Have you had a chance to try VR. I'm going to come back to this thread and do my own proper list but from reading yours I did just wonder if modern technology might have one more pivotal moment ready and waiting for you!
No, for two reasons. I have very low tolerance for wearing anything on my head at all, that pretty much rules out a heavy VR headset and has lead me to getting an EyeX head-/eyetracker instead of a wearable track-IR. I also only wear a headset when I truly must (voicechat for example) and am happy when I can take it off again. Second reason is my demand at quality. I have a PC that is powerful enough to run pretty much everything I want at max details in 3840x1600 resolution. I wouldn't want to get substantially lower resolution in VR. But in VR the PC has to be twice as powerful as it has to render the same highres picture twice in the same time, one for each eye. At the same time a consistently high framerate is even more important in VR.Have you had a chance to try VR. I'm going to come back to this thread and do my own proper list but from reading yours I did just wonder if modern technology might have one more pivotal moment ready and waiting for you!
1980 Battlezone on the arcade cabinet. I gazed at it in wonder. 1984 came Elite. Then Starglider. Mercenary. The vector graphics defined this very epoch and it was 1st P to boot.
Sat in Palma airport waiting for my flight home - good a place as any to write about my pivotal gaming moments.
First ever video game I played, a text based lunar lander (readouts of altitude, vertical speed and fuel) on a PET computer.
Spending a fortune feeding coins into classic video games in an arcade in Southall in the early 80's (in particular being cheered on by a small crowd when I was the first person to get to "the base" in Scramble - other favourites incl. Missile Command, Defender, Asteroids and Galaga).
Casually flicking through a friends Teach Yourself Basic book in 83, having an absolute light bulb epiphany and later walking away from my BA sponsored aeronautics degree and switching to computer science (not exactly gaming, but defnitely life changing).
Getting a BBC micro shortly after.
Falling in love with the worlds created by a combination of Level 9's brilliantly immersive text based adventures and my own imagination ... in particular Snowball, set on the seemingly derelict space ship where you wake up.
Elite on the BBC (of course)
The era of 3dfx cards, Doom, Quake, Unreal and the Half Life series (plus my personal favourites Portal and Portal 2), and of idolising (and following) both ID Software and Valve.
A brief switch to xbox console gaming, in particular the Project Gotham and Colin McRae racing games.
Back to PC gaming, World of Warcraft and in particular the single vast world map and seamless travel within it (including being able to walk the length of a continent if I felt so inclined, hopping on and off airships, and walking under the ocean through the deep run tram tunnel after falling off it). To this day WoW still has the best sense of place of any game I've played and I have nearly as many vivid memories of arriving at amazing locations in that game as I do of the real world.
A whole bunch of other, lesser, mmo's.
Elite: Dangerous (obviously) - and associated game changing upgrades to both HoTaS and head tracking.
The extraordinary revelation of just how mind blowing VR is. Although I don't use it as much as I used to (for some of the reasons given by Numa above) I still think it's quite extraordinary and one of the few bits of gaming tech that I've gone out of my way to show off to friends and relatives at every opportunity.
And lastly, something of an odd one but ... engagement with the online community surrounding this game (something I'd never done in all my previous years of gaming) and seeing (especially through Covid times) that online relationships with people can be just as rich, valid and meaningful as RL ones (still can't wait for Lavecon tho).
First ever video game I played, a text based lunar lander (readouts of altitude, vertical speed and fuel) on a PET computer.
Spending a fortune feeding coins into classic video games in an arcade in Southall in the early 80's (in particular being cheered on by a small crowd when I was the first person to get to "the base" in Scramble - other favourites incl. Missile Command, Defender, Asteroids and Galaga).
Casually flicking through a friends Teach Yourself Basic book in 83, having an absolute light bulb epiphany and later walking away from my BA sponsored aeronautics degree and switching to computer science (not exactly gaming, but defnitely life changing).
Getting a BBC micro shortly after.
Falling in love with the worlds created by a combination of Level 9's brilliantly immersive text based adventures and my own imagination ... in particular Snowball, set on the seemingly derelict space ship where you wake up.
Elite on the BBC (of course)
The era of 3dfx cards, Doom, Quake, Unreal and the Half Life series (plus my personal favourites Portal and Portal 2), and of idolising (and following) both ID Software and Valve.
A brief switch to xbox console gaming, in particular the Project Gotham and Colin McRae racing games.
