What other 80s era computer games did you like?

Alternate Reality (City and Dungeon) on Atari are definitely ones I liked. Last Ninja on C64 and Atari (I think it might have been a flip disk one where it had Atari on back and C64 on front).

On the Apple ][e where I played Sundog, in addition to Ultima series and Seven Cities of Gold already mentioned, I really liked The Adventure Construction Set, The Pinball Construction Set, Stellar Seven, Wizardry, Bruce Lee, and Eamon.

At the arcade, Joust and Rampage were big favorites.

@surfmaster2000 I tell you what, the 8-bit Atari was a powerhouse for gaming. Don't get me wrong, I loved my 8-bit Apple II, and I still have it set up next to a few shelves full of Apple II games. But, you want to talk about being jealous, those Atari systems had so much better graphics and sound than the Apple II or even the C64. They were, in my opinion anyhow, the top of the heap in that era.

@kaeilef I definitely appreciated both then and now that the Atari 8-bit produced a lot of great arcade-quality conversions especially.. even simple early releases like Donkey Kong and and Pac Man were darn near arcade like with it's player-missile graphics support. Atari's lineage as a coin-op arcade company really did show through in those types of games.

I was, and remain, jealous of the C64 SID chip sound support, both in games and the music culture that surrounded it as well as the greater software support. Adventure Construction Set was definitely a big one I missed. My best friend had that and even created a game for it and did the whole ziplock bag thing and sold a few at a local computer store. I definitely missed out!

I definitely was not jealous of the Apple II though due the Atari's much better graphics and sound.

Turn on. Start programming. I don't know if I'd even be a programmer today if it weren't for Applesoft Basic.

I had the Atari 400 home computer, we got for Christmas '79 and the 800XL for Christmas '83. My favorites on that were Blue Max, Alternate Reality(I only ever had The City), Temple of Apshai Trilogy, Archon II: Adept, Spelunker, Summer Games, Rallyway, Donkey Kong Jr., Jumpman. I also messed around alot with EA's Movie Maker. We were more of a home computer family than a gaming console family. We never had any of the Atari consoles. However later I did get the NES original and ColecoVision original.

As for the arcade...man that's too tough. I was there from the late 70's when the old pool halls my older brothers would frequent slowly converted to arcades as 1, then 2 then a dozen arcade games pushed the pool and pinball machines out in the late 70's. Then in the early 80's you had the mega "dedicated" arcades that were purpose built as arcades first...your Fun Factory, Showbiz Pizza(started right here in my home town of KC! I went to the very first 2 locations before they were more national) Malibu Grand Prix, Red Baron, and so on. Nickelodeon was probably the first "pure" arcade that was purpose built and that was actually in the late 70's. If I had to think of a few of my favorites: Taito's Front Line, Taito's Wild West, Ikari Warriors, Galaxian, Gorf, Phoenix, Astro Blaster(one of my first). Bagman, Rush'n Attack, Donkey Kong, Dig Dug, Cliff Hanger(a rare animated game like Dragon's Lair, but Japanese/more anime), Tron, 10 yard fight, A rare one hardly anyone has played Warrior by Vectorbeam. Man oh man..when I actually try to remember it just could go on forever. One would be my favorite/new/popular for a 3-6 month stint then more would take it's place on my play list. If I had to pick one that really defined my childhood it would maybe have to be Gorf. Part of that is no doubt due to the fact that we had an actual flyer for it and marketing materials that made us drool over that game ( "Hey it's got Space Invaders AND Galaxian in it!!") long before we first saw it in person at the Showbiz Pizza. My dad ever so briefly entertained the idea of buying one of the local arcades from a guy in town who lived not too far from us, so for a while we got all sorts of marketing/industry mail.

I feel the same way.  I first learned to program when I was 9 years old and we got our first ANYTHING gaming/computer wise for Christmas '79.  My dad bought us 5 kids the Atari 400 with several games and the cassette recorder(it was needed to play SCRAM, Hangman, and something else).  But he also got the cassette recorder because he got some Atari tech/programming books.  Out of the 5 of us, only my older brother and I really used the machine for programming. Our first real/complex program was D&D character sheet entry/generator that you could save your characters to cassette and retrieve them. 



I guess my dad felt bad for us having to always do things the hard way with a cassette recorder, because for Christmas '83 he got my brother the 800XL  with the works....Commodore 1702 color monitor with special conversion cable that our local Atari user group helped us make, Epson 80 column dot matrix printer, and an Indus GT disk drive.   We did a lot more programming there. A friend of mine who had an 800 and I both did lots of programs/basic games. We tried to create one "Triple A" game you could call it..something like you'd buy from a publisher, but we quickly realized that we'd have to use lots of Assembly and we never really finished it.  We were 12, what can I say.

But I definitely credit having those computers from an early age at an early time in the industry becoming mainstream with my being a software engineer now.  My older brother is as well, but funny thing is he came into the industry 6-8 years after I was doing it after some convincing by me.  Aside from my programming in Apple Basic classes in high school, I pretty much got out of recreational programming/computing by 89 when I graduated and left for the navy.  I didn't touch a computer for fun/programming/etc and in fact barely touched one at all in the next 6 years(my one enlistment in the navy).  When I got out, it was 1995, the Internet was just becoming what it is, and I needed a field of study since I was returning to school and so I chose IS/CS.  I knew the internet was here to stay and would only grow the industry/job prospects. Guess I was right for once. 


We were lucky enough to have Apple computer in school pretty early on, like a year or 2 after that, and so when we all had to learn very basic programming/usage I was already a whiz. The only computers they ever had for programming courses at my high school were Apple, so I had to do those 2 classes in Apple Basic, but it was a breeze after being well versed in Atari Basic for 5+ years.

You know for years I always just assumed that my dad got that stuff...drives...programming manuals, etc...because he wanted to expose us to it. But as I became a husband and father and life does it's thing, I realized "oh crap..my dad wanted to tinker and learn programming and hack just as he had done with electronics/tubes/switches. He just didn't have time..."   He was barely in his mid 30's then and with 5 kids and both parents working and baseball/soccer/football/wrestling for 3 boys and soccer/softball/cheerleading for 2 girls..and a mortgage and all that stuff that life thrown at you during those days..I realized he still had aspirations just like I do even now at 50. He just never had the time to fully engage his hobbies.  You really never realize your parents are actual separate human beings with their own dreams and ideas of things still to come when you are young. You just think of them as there to raise you. But going through it yourself makes you realize and appreciate them more.