Our Ages.....

[soeren]

I did a port of the Star Treck game to a Sharp MZ80k at the start of the 80's. The first computergame I ever wrote and the first on I ever played.

long long ago it was ...

[Toro]

44 and running strong... (gotta bicycle to counter my couch-potato tendencies Matrix is giving me).

First computer game: Empire (on a university mainframe, with A for army, D for destroyer, etc, etc.).

First board game: AH's Panzer Leader.

[crsutton]

49 years old--and I still have my girlish figure!!

Avalon Hill's "Gettyburg" was my first game. Did not even read the rules or play it. Just moved the pieces around and made up my own rules. The hexes were square!!!

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: donkuchi

Hey Nikademus, I just ordered from Shrapnel games a new version of M.U.L.E. It is called SPACE H.O.R.S.E. now but it plays exactly the same. I spent so much time in college playing MULE I ended up staying an extra year just to finish my classes I missed from staying up all night with my roommate playing the game.

BTW: I am 35 and my first wargame was TACTICS II that I found at a game store. It looked like it had been on display for 20 years when I bought it in 1976 at age 8. (Had over 10,000 army men before that from age 3)
First computer wargame I remember playing was Bismark for the Apple II.

I still play MULE on occasion using an Atari800 emulator....cant beat the original! WitP could take a page from MULE.....if you make a bad decision....blame it on a runaway MULE (or too much gambling at the bar)

If you get a funky combat result? blame it on Sunspot Activity! [:D]

[Mr.Frag]

Any of you guys Megawar addicts from the Compuserv days?

ASCII art made for great games. The concept had to be fantastic because the graphics were so bad [:D]

Sometimes I think we need to go back in time and dig up some of the greats. Concept was everything back then. Now we have graphics and sound but no concept. Boring! Thats why I play wargames. [;)]

[Nikademus]

ah the ASCII days.....i miss all the plethora of colorful (well colorful in terms of text) BBS's you could dial into and such. Then there was King of the Cats.....RIP graphics......that was a concept.

sniff......the good ol days indeed.

[The Gnome]

Sometimes I think we need to go back in time and dig up some of the greats. Concept was everything back then. Now we have graphics and sound but no concept. Boring! Thats why I play wargames.

I think the advent of advanced graphics and sound actually took a massive toll on gameplay. I remember playing Bomb Alley,North Atlantic '85, Tigers in the Snow, Dnieper River Line over and over and over again.

Without the graphics I almost felt like I was some general/admiral sitting deep in a bunker getting reports from the front line!

SSN Phoenix launches torpedo attack......

[MasterChief]

41....started with Avalon Hills Tactics II in 73 or 74 and haven't been able to stop since then! I still own the board game by the way. I was a little late getting into computer wargaming, but my first game was PacWar in 92 or 93!! Imagine my nostalgic anticipation of this one!!!!

[MasterChief]

For all those who teethed on Tactics II... I'm working on a Tactics II Scenario for Talon Soft's ACOW. I plan on keeping it as close to the original as possible but will of course take advantage of some of ACOW capabilities... I.E. airpower, naval presence, a few more specialised units and railroads. It should make an interesting PBEM game.

[Fallschirmjager]

All these people have mentioned Tactics II
Was there ever a Tactics I?

[Paulchen]

36 and starting with wargaming for ten years with pacwar

[kev_uk]

ORIGINAL: Lex Talionis

But for me "Arnhem" was the daddy of them all[&o][&o][&o][&o][&o][&o]. From looking at the "Highway To The Reich" site, HTTR seems to be based on the Spectrum "Arnhem" original! Been meaning to get that game.

Yup, I remember Arnhem, by R.T Smith (I think he works on the AI for the Total War series now, not sure tho). He also did Desert Rats as well, which was brill. Arnhem though, yeah that was a classic. AI was dumb as anything, but I enjoyed trying to hold onto the bridge with my paras against overwhelming odds whilst XXX Corps tried to make it up the highway..great stuff. He also did one based on Torch as well, never played that one though.

Another speccy game I liked was based on the Lynx helicopter, you had to shuttle troops all over this map to bolster defences and engage in A/G combat as well, having to outfit your Lynx with either troops or munitions...great game.