Back to PC gaming, World of Warcraft and in particular the single vast world map and seamless travel within it (including being able to walk the length of a continent if I felt so inclined, hopping on and off airships, and walking under the ocean through the deep run tram tunnel after falling off it). To this day WoW still has the best sense of place of any game I've played and I have nearly as many vivid memories of arriving at amazing locations in that game as I do of the real world.
A whole bunch of other, lesser, mmo's.
Elite: Dangerous (obviously) - and associated game changing upgrades to both HoTaS and head tracking.
The extraordinary revelation of just how mind blowing VR is. Although I don't use it as much as I used to (for some of the reasons given by Numa above) I still think it's quite extraordinary and one of the few bits of gaming tech that I've gone out of my way to show off to friends and relatives at every opportunity.
And lastly, something of an odd one but ... engagement with the online community surrounding this game (something I'd never done in all my previous years of gaming) and seeing (especially through Covid times) that online relationships with people can be just as rich, valid and meaningful as RL ones (still can't wait for Lavecon tho).
On my TRS-80 clone there was my own private asteroids game (not to mention many others). Previous to that it cost my dinner money to play that and Defender at the local newsagent. Hunger <-> Asteroids ? hard choice.
Then playing Elite on the school BBC and then on my C64 - a proper 3-d game!
Next on the C64 is :
"West of House
This is an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here."
Not much then until the original Doom which appeared when I began working after my degree. I remember sneaking into the CAD office to run it on their "big" 21in monitors! amazing.. Then Unreal, Quake, Half-life,Counterstrike became variously the "murder your colleagues at lunchtime" activity with Unreal tournament becoming the final fix for its combination of speed and engagement. Get that "ultra-kill" moment in in time for the 2 pm meetings.
Then I guess ED, which came after many years of not really playing games much. Suggested by a friend, and then hooked back into the world I left behind in 1987.
Then playing Elite on the school BBC and then on my C64 - a proper 3-d game!
Next on the C64 is :
"West of House
This is an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here."
Not much then until the original Doom which appeared when I began working after my degree. I remember sneaking into the CAD office to run it on their "big" 21in monitors! amazing.. Then Unreal, Quake, Half-life,Counterstrike became variously the "murder your colleagues at lunchtime" activity with Unreal tournament becoming the final fix for its combination of speed and engagement. Get that "ultra-kill" moment in in time for the 2 pm meetings.
Then I guess ED, which came after many years of not really playing games much. Suggested by a friend, and then hooked back into the world I left behind in 1987.
There were many, many games, but these are the ones that grabbed me...I'm 54 and been playing computer games since I was about 10.
I've been looking back at my game time with Elite Dangerous and with a little sadness as I've stopped playing, but also with some awesomeness at what I experienced. It has been a pivotal moment in my own gaming experience that got me thinking about the past. I decided to compile a list of those special moments that meant a lot to me. I guess you have to be somewhat old to understand.
So here goes. My own personalPivotal Moments in Gaming History
Playing Asteroids in my local chippy with my best friend.
Being given a Vic20 for Christmas and masteringBlitz. I learnt to program basic.
Upgrading to the C64. So many games but if I had to pick one that inspired me it would be the Ultima series. Got lost for hours with my band of heroes. Tally Ho!
Learning to fly Sub logics Flight Sim. This is my longest running game (sim). I'm still playing it with MSFS2020 and have enjoyed every incarnation.
Playing Doom on the LAN at work. First experience of team play.
Playing Smash TV at the Trocadero in London with my second best friend. Awesome sounds and amazing game play.
Blood. A most underrated and oft forgotten game with depth, hidden gems and references to many horror movies.
Half Life. What an awesome immersion. I still play it on Dos Box.
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. I feel like I've been to Pripyat.
Elite Dangerous and VR. For me ED wasthegame for VR. I played from launch till Odyssey. Completed both DW1 and 2, got the cloth patches to prove it. Made friends in game and experienced some amazing things and people.
Half Life Alyx, well because Jeff! the best VR game for pure VR immersion to date.
MSFS2020. Just purchased. The adventure is still continuing....
So what's yours?
1983 - Dungeons of Daggorath and BASIC on the Tandy Color Computer - Cartridge - MC6809 CPU
1987 - Starflight/Space Rogue/Star Command on a Tandy 1000 EX - DOS - 8088
1988 - Wasteland on a Tandy 1000 TX - DOS - 80286
1993 - Frontier: Elite II and Warlords on an Amiga 500/2000 - AMIGA
- MC68000/680301995 - 2000 - Duke Nukem 3D/Quake/Shadow Warrior on a Pentium PC - Windows 95/98
2001 - 2013 - Dungeon Siege/Neverwinter Nights/ Neverwinter Nights II on a Pentium 4 or greater Windows box - Windows XP through 7
2013 - Space Rangers 2: Dominators on a quad-core AMD Windows 7 PC
2015 - Wasteland 2 - Windows 10 - hex core AMD
2020 - Elite Dangerous/Horizons/Odyssey on octa core AMD PC - Windows 10
Playing on my first small computer with a membrane keyboard in the late 70s (don't remember what it was).
