Hey, Player! What are your favorite games?

 I'll admit it.  When I first bought a computer, the lowly Apple ][ (yes, even before there was a ][+, let alone an Apple //e), it wasn't for work.  It wasn't to replace my aging Selectric typewriter.  It was to play a game!  Specifically, "Akalabeth," one of the earliest computer games, and the one that eventually morphed into the Ultima series.   And it was one lame game, let me tell you!  

How lame was it?  Look at this:


Yep, that's computer gaming, circa 1980!  I loved it.

Back then, the one big competitor for Akalabeth (and Ultima) was Wizardry.  The earliest Wizardry had graphics similar to the above.  I even got to be a Beta Tester on that series!  But as graphics improved and computer memory grew, it grew, too.  By the end of the series, Wizardry 8, it looked like this:


But now we're talking the nineties, and computer gaming has become a major industry.  Doom was the first "shareware" game--a major risk, based on the notion that a free sample of the whole first third would draw in customers for the rest.  They made a shitload of money.

And my all-time favorite game was in the same period:




And these days, I'm playing this:



So:  what are YOUR favorite games?  What are you favorite gaming memories?  Which were the WORST games?  Let's play!

AlextheKay, he be a playa!



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