First RPG You EVER Played? [Archive] - Retrogaming Roundtable

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Aswald

08-06-2003, 02:04 PM

It was back in the very late 1970s, on what I think was a TRS-80 computer(?). A crude door opened, and "WELCOME" appeared. From there, it was a sort of multiple-choice question game: "Do you enter the Left Door or the Right Door?"

L=Left
R=Right.

It was on a green monochrome monitor. Primitive, but so much fun back then!

SoulBlazer

08-06-2003, 02:14 PM

Well, what do you define as a RPG? I know many people consider Adventure for the Atari 2600 a RPG, and that was a game I played a lot back in the day.....

My first computer RPG would be something text based for the Apple II I learned to use in the early 80's in Elementry school -- no clue what it was now.

The first one I OWNED was Bards Tale for my brand new C128 for Christmas of 84.

The first one I really ENJOYED was Dragon Warrior for the NES in 1988.

Then came Final Fantasy in 1990 and that turned me on to the whole RPG experience in a new way.

I'm still a die hard FF nut to this day, but the new Dragon Warriors (ever since 5) have done nothing for me. FF has changed with the times -- DW has'nt. Same game play as 15 years ago -- fine back then, not really enough to get my juices going now.

But I did'nt want to turn this note into a RPG rant...... :-D

Today RPG's rank with strategy and simulation games as being my favorite and a staple of my PC and console collections. :D

Thank you, Enix and Square!

Aswald

08-06-2003, 02:16 PM

Adventure for the 2600 does count as an RPG, but I didn't get it until after I played that computer game. It was probably my second game.

It can be either computer or home console, as long as it's an RPG. Even a hand-held.

Quintracker

08-06-2003, 02:20 PM

Dragon Warrior on the nes :)

Qixmaster

08-06-2003, 02:23 PM

dragon warrior for me as well. ah the memories...

Sniderman

08-06-2003, 02:31 PM

Let's see. I'm gonna stretch the "RPG" definition. Other than Adventure (which I really do consider a rudimentary RPG), I would have to say Telengard for the C64 from Avalon Hill. You killed critters, found weapons and treasure, and increased your basic stats as you played. It was kind of a "Bard's Tale Lite" and I played the HELL out of it.

An I was an Infocom HOUND in the day. Played (and won) Zork I and II (never played III), Lurking Horror, and Planetfall. (Owned most of the others too, but never "won" them without the Invisiclues.)

WiseSalesman

08-06-2003, 02:37 PM

It was either Dragon Warrior for the NES (which I got for free for subsribing to Nintendo Power), The Magic of Scherezade, also for NES, or Demonstalkers for PC.

dave2236

08-06-2003, 02:42 PM

Dragon Warrior for NES....which I also got for free with a Nintendo Power subscription

Oberfuhrer Hamm

08-06-2003, 02:48 PM

When I first got a PSOne, the game that my parents bought with it was FF8. It was the first RPG I ever played and I liked it enough to get FF7 and FF9. FF8 was the only RPG that I ever finished though. I was never motivated to finish FF9 and I did come close to finishing FF7.

XpOsUrE

08-06-2003, 02:59 PM

For myself it was Legend of Zelda for the new, I beleave back in 87.

Drexel923

08-06-2003, 04:16 PM

Probably Dragon Warrior, but the first one that made me love RPG's was Secret of Mana.

Raedon

08-06-2003, 05:05 PM

I played paper AD&D first becuase my neighbor DM'ed. My first real RPG was probably AD&D on the INTV but Zork was close. first RPG that kept me up to 4am was Bard's Tale.

ubikuberalles

08-06-2003, 05:10 PM

ZORK I was the first RPG I ever finished but the first RPG I ever played was ZORKs predecesser: Adventure (the text game not the 2600 game). Now THAT goes way way back to 1977. @_@

Zaxxon

08-06-2003, 05:19 PM

Is Oregon Trail an RPG? If so, that's mine.

Kroogah

08-06-2003, 05:22 PM

Zelda. I played the Zelda games so much I can't stand the N64 and Gamecube updates. OG topdown Zelda is my preference. Same with old and new Metroid.

grayejectbutton

08-06-2003, 05:28 PM

AB Positive

08-06-2003, 06:14 PM

The first RPG I ever played was Dragon Warrior for the NES, for just about 45 min. or so while I was with my mother as she visited a friend. The first one I ever owned and beat was actually Crystalis for the NES. Looking back now, I'm shocked it was by SNK.

-AG

kainemaxwell

08-06-2003, 07:34 PM

Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior, can't remember which one.