Playing Wizardry on an Apple II.
Playing FS on our first 286 at work (we were checking/verifying BIOS compatibility...honest)
Playing Falcon 4.0 after buying extra RAM and a co-processor for my 386.
Playing Wizardry on an Apple II.
Playing FS on our first 286 at work (we were checking/verifying BIOS compatibility...honest)
Playing Falcon 4.0 after buying extra RAM and a co-processor for my 386.
One old game I loved that people rarely talk about any more was Terminator Future Shock, Bethesda's take on the post apocalyptic bit of Terminator, it was pretty cutting edge at the time. It came out before the original Quake but had full 3d enemies and mouse look, real world weapons, driveable vehicles. oh yeah, and BUGS! lots of BUGS!
As an ESO fan, this game hit me harder than any other game. You walk through the path and start to see gaps in the trees along the river near river wood. Whiterun slowly comes into view and it is still one of the most breathtaking views in gaming.
I have to say ESO is already pretty enjoyable, and it’s to the point that I don’t even use fast travel unless I’m doing quest to get more ESO gold. Then again I’ve already done most of the quest I want to experience so I can just explore and do whatever.
I have to say ESO is already pretty enjoyable, and it’s to the point that I don’t even use fast travel unless I’m doing quest to get more ESO gold. Then again I’ve already done most of the quest I want to experience so I can just explore and do whatever.
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Space games is definitely my main thing.
First was playing Star Trek on a TRS-80 when I was about ten. The possibilities seemed endless.
Then probably Elite on the BBC, 1984. Most played game - definitely.
Difficult to pick a third. Since then, mostly disappointments. Seeing Doom for the first time was memorable. Not a space game, but then these days any collection of rooms with a skybox counts as a space game.
Martin Schweiger's Orbiter Sim is still the only real space game after all these years.
First was playing Star Trek on a TRS-80 when I was about ten. The possibilities seemed endless.
Then probably Elite on the BBC, 1984. Most played game - definitely.
Difficult to pick a third. Since then, mostly disappointments. Seeing Doom for the first time was memorable. Not a space game, but then these days any collection of rooms with a skybox counts as a space game.
Martin Schweiger's Orbiter Sim is still the only real space game after all these years.
I think it has also to do with how much you contribute and you arent really just someone who consumes, you shaped this community in part with that what you did and shared.
Good grief well If memory serves.....
..wiggling past bigger kids to get a glimpse of a Space Invaders machine whilst on holiday on the Isle Of Wight.
Star Raider on our first Atari ( my own game in a family of 5 kids) wow that extra keypad with overlay lol.
The Hobbit on the family ZX81.
Speccy game Joust.
Big Brothers Elite on the family C64.
Bought my own Amiga 500+.... Stealth Fighter Bomber F117 ( or some-such).
Alien Breed CoOp with my best friend.
Sensible Soccer.
Secret Of Monkey Island ( 5 of us playing it together ).
SimCity on my custom built 486 PC.
Street Fighter on my PlayStation (1).
Sega Rally on first Xbox.
blah Xbox blah PlayStation blah blah blah
ED on Xbox and a bit on PC ( now donated the PC rig to Daughter).
..wiggling past bigger kids to get a glimpse of a Space Invaders machine whilst on holiday on the Isle Of Wight.
Star Raider on our first Atari ( my own game in a family of 5 kids) wow that extra keypad with overlay lol.
The Hobbit on the family ZX81.
Speccy game Joust.
Big Brothers Elite on the family C64.
Bought my own Amiga 500+.... Stealth Fighter Bomber F117 ( or some-such).
Alien Breed CoOp with my best friend.
Sensible Soccer.
Secret Of Monkey Island ( 5 of us playing it together ).
SimCity on my custom built 486 PC.
Street Fighter on my PlayStation (1).
Sega Rally on first Xbox.
blah Xbox blah PlayStation blah blah blah
ED on Xbox and a bit on PC ( now donated the PC rig to Daughter).
Secret of Monkey Island MP - yeah, with a plate of sandwiches the host's mum prepared. And in our case a dictionary to understand the English.