Did You Know About Arcade Games or Computers First?

[OldTymeToys]

Arcade games for me.

I do remember getting the TRS-80 for Christmas one year and playing Dungeons of Daggorath on it. That was probably 82-83ish.

 

[ShaunDBurch]

Man...this one really makes you think! LOL At least for me.

Definitely played old school EM arcade stuff before I was exposed to computers. If we are talking video games with a tube, then that gets tough for me to pinpoint.

As a kid we had a little TI computer that loaded games from cassette tapes. It may have been a TI-99 so that would have been around '79. I also used to ride the bus out to a "PC Arcade" to rent time on TRS-80s. That would have been '77 or '78.

I played my first video game at the corner store by house on the way to school in the morning. It was a Space Invaders. I thought I was younger when I first saw the game, but according to the release date it would have been in 1978...so I was 12 or 13.

If we are strictly talking video arcade games, I have to say I was exposed to computers first...just by a slight edge.

Great question! Thanks for posting.

 

[rod90]

It is hard to remember. I bought a Commodore 64 and an Atari in high school. The bars had arcade games in them back then. Trying to remember a year or two from way back then is impossible for me.

 

[CameronMcC]

Arcade games. I have distinctive memories of them from early youth. Computers i caught up with in elementary school but it was after for sure. I also never thought they were as fun. I saw too much adult work being done.

 

[gretz99]

This is a really tough one considering my early exposure to games and computers was in the seventies (depressing to think that was 50 years ago).

It was almost simultaneous, but I think it had to be games since PCs were not readily available.

Pong came out in 1972. My earliest recollection of computers was playing the text-based games like Hunt the Wumpus, Star Trek, Adventure in the mid 70's.
F*ck where did all the time go . . .

 

[rod90]

I was eaten by a Grue many a times. I also remember lobbing missles over the mountain on the Apple IIe. I played it at the library in highschool

 

[alfonzotan]

I was eaten by a Grue many a times. I also remember lobbing missles over the mountain on the Apple IIe. I played it at the library in highschool

The only time I really got in trouble in high school was when I changed the names in the BASIC code of a text-only Apple II football game in the school library. Made the player's team into rock stars (at quarterback: Eddie Van Halen) and the computer's team to be all the principals and teachers I didn't like.

This should tell you that (a) I was a total dork in high school, and (b) I had some really juvenile teachers and principals for any adult to get as mad as they were over something that dumb...

 

[ArcadeTechGW]

Close tie. I was fiddling around with a Digital Equipment PDP8 in high school, ~1976 but I seem to recall playing Pong before that at various restaurants.

 

[ArcadeTechGW]

I was eaten by a Grue many a times. I also remember lobbing missles over the mountain on the Apple IIe. I played it at the library in highschool

Scott Adams Adventure!

 

[Totally80sMan]

I was eaten by a Grue many a times. I also remember lobbing missles over the mountain on the Apple IIe. I played it at the library in highschool

Great stuff. There was nothing as scary as a Grue, well maybe a swarm of blood-sucking locusts appearing over the horizon.
To this day I explain to my grown daughter how terrifying Infocom was.
Maybe it was the fact that everything was in the imagination. No graphics.
I think the Enchanter series with Sorcerer & Spellbreaker were some of the best stories ever written.

Grue

The Grue is a sinister, lurking presence in the dark places of the earth with insatiable appetite. Its favorite diet ranges from adventurers to enchanters. Its appetite is only tempered by its fear of light. They are famous for their horrible fear of light: No grues have ever been seen by the...

zork.fandom.com

 

[mylz]

I think it was computers for me. My grandpa was a huge techie back in the day and was the first in our family to get a personal computer. It's kind of funny, because he wasn't a geek or anything. He and my grandma grew up on ranches training horses and stuff, he was just really into computers. This would have been maybe '90 or '91. I remember the computer had a DOS prompt and he would type in "bananas" or something and pull up a game with two gorillas on top of skyscrapers and you'd type in angle and velocity and huck bananas at each other.

 

[LittleLarrySellr]

I think computer for me. We got a TI 99 4A in the early 80s. I saw someone mentioned Hunt the Wumpus. Lol. That brings back memories!

around 84-85 my dad started taking me to the mall on Saturday and that was when the arcade took over quickly compared to playing a rip off Space Invaders on the TI. I was so excited for those Saturday when he'd take me.

 

[Tr3vor42532]

My dad had arcade machines in the shed before we had a PC in the house.

 

[pboland]

If I can not count my Odyssey2 as a computer, then the answer is arcade games. I was six when my family got the O2 in '79 and to us it was a computer. We had a pong clone of some kind before that (very scant memory of it). I didn't play an arcade game until about 1980 at a local pizza place (I couldn't tell you the game again, scan memory of it).

I think most early video game systems were kind of marketed as computers. Heck the slogan for Odyssey2 was "The excitement of a game with the mind of a computer". And of course Atari 2600 was first called the "Video Computer System". I think for a lot of people back then, it was our first exposure of any kind of a computer. I know we don't look at it that way these days, but it really was different back then.

 

[blown23t]

Oh, totally arcade games.. didnt have money for computers at the time growing up.. I remember the atari 2600 asteroids game costing 44.95 at the time. my buddy had it.. we all went to his house to play it.. big bucks back in that day...
And arcade games were 25 cents... then came dragons layer... 50 cents....

 

[jacklick]

Yea, definitely arcade games for me as well. My mom, who definitely used Wang computers and word processors at work before arcade games came around, did buy me a c64 in like 1983 and she said "people say this would be good for you to learn". I was like where are the games? No disk drive or cartridges. Just a basic prompt. woohoo.

I think you would need to be a real early nerd and working in silicon valley or gov't to know about computers before video arcade games.

 

[rkhoury]

Definitely arcade for me. I believe the first time I saw an arcade machine was Space Invaders at the front of the neighborhood IGA. I was hooked ever since. I mowed lawns to save up for my Commodore 64 so I could play and learn how to program at home.

 

[VectorCollector]

For me it's a close call as the Commodore PET came out in 1979 and vectors were also becoming alive in the Arcades.
Before that I did know about the Apple II, but never owned one (though I did want to).

Computers | Timeline of Computer History | Computer History Museum

www.computerhistory.org

Though not allowed to be mentioned. the 1977 introduction of the Atari 2600, would have been my first introduction to microprocessor based hardware.
That said, I guess the 2600 led me into seeking out games in the Arcades too.

Atari 2600 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[quickray]

For me it was arcades first. Specifically an upright PAC Man in a hot dog restaurant called Weiner King. Yup, that was the name of it. I think it may have been the yellow paint and all the color on the cab that impressed me the most.

I wasn't exposed to a computer until probably 1986. My grandfather had one of those old Macs, the ones that were mono, not color. He used it mainly for his work but ever so often he'd turn Hardball on for me and I was always so amazed with the graphics on the thing. Then I'd start to visit computer stores and look at the games, always thought Amigas looked the best.

 

[ArcadeMaze]

Video games @ Bowling Alley> In the arcade> Atari2600> Apple II> Atari 800> TI 99/4(a)> C=64