BigBoogie

08-06-2003, 07:52 PM

Kings quest. It some old computer my stepmothers father used to own. Not sure wat it was, I was only like 9 so my comp knowledge was limeted. Mmmmm kings quest.

hezeuschrist

08-06-2003, 08:01 PM

Dragon Warrior I'm sure was the first one I played, but the first one I really got into was Final Fantasy 2 for SNES. That was the game that really turned me on to all the other RPG's, and is by far the one I have beat the most time.

Damn, now i want to go play through that again :(

cheesystick

08-06-2003, 08:26 PM

Mine was "the 7th Saga" for the SNES. I bought it for 10 dollars from my neighbor's garage sale on a whim, onlly to find out what it was a steaming pile of cow dung. It is one of those turn based RPG's have has countless random battles that you cannot escape from and probably suffers from every bad stereotype than an RPG can have. Thus, because of that game, I was scared for life. I now just do not like RPG's in general, all because of that stinker.
I realize now that the 7th Saga was a terrible game to start out with, but I can't help the fact that it has tramautized me for life. Now no matter how hard I try, I can't ever seem to enjoy playing RPGs. Its truely a shame.
-crispy

scooterb23

08-06-2003, 09:05 PM

Adventure was the first I played

Zork was the first one I enjoyed for more than 3 minutes (played it for about 2 hours before ditching it)

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was the first (and only) text RPG I finished

Road Trip (PS2) the first console based RPG I've ever finished

1bigmig

08-06-2003, 09:46 PM

but the new Dragon Warriors (ever since 5) have done nothing for me. ... Same game play as 15 years ago -- fine back then, not really enough to get my juices going now.

BLASHPHEMY :angry: :angry: :angry:

Dragon Warrior or Final Fantasy for the NES. I played both of them pretty close together so I cant remember which came first.

Chunky

08-06-2003, 10:21 PM

I think it was Haunted House for the Apple II, or at leasr i remember it being like a Mud text based, get stick, get gum, chew gum, put gum on stick, get dollar in sewer grate with stick. that and playing i think was D&D with a maze with line drawn picture and you got gold or whatnot. man that had to been 81 or something.

Phosphor Dot Fossils

08-06-2003, 10:34 PM

Telengard (http://www.thelogbook.com/phosphor/apple/telen.htm) on the Apple II.

Someday, Snider, I'm gonna rumble ya. Be it Kickman or Telengard, yer goin' DOWN. LOL

Kid Fenris

08-06-2003, 10:35 PM

My first RPG experience came when I tried out the Bard's Tale on my cousin's Apple II. In my childhood, I thought that "Skara Brae" was the coolest name ever devised.

gwaine

08-06-2003, 10:42 PM

Kings quest. It some old computer my stepmothers father used to own. Not sure wat it was, I was only like 9 so my comp knowledge was limeted. Mmmmm kings quest.

Was that really an RPG? A great game, but you don't level up or gain experience or anything like that. That was the first computer game I ever played. My first RPG was Ultima II in all its CGA glory (PCJr). Wow I love that game.

gwaine

08-06-2003, 10:43 PM

My first RPG experience came when I tried out the Bard's Tale on my cousin's Apple II. In my childhood, I thought that "Skara Brae" was the coolest name ever devised.

Skara Brae was in the Ultima games...was it in Bard's Tale too?

hezeuschrist

08-06-2003, 10:45 PM

Kings Quest was an adventure game, a top notch one at that.

brandver3

08-06-2003, 10:48 PM

Breath of Fire 3. Which I am about to beat (FINALLY!!!) was the first one that got me hooked.

Now I did play Dragon Warrior back in the day, but I really had no idea what I was doing, so I don't really count it.

Bighab

08-07-2003, 12:57 AM

The first RPG I played was Wizardry on an Apple II clone way back in the day.

atomicthumbs

08-07-2003, 01:00 AM

Dragon Warrior for the NES. I still LOVE that game!
(I did play The Legend of Zelda first, but I consider that an action/RPG).

Jasoco

08-07-2003, 02:49 AM

Dragon Warrior for NES.

I also got it for "Free" (Plus $15 S/H) through Nintendo Power. How could I pass it up after the awesome catchy poster they sent us. My sister would repeat the poster over and over and begged Dad to send for it.

Boy, I remember the day we got it. Ahh.. memories.

Still haven't beaten it. I'm THIS close, but don't trust my NES currently to put it in one more time to play again. And I just can't get into it on my Emulator.

