This week, we thought it’d be fun to see the sort of first games that our team members played when they were younger!
There were a lot of fond memories of the Humongous Entertainment family of children’s point-and-click games. Our co-founder Jessica said she used to play Freddi Fish on an old MS DOS machine that she possibly still has. Our other co-founder Mark, our Marketing/PR Manager Catherine, and our Game Designer Andrew Miller also have very fond memories of those games as well, and Mark remembers playing those before he even got into console gaming.
Artist Dan Howard originally said his first game was Asteroids. Then he remembered that his first game was definitely Oregon Trail, which he played on “the old spinach green Commodore and Apple II machines [his classroom] had in Kindergarten.” He also remembers playing a lot of math games at the time as well, which he cites as being “pretty fun as a dumb kid.”
One of our other artists, Chelsea Harper, said her first game was Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Genesis. She borrowed it from her babysitter when she came to watch her as a kid. “However, my first game that I ever owned myself is Final Fantasy IX,” she mentioned.
Andrew said his first game was Prince of Persia on the Apple II, which he used to play with his dad. Generally, many of his first games were educational in nature and included such games as Reader Rabbit and Gungan Frontier. Outside of educational games, the first games he played completely on his own were Doom and Myst.
On the topic of Myst, our new junior writer Sarah Spiers cited it as her first game. It, along with The Sims, was one of three games she had when she was younger. “My mother wouldn’t let me play The Sims, and the third game wouldn’t run on my computer,” she said, “so I was stuck with Myst.” After becoming enamored with the game’s world and puzzles, she teamed up with her best friend to finally beat the game. Even now, she’s still a huge fan of the game and even wrote a paper about it.
Programmer Josh Samuels wasn’t entirely sure which particular game was his first, but he had a lot of fond memories of the 1983 Star Wars arcade game, which he thinks might’ve been it. As an extra in the American Ballet Theatre in 1980’s LA, he saved up his money to buy an NES. In the 90’s, he found himself borrowing games like Ultima 6 so he could play them on his dad’s laptop. Josh actually credits this for getting him interested in programming in the first place since it “forced [him] to learn about DOS and memory management.”
Lastly, artist Sal V. Cloak said his first game was Donkey Kong, which he played at a convenience store. It was his first exposure to video games in general, too. “Even at such a young age,” Sal says, “one of the things I always looked for in games was not just the subject matter, but how the music and visuals created an experience—an experience that the player would get direct and active participation in. To be part of the action you were seeing instead of just watching. So cool!”
What was your first game growing up? Let us know in the comments!
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