The first game I can recall playing is one of three games

Doom 2

Civilization

X-com: UFO Defence

I cant remember witch was first  But its one of these.

I was seriously so young I cannot remember what was first, maybe Jill of the Jungle, or Prince of Persia?

Didn't read the whole thread I admit...

If this counts for any computer game, I'd have to say JUMPMAN!  Oh and California Raisins. lol

The first games I played were on an Intellivision game console.

The first game I ever bought was Starcraft.  I bought my first computer 3 months later.

My first game was Age of Empires, followed by TIE Fighter, which is still the best PC game of all time. Maarek Stele ftw.

Then I got MathBlaster, if anyone remembers that old game

Now i have sins and halo. Need nothing else, until i finish fixing TIE fighter so it runs on my computer.

The first one i remember was Elite on Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48. I guess it's still in my top 3.

This thread brings back a lot of memories, so many games I remember with fond memories. Ultima series, X-Com, Civilization, Pirates!, Dune, X-wing, Eye of the beholder, Quest for glory, all the Sierra "quest" games, just about every single Lucasart adventure etc etc etc...

Not counting any earlier machines, my first "IBM compatible PC" game purchase(s): Sim City and Populous. Sim City came with a dark maroon copy protection symbol sheet, and it was difficult as heck to actually figure out the symbols. Entering it wrong resulted in Sim City going all disaster crazy and being unplayable, which happened more than once, sometimes without me actually realizing I had typed it in wrong until the game became completely utterly so full of disasters it was impossible to keep playing. Copy protection "fun"...:-p *tsks*

The only "IBM compatible PC" game beside Elite 2 I bought that came on 720k floppies, and I should still have them somewhere along with the boxes. I highly doubt the they still work after so many years of storage though.

Can't quite remember when it was though, nor the price I paid.

I still have a couple of shoeboxes full under my desk for my Atari ST 1040 that work perfectly to this day! 

I can't possibly remember. The earliest PC Game that I can vividly remember is Wolfenstein 3D. I remember playing other games, such as Civilization, but I think I actually played those much later.

And yeah, this is for PC games. I probably played some earlier stuff on other formats before then. Sonic was released a year prior to Wolfenstein 3D, along with such classics as A Link to the Past. I didn't really understand much of the stories, anyway. It was long before I learned English, so I was kinda hampered and didn't grow to appreciate my favourites, such as RPG games, until much later.

Edit: Man, some people are saying "Age of Empires" or even the Battlefield games. I feel old.

For my Amiga it was Elite and Evil Garden. For the pc it was master of orion 1.

my very first pc game was for hte mac...it was called Super Maze.  anyone heard of it?

First PC game must have been on a LAN my classmates had. Must have been DOOM though I'm not sure.

First game ever I don't know the name of. I was 4 years old (27 today) and you rolled a colored BIG ball straight forward through a city. It was on an Amiga or the Commodore 64

Remember a few other games from that time. Last Ninja. Great game. Gotted an emulator and played it again a few month ago and wish I hadn't....It was pure crap!

Also remember some other games from the Amiga/Commodore 64 period. Was this sidescrolling beat'em'up (like Final Fight on the SNES) where I remember saying "must kill the fat bastard" (a normal enemy which was fat).

Then there was a game which I was seriously scared of. You hunted monsters with bow & arrow. It was sidescrolling but you could move "up" aswell. I ran out of the room when my brother and friends played it since there was this worm or something that came up from the ground and swallowed your character!              Can't remember the name of that game....

Probably Commander Keen.

Ghostbusters on the Commodore 64

First Pc was a 386 that had 4 mb of ram..even had one of those ancient "B" drives.  Still have that old computer infact.  I later upgraded it with a Evergreen upgrade kit for the processor and moved it from a 386 to a 486 really, really low end pentium 1.

It was so low end it would run Age of Empires 1 but only at bout half normal speed....Took a really long time to walk your workers even a few inches but I was in heaven.

First game I bought and truly loved.......the game I believe preceeds The Settlers..
 SERF CITY   ....loved that game ...could even split screen it an play with a friend.

Valkajin

I think the first one I played was Wolfenstein 3-D.

My other old favorites in no particular order:

NovaStorm

DukeNukem II

F-15 Strike Eagle III

Commander Keen 4

Tunnels

Prince of Persia

WinTrek

Line Wars

and Lemmings

oh the memories... I actually found most of these and have gotten them to work on my current pc.

Crap, I can't remember!

Wait... Wait...

Paint!

I don't remember what the first game was named but it was based on a series of novels where humans were living on a low gravity world can could glide like flying squirels with their baggy clothes. They also lived in huge trees kinda like Wookies. It was on my cousin's Commador Vic-20.

Edit: I found it, it was Below the Root, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, Dale Disharoon and Bill Groetzinger. Was based on the Green Sky triligy by Snyder and came out back in '84

First computer was a TSR-80 complete with a cassette tape drive.

First real 'PC' was a 286 prosessor and a huge 40 MB hard drive and I think 512 KB of RAM with the first Wing Commander game on a VGA 13 inch monitor.

I believe perhaps your desk might be slightly less prone to the elements than my attic (although I am sure there are other risks :-p). Come to think of it, in retrospect perhaps the attic wasn't the best place, but I haven't really thought about it all that much until this thread. Maybe I should venture up into the darkness and dig out a few and see if that old dusty pc in the corner can get be convined or possibly coerced into action again.

You should think twice about that... and make sure you have enough free time for the worst case scenario.

If you experience the same problem I had, you won't be able to stop playing all of your functional old games for weeks.  This happened to me a few months ago when I broke out my old ST1040 and played all the way through Ultima 3, 4, and 5.  

Hmm, I think we may have had some game cartridges for the old Vic20. If we didn't, then I do remember playing some side scrolling ninja game that was loaded off of a cassette (yes, audio cassette) onto our C64/128. If by PC we mean x86-based computing, Solitare, Minesweeper, Conquest, Scorched Earth, X-Wing, Tradewars 2002. The first game I actually bought though was probably Dungeon Keeper (or maybe Outpost 2).

First game, in school of course: Oregon Trail

First game loving, Civilization.  I was so happy when I finally got a computer...in friggin 1994.  So sad.  I was TWELVE! ...now kids have PCs when they're like 5.  So unfair.

Lol haven't you seen the latest microsoft commercial, the kids in them are like 4 or 5 and they use apps better than most adults. I find most adults (any age after 35) know probably a few things about their computer:

1. Open internet explorer, and surf most of the web
   
2. Turn on and off their computer
3. Start an app probably word or excel the most
4. shutdown
5. and maybe basic diagnostic
6. Install a few programs
7. (maybe something else)

sure, there maybe a few more things most adults can do, but my point is that kids these days are much more tune to tech and stuff. And I also find this interesting, adults don't touch the settings (much), they think that if they even go near it, it will cause a computer crash, which I find kinda amusing.

Gunship 2000, 1991 played on the first computer I bought for $1200 which if I recall was a 386dx-33mhz.. with 128MB RAM.. it had a "turbo" button too which I think kicked it into 40mhz.. lol