BTW I am 33 next tuesday!

[Arnir]

I'm 37. My first computer was an Apple ][+ with the mighty 48k. (I first typed meg. My how times have changed).

My first wargame (of my own) Midway from AH.

My first computer game was Computer Air Combat from SSI. Then Wizardry. I was well rounded back then.

I loved the old computer games because it was all about the play. Also, it was years before I got a game that had show affecting bugs (not show stopping). Can't say that these days. Of course, I was more naive back then, but the games worked and I loved them. Still miss the solid sound of an Apple drive closing. Metal. <sigh> Those were the days.

[daump]

42

First intro to wargaming was Panzerblitz/Panzer Leader in Junior High and played years of Airforce/Dauntless and Star Fleet Battles.

Got into computer wargaming with my Atari 800 with Kampgruppe and USAAF and wrote my own Star Fleet Battles combat resolution utility.

Looking forward to end of June early July.

[:D]

[Bulldog61]

49 started with A/H's Guadalcanal

[bradfordkay]

All these people have mentioned Tactics II
Was there ever a Tactics I?

IIRC, suh, Tactics was Avalon Hill's very first release back in the fifties. I didn't discover them until '69 (I was eleven), but remember reading a history of AH at some time in my life. A lot of those memories are a little foggy, but I believe that the bit about Tactics is correct.

[pompack]

IIRC, Tactics was a kinda hobby-level production by Roberts. He decided to publish it for real, cleaned it up, formed Avalon Hill to publish it, and called the result Tactics II. I think that was about 1959, but the details get a little fuzzy over the decades.[;)]

[bradfordkay]

You could well be right. I did say that my memories from that period are a little foggy...

[Blackhorse]

There was no commercially-released "Tactics / I" . . . Tactics II was it.

Re: Computer games.

All the way back in 1973 in high school I recall playing an Xbasic game (all text, of course!) to put a moon lander (softly!) onto the surface of the moon. I also "programmed" my first game . . . a US Presidential Election simulation. As these were 'played' on a PDP-101 computer, with a roll of punched tape to 'program' it, I don't think of them in the same vein as modern computer games.

My first three real computer games were in 1980/81.

1. B-1 Bomber, an all-text game where you try to get a single bomber from the arctic to a target in the Soviet Union and back. Woe unto the pilot who is assigned to take out Yerevan!

2. Midway (name?). Another simple simulation -- no naval or land combat, only planes from one task force attacking another. One game ended in a draw after a series of ineffective strikes chewed up all the planes but left the carriers on both sides untouched or only lightly damaged. In the end, the computer's last plane (a fighter) shot down my last plane (a dive bomber).

3. Some abstract nuclear war simulation. Each side got an 8x8 grid with some cities on it. Each turn was a year and you built one of Bombers, Missiles, Nuclear Submarines, ABM sites, MIRVs, or spies. Eventually, either you or the computer decided to 'first strike' and then played out the carnage.

[MadmanRick]

I am 43 (44 in less than month) and my first wargames were:

Afrika Korps-board

Harpoon-computer

I have currently some 2-300 computer wargames (most which I haven't touched in years and some that are unplayable due to system limitations) and at least 30 board wargames (out of a total of 150 or so that I owned in the '80's). My favorite genre is 20th century naval wargames, with an interest in WW2 and later ground games. However, I've played everything from flight sims to Age Of Empires, with a few sports sims thrown in for good measure. My absolute favorites have been (computer) Harpoon Classic, with honorable mention going to Steel Panthers series (and mods) Uncommon Valor, Close Combat 4/5 (& mods), V For Victory series and The Operational Art of War I & II, (board) Flattop with honorable mention going to the AH's Panzer Leader, Victory Games Fleet Series, AH's Fortress Europa and GDW's The Third World War series. Most disappointing games are (computer) Patriot, with dishonorable mention going to The Third Reich, (board) VG's Pacific War with dishonorable mention going to VG's Vietnam and GDW's Assault series (which I drooled over for many, many months, but never was truly able to play due to it's complexity). Most anticipated vaporware is/was Harpoon 4 [:(]

Madman