Русский
We all love to indulge in nostalgia from time to time. Especially when it comes to children's and teenagers' entertainment! Today Freesoft editors decided to ask the experts about their first computer games. Tetris? Prince of Persia? Or maybe the legendary Warcraft? Make some tea and take a seat!
Philip Gurov, managing partner of the PR-agency "Gurov and Partners":
My first computer game was Alley Cat, created in 1983. At the very beginning of the 90s I played it at my dad's work. My father worked as an algorithmist and sometimes took me with him to his office. Then the computer came home.
The main character in the game is a black cat, making mischief in different apartments. I had to break the cage and eat a miserable bird, or to catch fish in an aquarium, or to eat all the food of evil sleeping dogs. The game had great humor, which for the first computer games was rather a rarity. I really liked the music in the screen saver and the soundtrack of the game in general. And the hardest part was the cat's love affair - you had to get to the cat, dodging the arrows that the cupids sent. If this was successful, kittens would start dancing on the screen.
Alexander Prun, an energy engineer:
When I was about six or seven years old, I don't remember exactly, my father brought home a ZX Spectrum and said you could play on it. It was a strange thing, unlike the Dendy of my peers, but I had no reason not to believe it. It was turned on in a tricky way for me: to the TV via the power supply and the tape recorder started a cassette with recorded games which were played after a while. There were Tetris, Elite, Dizzy, Dan Dare, from what remains in my memory. Which one was the first?
Tetris is clear - the whole family used to play it, competing in the evenings.
My dad was already playing Elite , as it was incomprehensible and complicated for me. A huge dark space with thousands of planets, hard landing on a station, crashing into that very station when you fail, battles with pirates, elaborate economy and trade between stations. In short, not for a first grader.
With Dan Dare: Pilot of the Future it's easier: running around, shooting aliens. The problem was the increasing difficulty and the limited time. It was fascinating to explore the intricate levels, trying not to get captured by the green men. Different sectors differed in color and a couple of new enemies. It took quite a while to win, the adrenaline rush before destroying the planet ended in a fiasco several times, but once I managed to run to the ship and see the victory roll. With trembling hands I turned the game off and never turned it on again...
Dizzy was my first quest, however, where everything was new and fabulous, a world where I was constantly dying trying to get a little further than the initial forest. I was able to pass the game only a few years later on my computer in the arms of a dictionary: there was no translation, and items were often used according to their special quest logic.
But it was all pampering, the first innocent experience of video games before the appearance of first-person shooters in my life and problems with studying in elementary school...
Yusya Shutova, PR-specialist and blogger:
The first PC game was back in the days when PCs first appeared in Russia - the classic Pacman. If we talk about the time when there was an opportunity to play online games, the popular MMO was Ragnarok.
Ragnarok - one of the first MMO, which I ran into and played more than 3 years. For a teenager, in a time without much choice it was one of my favorites. The stylistics, the choice of characters, the ability to commiserate - all this and more really pulled me in. And some of the "mobs" became a hallmark and went on to become memes - porings. A basic "mob" that collects all the loot behind you.
It is interesting that even today there are many fans of this MMORPG, although its gameplay today seems somewhat outdated compared to other products on the market.
Moreover at the same time another game format - Counter-Strike - became popular, first-person shooter that attracted a great number of PC users. Those who did not have the opportunity to play on a PC at home (yet we are talking about the early 2000s), came to the club and play all day long. Despite the fact that the shooter is not at all a girl's, the fairer sex is not bad with male duties.