The first time I encountered a computer was the
Space Invaders arcade video game in Rome, Italy, in the winter of 1980 (during my temporary stay in Rome, on the way to the United States).
A young Italian boy offered me a chance to play, and I was immediately hooked! I have never seen anything like it before.
When I moved to the United States, the very first electronic game I recall was some version of Pong. I had fun playing pong on TV but was quickly bored.
However, my father purchased an
Atari 2600 video game system for me (when I was 12), as they were becoming quite popular. I recall the excitement of bringing it home from
Boscov's (the department store) and playing some games, including
Combat. I have many happy memories of playing
Asteroids, Missile Command, Breakout, Defender, and
Space Invaders. The Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 was terrible compared to the original Arcade version, and I did not purchase it.
There was one game that I purchased -
Laser Blast - that I really regretted - because it was so terrible. I recall saving my money from delivering newspapers to buy them - only to be so disappointed. I was much more careful about buying additional video games.
After a few years with Atari, I decided to switch to
Intellivision, and we traded in my Atari 2600 for this new Intellivision at
Boscov's. I enjoyed it a lot as well, especially the
Sea Battle game. It was an enjoyable system with unique controllers, but I also got bored and wanted a real computer. There was one particular game that stood out:
B-17 Bomber with voice.
While I lived in Shillington, I spent some time at the local Radio Shack, playing on Tandy's TRS-80. It had two disk drives, and I recall playing computer games like
Eliza.
This was also the time when I discovered the
Zork series of text adventure games from
Infocom. Zork and many subsequent text adventures (interactive fiction) became a passion of mine. I even developed some text-based adventure games (on a later Commodore 64).
I played most (if not all) Infocom text adventures, including:
- The original Zork Trilogy (Marc Blank & Dave Lebling):
- The Enchanter Trilogy:
My friends at the time purchased
Colecovision game consoles and played
Zaxxon and
Donkey Kong.
These games were a lot of fun, and I often wished I'd have a Colecovision, too. These were fun titles to play.
Since I wanted a real computer, I convinced my Dad to purchase the Texas Instruments Ti 99/4A, which had some rudimentary programming and a few games. It had a keyboard and a few games. I learned to program using BASIC and had a tape drive to load programs.
Commodore 64 was announced during this time, and we signed up to purchase it. Although it was extremely costly, at $595, it was much cheaper than Apple II+ or Atari 800 alternatives. I was eager for a real computer (as T.I. 99/4a was very limited), and my Dad purchased it for me.
In addition to the main Commodore 64 computer, my Dad purchased a {color monitor (40x25) and a tape drive. The tape drive was used for loading and saving files. Being extremely slow, I eventually replaced the tape drive with a Commodore 1541 external floppy drive (which used 5 1/4" single-sided floppies to store files).
In addition to playing many games, I learned a lot more
BASIC programming on the Commodore 64. This was also when I started to create my own games, hoping to get them published in a magazine. Eventually, by some stroke of luck, one of my games -
Supertank! - was accepted and published by
Compute's Gazette in 1984.
COMPUTE!'s Gazette 1984/11 (Issue #17), COMPUTE!'s Third Book of Commodore 64
I don't recall the exact amount of royalties I received - but it was in the neighborhood of $1300. It was a lot of money for a teenager like me. During this time, I dabbled a bit with 6502 Assembler. I quickly discovered that programs in assembly language (especially games) ran significantly faster than ones written in Basic (an interpreted language). However, my assembler-based games were not portable across different platforms, so none of my other games were selected for publication. (Compute preferred games that could be ported to Apple II and Atari 8-bit platforms)
Since most of my friends had the Atari series of 8-bit computers (and they did not experience reliability problems with their disk drives), I decided to sell my Commodore 64 and switch to the Atari 8-bit platform (The Apple II was too expensive).
I spent some of my game royalties on an
Atari 800XL computer with an
Indus G.T. floppy drive.
