP. When I go back to Iowa this winter, I will have to remember to look for that CD so I can find it. I bet I could make it work on Win7 - it didn't use much for graphics, so shouldn't have any compatibility issues due to drivers.

Also played arcade style games: Sink Sub Pro and NiteRaid [:D].

[Lokasenna]

Ah, I found it - Empire II: The Art of War. I think the copyright has expired by now.

http://www.squakenet.com/download/empir ... -war/7264/

I really enjoyed the game in a very meta way. I think I created a custom Battle of Midway scenario for it. Awfully fun for a 1990s game.

[wdolson]

Copyrights are probably still good, but the original owner of those games are usually bought out or out of business and the current owner aren't enforcing the copyright. From what I've heard it's the responsibility of the copyright holder to enforce them. That's probably how those abandonware sites manage to stay up.

I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not qualified to opine officially. This is just my amateur spit balling.

Bill

[Chris21wen]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

Epyx's "Sub Battle" for my Leading Edge PC.. 20MB hard drive. Got so addicted that my wife threatened marriage counselling. She finally game up with that idea and resigned herself to her fate.

I honestly can't remember but it was for an Apple II. Probably something like Kampfgroup.

[Chris21wen]

That's not a simulation sorry.  I do remember one where you had to control a nuclear reactor.

[pontiouspilot]

Leisure Suit Larry....i'm just kidding but I did buy it for a relative's kid and ruined him!! First was likely Perfect General, Carrier Strike and Secret W of Luft all about the same time.

[jmalter]

Well I had some time where the only 'computer-game' action I got was by creating Excel macros to emulate the production-end of the SPI WitP board-game.

Then there was a period of Doom 95, ick.

I got quite involved in supporting Advanced Squad Leader by adding bits to Rodney Kinney's VASL/VASSAL thing.

Did a bit of MoH, but meh.

[Rising-Sun]

I played so many games back then when I was a kid on Atari 2600 so on. One simulation got me interesting was F-16 Fighting Falcon by Spectrum HoloByte. Then later become more popular software on to Falcon 3.0, etcs.

Missed the good ol' days back then

[wegman58]

I think there was a WW II one - BUT NORTH ATLANTIC 1986 on an APPLE ][ Plus comes to mind. Thing was, if you were doing well as NATO and shot down all the normal planes it triggered auto reinforcements - and those included BACKFIRES in the reinforcements!

[John 3rd]

Great Naval Battles

[Rising-Sun]

Those DOS Games can be pain for most users that doesn't know how to set it up to run those and I would have to agreed with John, believe Great Naval Battle Series were my first sim.

I still have this Great Naval Battle Vol III "Fury in the Pacific".

[btd64]

The very first harpoon. Good game. not my first though....GP

[crsutton]

Ok, how about the first game you played vs a human on the computer? With me it was Atomic Games/Avalon Hill's "Operation Crusader"-a very good game for it's time. It was the first computer game that made me believe that we were heading into a new renaissance for war gaming. I remember that you could not just attach a file to your email but had to use uudecode on the file before you could send it. Still, when I got my opponents first turn over the net- it was "pig in sh*t" time for me.

[geofflambert]

ORIGINAL: RisingSun

Those DOS Games can be pain for most users that doesn't know how to set it up to run those and I would have to agreed with John, believe Great Naval Battle Series were my first sim.

I still have this Great Naval Battle Vol III "Fury in the Pacific".

My eyes are getting weak. I thought you were talking about "original sin". [;)]

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Mike Solli

I played that one too. Found it by accident.

ORIGINAL: nashvillen

Star Trek on a teletype machine with a local community college on that yellow teletype paper.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek_(text_game)

I think this game, with ASCII symbols on an x,y grid, was the first game a lot of people played. I played it at UVA in 1977 on a B&W Bell & Howell dumb terminal, connected to a Prime mini-computer across Grounds by an acoustic coupler modem. Dial telephone, shove the handset in the rubber cups.

The first game I played on my new Apple IIe when I got it home in 1983 was Zork. I eventually owned most of the SSI catalog for Apple. Don't recall the first one. Might have been their D-Day game.

[rockmedic109]

Battlecruiser on Atari. You got a "*" when one of your shells penetrated on a hit. That was cutting edge graphics at the time. I can't remember when this was but the major news story at the time was something about the invention of the wheel.

[tigercub]

it was called carrier strike!

Tigercub