WiseSalesman

08-07-2003, 03:34 AM

You consider Road Trip an rpg? :hmm:

NE146

08-07-2003, 04:25 AM

I had an Apple II.. but games like Wizardry and Ultima just didn't seem fun to me. So I skipped a lot of them as I wanted arcade action. I mean I played a little Dark Crystal and of course the Infocom stuff but I don't think those are RPG's.. I think the FIRST RPG I really remember going gung ho at.. was PHANTASY STAR on the SMS. :)

atomicthumbs

08-07-2003, 06:30 AM

You consider Road Trip an rpg? :hmm:

That comedy with Stiffler and that REALLY skinny dude where Tom Green gives oral to a mouse?

..
...
....
.....
......
.......
........

Sure. I'd consider that an RPG. A damn fine RPG at that!

(just kidding. Which game was Road Trip, and was this about that Zelda comment?)

Griking

08-07-2003, 09:04 AM

The first RPG that I remember playing was Wizardry when I bought my Apple II. I may have tried another before this but if so I don't remember. Wizardry was the game that started it al for me. From there I moved on to the Ultima, Might & Magic and Bard's Tale series.

On a side note, I don't consider Atari's Adventure, King's Quest or any of the Infocom games as RPG. These are Adventure games and there is a difference.

WiseSalesman

08-07-2003, 10:54 AM

@atomicthumbs: LOL

Okay, the comment about roadtrip wasn't directed at you, but at scooter. He said:

Road Trip (PS2) the first console based RPG I've ever finished

Road Trip was a budget racing game for PSX. You stated off with a somewhat crappy car, and you traveled the world, racing and talking to other cars. YOu could pick up new parts for your car that would eventually improve the speed and handling. Not really something I, personally, consider an RPG.

Now if they really made an RPG based of the movie starring Sean William Scott and Tom Green....well......I figure it'd be my scared duty to pick that one up. :D

atomicthumbs

08-07-2003, 11:07 AM

Pantechnicon

08-07-2003, 11:10 AM

Under the broader definition of RPG, mine would be Adventure for the 2600.

Under a narrow (and more fitting definition) of RPG, mine would be Final Fantasy Legend for Game Boy.

It's kind of a neat story about how I discovered FFL. I was in the Marine Corps from 1988-1992. During that time I had an old style Game Boy which was a constant companion. I was getting ready to ship out to the first Gulf War when I received a package from my dad which contained FFL. Dad knew I had a Game Boy, although he really wasn't sure what that was. He knew I was going to Persian Gulf, and got it in his head to get me a game for it. So he went to a local game store and asked some clerk for a Game Boy title that "would keep a young man occupied for long periods of time" (my Dad obviously knew something about the nature of war, being long periods of boredom punctuated by moments of intense terror). The clerk gave him Final Fantasy Legend and he shipped it to me.

As it turned out, I never did make it to the Gulf War, but I did become very occupied by FFL. Bear in mind that, up to this point, my gaming experience was mostly on the 2600, and the scant titles I had for my GB were Tetris and Super Mario. I extensively played paper AD&D in junior high, and I had no idea that the experience could be had on a computer game, let alone a portable one. So FFL really opened a door to me with respect to gaming. I went on to everntually play beat the whole FFL series on Game Boy as well as the all the Zelda titles for the same. Great stuff.

Actually, I think the GB is a great platform for RPG's. For one thing, I still prefer (and always will prefer) old-school titles of a reflexive or puzzle nature. And while I like the RPG gaming experience, I have neither the time nor inclination to get involved in the humongous scope of RPG's on newer systems. So the old Game Boy RPG titles, for me anyway, strike the right balance; I get the RPG fix without becoming too lost in the game.

MarkM2112

08-07-2003, 11:51 AM

For me, it was Ultima II on my Apple ][ Plus. Man, I spent hours on that thing! In college, I also played a MULTIPLAYER "online" dungeon crawling RPG, (on the PLATO [now NOVANET] computer network through the University of Illinois) where you played with other players in other parts of the country! It was called "Avatar". It was so cool!

Cheese

08-07-2003, 12:15 PM

AD&D for INTV back in the day, and when I got back into gaming, Swords of Vermillion.

Reverend JagDiesel

08-07-2003, 01:21 PM

It was either Ultima 5 or 6, cant remember.
I, like others, had been turned off by some of the stinker RPG titles over the years and had actually planned on staying away from the genre.. Then I got an Xbox, heard about Morrowind and am hooked. Man, I cant wait for the Morrowind GOTY edition for the Xbox, more places to go, more people to kill. I just hope they fixed some of the bugs in it!

SFCfan

08-07-2003, 10:29 PM

For Computer: King's Quest II (I now have KQ 1-5)
For Console: Final Fantasy for NES (currently halfway through enhanced PSone version)

P.S. Find Excalibur right before you face Chaos, He has MORE THAN 10,000 HIT POINTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!! :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o :o

scooterb23

08-07-2003, 10:44 PM

I counted Road Trip as an RPG because it was running around, completing tasks, talking to people, and upgrading my character to complete a quest...just because I got to drive around as a choo choo train for the last half of the game doesn't mean anything :)

Plus it took about 20-25 hours for me to finish the game...much more time than I am used to putting into a game. I don't play RPGs so yes, that's a lot of time to me.

It is a fun game, it's only about $20, I'll recommend it...

Has anyone else played it??? Other thoughts?

DDCecil

08-07-2003, 11:29 PM

Dragon Warrior, Thanks to the NP promotional offer!

calthaer

08-08-2003, 09:10 PM

The Bard's Tale for me. That game blew my mind back in the day.

Most of Sierra's King's Quest games never were and are still not considered "RPGs." Same thing with Zork, Hitchhiker's Guide, and a lot of other Infocom text games (we're not talking the Mines of Titan ones). They have always been called "adventure games" right up there with their later descendents such as the Lucasarts adventure games (Full Throttle, Maniac Mansion, Grim Fandango). There are no stats, you cannot create your own character...nada. Shadowgate, Ecco the Dolphin, Monkey Island, Zork Zero, all those Alone in the Dark games, 7th Guest, Gabriel Knight, Ico, Myst, Leisure Suit Larry, and all those other collect-key-item-use-certain-place games are not generally called RPGs. Browsing by genre at Gamespot.com shows that all of the above can be found under "adventure," while "RPG" yields Dragon Warrior, Dungeon Siege, Morrowind, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, Final Fantasy, Goldun Sun, Grandia, etc.

The most notable difference between most adventure games and most RPGs is the fact that you do not generally have to fight things to advance, and if you do fight things, it's almost always a puzzle disguised as a fight (the final "battle" of King's Quest V comes to mind for some reason).

King's Quest departed from this formula with Mask of Eternity but before that it was most definitely an adventure. The Quest for Glory games also blur the line quite a bit.

People still make Zork-type games today. Some peope really like the text-based adventure games. In fact, one site devoted to them has their definition here:

http://www.justadventure.com/articles/ad-ven'ture/ad-ven'ture.shtm

And here's another one that is a little bit more funny:

http://www.justadventure.com/articles/Shut_Up!/shutup.shtm

Of course I realize that a lot of people will disagree, but if that's the case, we'll all just have to agree that the term "RPG" is completely meaningless and that any and every game possible falls into this completely ambiguous category. We then have no common vocabulary to talk about games at all.

If that is the case, then I change my answer. Bard's Tale was not my first RPG: Pac-Man was. It was followed shortly by Pitfall!, another great RPG.

devilman

08-10-2003, 12:18 AM

The first RPGs I ever played were for the Sinclair ZX Spectrum, but I can't really remember them much now. There was a text adventure/RPG called "Behind Closed Doors", a wonderful game where you started out locked in a toilet/bathroom and had to figure out how to get out there cuz the door was locked. The game came free on a cover cassette, either with "You Sinclair" or maybe "Sinclair User". I have searched for this game since then but haven't been able to find it. Anyone have the ROM of it?

I've got fond memories of BCD too - The World Of Spectrum (http://www.worldofspectrum.org) archive has Behind Closed Doors 1 - 4 (Didn't realise there were even that many).

Bard's Tale on the Spectrum was probably my first RPG. It came on two tapes and I was rather gutted to find that when I reached the second tape, my tape 2 was a duplicate of tape 1! No more dungeons! :(

badinsults

08-10-2003, 01:31 AM

I guess for me it was Zelda 3... if that counts

I remember shortly after getting Zelda 3, I was getting a game. I wanted Dragon Warrior 3, but the store didn't have it. For some odd reason, I knew that Final Fantasy 2 was a similar type of game, so I got it instead (I could have got Dragon Warrior 4, but it was more expensive). To this day, I still consider FF2 to be my favourite snes game.

Droodroo

08-10-2003, 05:15 AM

Zelda on the NES, which i didnt like at 7 years old, then fatal labyrinthe on the sega mega drive / gen when i was about 12, didnt like it either.

Must say i dont like RPGs at all.

D

PDorr3

08-10-2003, 11:20 AM

First RPG i ever played was Zelda (nes) but if you dont consider that an rpg, than pokemon (gb) and if you dont consider THAT an rpg, than ff7 (psx)