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Foebane · 13 August 2019, 10:22

Long before I was on Amiga, or even Atari 600/800XL, my first computer (which was my Dad's) was a Sinclair ZX81 complete with "wobbly" RAM pack. It was like the silent black & white era of movies, but on computers, and there weren't even any user-defined graphics, so one had to make do with the established character set for objects and characters, and imagination was important.

There weren't many games that I remember for this machine, although I did have a small collection of simple programs from Sinclair as demos.

Eventually, for my birthday, I did get Avenger, then Protector, from Abacus Programs. These are very similar-looking games, different in playability, from the same programmer in the same year (1982) and quite good for what they were.

[ Show youtube player ]

The trickiest part of these games was getting them to even load from cassette tape, which could fail at any time, especially with the wobbly RAM pack crashing the ZX81 if moved. I must've loaded Avenger so often that I practically memorised the loading noises!

Anyway, these two were my first gaming experiences on computer, what were yours?

13 August 2019, 10:22	#1
Foebane Banned Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Cardiff, UK Age: 51 Posts: 2,871	Your very first computer game? Long before I was on Amiga, or even Atari 600/800XL, my first computer (which was my Dad's) was a Sinclair ZX81 complete with "wobbly" RAM pack. It was like the silent black & white era of movies, but on computers, and there weren't even any user-defined graphics, so one had to make do with the established character set for objects and characters, and imagination was important. There weren't many games that I remember for this machine, although I did have a small collection of simple programs from Sinclair as demos. Eventually, for my birthday, I did get Avenger, then Protector, from Abacus Programs. These are very similar-looking games, different in playability, from the same programmer in the same year (1982) and quite good for what they were. [ Show youtube player ] The trickiest part of these games was getting them to even load from cassette tape, which could fail at any time, especially with the wobbly RAM pack crashing the ZX81 if moved. I must've loaded Avenger so often that I practically memorised the loading noises! Anyway, these two were my first gaming experiences on computer, what were yours?