On the Atari 800XL, I played some of my all-time favorite games, including
M.U.L.E. and Lord British/Richard Garriott Ultima's:
II,
III, and
IV. I also fondly remember playing Electronic Arts'
Seven Cities of Gold,
Archon, and many others.
Ultima IV - Quest for the Avatar was particularly memorable as all my friends played it for a long time. It was, by far, the BEST game during my teenage years.
The adventure genre has always been a favorite of mine. During 11th grade, I took my first computer science class with Professor Quigley at Governor Mifflin High School. I learned programming in
Pascal on
Apple IIe computers in the computer lab. This was my first formal programming instruction (as all of my previous experience creating games in
BASIC and 6502 Assembler was from hacking and reading other people's programs).
I really liked the conciseness of Pascal. Unlike Basic,
Pascal was a compiled language, and programs ran quickly after compilation. There was no Pascal compiler for the Commodore 64 (or Atari 800XL), so I did not continue with Pascal beyond 11th grade.
The one game that I recall playing after hours on
Apple IIe was
Castle Wolfenstein. It was one of the first games that featured voice effects.
After being admitted to Lehigh University, I sold my Atari 800XL - since Lehigh recommended an I.B.M. P.C. (and various P.C. clones) for university classes. I returned the P.C. clone, which had problems with its 80x25 character display. I used Lehigh's I.B.M. A.T.s in the Lehigh Computer Center to write term papers and develop software programs. However, the P.C. technology at the time was decades behind Atari, and dealing with MS-DOS and horrible video and sound cards was a bit disappointing.
I purchased an
Atari 520ST, which I used to play computer games and learn to program. I tried using a "C Language" compiler, but it was so slow that it was practically unusable. Eventually, I got tired of the Atari and sold it. Some of my friends acquired the excellent Apple Macintosh computer at the time, but its small monochrome screen and single floppy drive seemed like significant drawbacks.
After graduating from
Lehigh University with a B.S.E.E., I went to Georgia Tech for my graduate degree. I encountered Unix-based machines, including the Apple IIe,
Macintoshes, and I.B.M. P.C. clones.
Despite having poor graphics (compared to Atari 520/1040ST) and horrible sound, P.C. clones were winning in the marketplace (probably due to
Lotus 1-2-3 Spreadsheets and WordPerfect word processors). These were the killer applications of the day. Even when co-oped for I.B.M. Kingston, I learned to use
Lotus 1-2-3 to make measurements and drive test & measurement gear.
When I graduated with an M.S.E.E. from Georgia Tech in the summer of 1991, I was offered a Silicon development job at Compaq Computer ( a new P.C. Clone maker) in Houston, Texas. Surprisingly, my first computer for developing circuits and running Concept and Verilog simulations was a Sun Workstation.
I could borrow a Compaq Portable to take home for work or recreation (which I often did). It was heavy (and not what I would call an easily portable P.C.). Since Compaq computers were so expensive, I bought and built various P.C. clones while employed there.
This is the first time I built an Intel 386-based P.C. clone. Two games were absolutely etched into my memory:
Ultima Underworld (the first 3-D adventure game) and the
Wing Commander series. These were some of the best games from 1992 to 1993. Ultima Underworld was far superior to Doom, yet Doom seemed to be more popular.
After leaving Compaq Computer in 1994 for Tektronix, Inc. in Portland, Oregon, I didn't spend as much time on P.C. games. I was too busy windsurfing, biking, hiking, and snowboarding. This was one of the best times of my life for outdoor adventures!
Though I had a fantastic time in Portland, my career was going nowhere. In 1996, I accepted a Silicon Development job at Intel in Folsom, California, where I worked on developing the latest P.C. chipsets. During this time, I built a few PCs myself. I recall a few noteworthy games, including
Grim Fandango,
Half-Life, Starcraft,
Falcon 4.0,
Unreal, and my all-time favorite,
Total Annihilation.
My favorites from the past 20 years include:
