When and Why did you start playing adventure games?

Did a friend recommend them?

Did you read about them?

Were you curious about games you saw on store shelves?

For more recent adventure gamers, did you start with casual adventure-like games like HOPA's (Hidden Object Puzzle Adventures) from Big Fish or a similar download website.

What did you think the first time you played an adventure game?

My first adventure game (actually my first computer game of any sort except for solitaire) was Myst and I kept wondering when the enemies were going to attack. The only computer games I'd seen played anywhere had enemies in them. I was quite pleased to discover that there were games where you could explore without being harrassed by enemies.

I played my first adventure game in 1982. My then-husband was bound and determined to buy a computer and other than the fact that it was a new thing, I had no idea why he wanted one and could not begin to imagine what we would do with it.

A week or two after that, we went into the store where he had purchased the computer and I saw a text adventure game called Zork - it was one floppy disc and the packaging looked like a zip-lock bag.

Went home and started playing it, was absolutely entranced, and shortly thereafter discovered a few text adventures from Sierra On-Line.

And the rest, as they say, is history!

Hi, Jenny!

I bought my first computer in 1986 (an IBM PC with 640K of RAM (upgraded from 256K), 2 floppy 5-1/4" disks, DOS, monochrome monitor and no graphics card. As I was browsing through a computer store, I spotted "Wishbringer" by Infocom on the shelf and thought it looked interesting. Of course, back then, all games were text-based so you had to use your imagination. I think it took me a few months to finish and I had pages of maps so I wouldn't get lost, but I was hooked. I believe the first game I played after buying a graphics card was "Beyond Zork" and, even though it was still text-based, it actually had a map, and the locations became visible as you moved from one to another.

I'm chuckling at your comment about playing "Myst" and wondering when the enemies were going to attack, because that was the game I played after "KQ8: Mask of Eternity", and I was waiting for the same thing !

Susan

I loved Wishbringer and Beyond Zork, Susan.

I don't really know why, we had Zak McKraken and the Alien Mindbenders on the PC, probably got it because the zany humour appealed to me, and that was my first real point & click. Soon caught the bug and thoroughly enjoyed The Secret of Monkey Island and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, loved playing these games with my sister.

We took a day to complete SoMI and 2 years to complete Zak!!

Hi, Marian!

I stuck to Infocom games for quite a while and loved the Zork series. It wasn't until I played "Zork: Grand Inquisitor" (which was so much fun) that I finally got to see what the little white house looked like ! Then I discovered Sierra On-Line and played Gabriel Knight 1, 2 & 3, Shivers 1 & 2, King's Quest 6, 7 & 8 and Phntasmagoria, and the storylines were amazing.

I think you and I like the same games so, if you have played one that I haven't and really enjoyed it, I know that I will as well !

Susan

My first computer was a Tandy 1000. My first game was Pirates, then Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards. My hubby wanted the computer not me. Then I found games and he could never get the computer away from me. We eventually bought a second computer, His and Hers.

For me it was 1977, not on a PC but an IBM Mainframe - The Colossal Cave Adventure. It would be almost 10 years later that one of my buddies from IBM brought a copy of LSL into the office. After that I was hooked, and literally have played many hundreds of adventure games since.

While I haven't played many newer PC games lately, I do on occasion make exceptions for folks like Agustín Cordes. Great guy, I miss chatting with him.

I've moved on to Consoles and Hand Held systems, mostly playing JRPG games.

You guys all started way before me. I didn't own a computer in the 1980's. I didn't buy my Pentium II computer until mid-1999 -- almost the end of the 1990's. It didn't come configured for sound in DOS, so I avoided DOS games until I figured out how to get sound working in DOS (which involved buying a different sound card).

As for why I was interested in trying adventure games, I had some online friends who played games like Myst, Shivers, Riven, and Starship Titanic. They also liked Playstation games like Lunar: Silver Star Story and Xenogears, but I wanted to start with computer games rather than Playstation games.

I did eventually get a PS One Playstation. Guess what I played on it -- Myst.

Unfortunately I played Myst after I played through T7G, and didn't care for it much - but all the games that followed were much more enjoyable. I recall SirDave and I having several conversations about my dislike for Myst.

I did replay the 3D version, and it was much better.

You should get yourself an android tablet, I replayed The Book of Unwritten Tales 2 as well as Tunguska several months back. they were just as enjoyable as my first PC experiences. I wish they would release more of these classics for the android platform, you know like TLJ.

I played The 7th Guest after playing Shivers, and was deeply disappointed in The 7th Guest.
I thought Shivers was a much better game. Still do. Of course Shivers had the benefit of a few years.

I don't think either Shivers or 7th Guest is like Myst. The puzzles in Myst are more built into the environment. The puzzles in Shivers and 7th Guest could be removed from the game and still be puzzles. That wouldn't work for most of the puzzles in Myst.


I bought an iPad a few years back and I don't really enjoy playing adventure games on it.
I prefer a large screen for adventure games.
The iPad works well for Mahjong games though. I have a 3D Mahjong game that works better on iPad than it would on PC because of how you can rotate the board with your fingers.

It was in 1987. I had just gotten a PC at work, and a friend lent me some games to try out on it. One of them was Leisure Suit Larry (the first game). It wasn't all what I expected a computer game to be. The character was just standing outside a bar. Obviously, I had to type commands, but couldn't figure out what to type exactly to proceed. I didn't like it at all, so I typed "F*** off". The game responded "Same to you, buddy!". After that I was hooked. I hadn't expected that kind of interaction from a game. I went on to buy all Sierra games I could lay my hands on, which wasn't exactly cheap, with postage from USA to Sweden included. But it was worth it!

Boy, we are going way back here. As far as I can recall my first game was Dragonlance Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Gold box Krynn trilogy: Champions of Krynn; Death Knights of Krynn & The Dark Queen of Krynn. After that I turned to the Sierra games. Hubby told me my first comp. was an IBM 386 sx.

I got my first computer in 1994 and it came loaded with lots of Dos games like Commander Keen and other such platformers and shoot em ups. As my computer came with a CD Rom player I soon started haunting computer game shops in my lunch hour and reading game reviews . I think Myst may have been my first purchased game, but it was Tex Murphy - Under A Killing Moon that got me hooked on adventure games.

I can't remember the year, but, it was around 30 years ago. My brother had a computer and had a game called Sherlock Holmes on it and I can remember that he asked for my help. and he also had Dagger of Amon Ra on his computer. so, as soon as I got back from visiting him, I bought my first computer. Never looked back. I was hooked.

I too came to them late in the day. It was somewhere in the mid 90s when I got my first computer, and tended to play things like Quake and Doom. IN a computer game magazine I read about a game called Twinsun's Odyssey and the graphics intrigued me as much as anything so I bought it. It had a lot of action but it also had chracaters you could care about and a story, which sucked me in. That led me to seek out more such games, which led to Riven and then Gameboomers, and here I still be
I did try and replay Twinsun's Odyssey a few years back but it wouldn't function properly. Perhaps I will be inspired to try again.

"Golf" was the first thing resembling any sort of computer game I'd ever seen or heard of. That was in 1992.

Then in 1994 one of my Sons in Law (not the one who builds my machines - but one who at that time was a Programmer) brought the DOS version of the first two Secret of Monkey Island games when he and my eldest Daughter visited for a few days.
And he installed them via floppies onto the 386 computer I had. Making me a DOS Menu that appeared when I switched the machine on - from which I could choose what to do.

Needless to say, I completely wrecked this menu more than once (having had no previous experience of DOS or anything else) and he had to return and fix it
But I loved being able to move this little character across the screen and actually get it to DO things

It took me months to get through the first game - never having seen anything like it before - and no such things as walkthroughs being available
But of course I "got the bug". And on a much later visit he did the same for me with the first Gabriel Knight game - Sins of the Fathers.

After that, I worked "backwards" playing loads of truly ancient games, and then eventually started to move "forward" and look at new releases.
But computer games in the UK were VERY expensive so I had to save up my pennies in order to even afford one !!
And what a HUGE treat day it was when I went out and bought a beautifully boxed game with all the extra treasures inside

Flotsam, Twinsen's Odyssey (under the name of Little Big Adventure 2) is available as a download on GOG. It also supports Windows 10.

I got my first computer in 1996, a Compaq Win 95. I got Myst for free, bundled with the printer. So, I had to try it. I didn't like it at all, probably because I didn't understood what was being said. About the same time I bought Fate of Atlantis, and that is still one of my favorite games.

Would that be Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis? If so, I just replayed the game on my tablet under Scummvm - Loved that game.

The GOG version uses DOSBox.
Some people have left tips for setting it up at the DOSBox website.
https://www.dosbox.com/comp_list.php?showID=1237&letter=L

Interestingly, one person's instructions have you install the game using DOSBox and then play it using regular 64-bit Windows 7. I don't know if that would work using Windows 8 or 10 though.

I think Secret of Monkey Island was the first 3rd person game I played, as well as the first DOS game I was able to play with sound. It was part of the LucasArts Archives Collection Vol. III, where the games seemed to be updated to work in Windows 95/98 with sound. I especially liked the beginning of Secret of Monkey Island, which took place at night under a starry sky. I thought it was very mysterious to explore that first island at night (Melee Island).

For me it was 1987 -- My secretary was playing Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards during lunch break at her desk. We didn't mind game playing at break times as we thought it would help with computer skills at the time. I watched her type in commands to move Larry along, solve puzzles, and get killed ! I was fascinated by the amount of vocabulary the game "understood" . Next thing I knew, I bought my first 8086 IBM and 15" monitor and I bought my copy of LLL and off I went !! Then on to Police Quest, Space Quest, Kings Quest and a "quest" for every pc adventure game I could find. Early BAAGs guy I guess. I am still at it today !

It was the late 90s, which was when I had my first computer. My brother had bought "Titanic: Adventure out of Time" and didn't really care for it. He gave it to me to try, and that's what started it all. I had never known anything like it, and I loved it. That game is still special to me, as a result. I still have the box. Gaming for me is like an interactive book, with beautiful graphics, and I was so excited to come upon such a thing. I can't remember what the second game was after that, but I'm thinking maybe Myst? And I was definitely hooked after that! What a story! I am all about the story in my games. I'm a strictly PC/mouse/keyboard gamer, because that's what I started with, and it seems the most simple to me. I'm so happy to have found my passion. I've played some truly amazing games throughout the years, and I'm still grateful to my brother, and Titanic for starting it all.

Thanks for that Marian
Whatever version I tried to play last time, there were control issues like the character would run out of your screen and the camera wouldn't follow and centering wouldn't help.
I have GOG so will check it out, in conjunction with Jenny's dosbox link
It would be nice to play it again.