I was going through some ol' PC CD's the other day and found my old Arx Fatalis CD. I had this little trip back in time where I remembered playing it for the first time and loving it, and I guess it was the first proper RPG I played. What were your introductions to this great, great genre of video games?

Ultima 2 on at the time modern Apple II+ with a whole 48kB main board memory. Three of us chipped in to spend $25 for it back in 1981. It came on a 5 1/4 inch floppy disk and you had to copy it for a player's version to record data. You don't know what you missed by not having to swap disks while playing.

I think it was "Telengard" on our C64...for computer Rpg's that is. I hated having to switch tapes back and forth to save or play the game. So glad when flat 4" disks came out.

Hmmm have no idea what it was but a friend had it playing on an old apple computer so I went an bought a Commodore VIC-20 - there was very little games so I went and got a Spectrum 48k but can't remember the games now but then I got an Amiga 500 and Bardstale ($120 worth) the next year was a Blur

Edit:
As a Side note does anyone remember "Deus Ex Machina" on Spectrum/c64 that is one Game (if it was that) that has stuck in my head forever

I think it was the Temple of Apshai on the Atari 800 in the early 80s.

Also, some text adventures from Infocom; Zork, Planetfall, etc. come to mind. I wasn't very good with the text games because I had a hard time coming up with the appropriate verb/noun parsers.

Then several others before I played Ultima III then Ultima IV. They were the best in the early 80s.

Plus, on the Atari, the graphics and sounds were fantastic. When I tried playing them later on the PC the graphics were poor and the sounds were bad.

Yeah, pretty much everything has better graphics than a early PC. It makes a lot of the real early games hard to play.

My first was the Bard's Tale, which my grandfather sat me down to watch him play. First one I played through on my own properly was probably Phantasie III. Both on the C64. The first one I ever beat (RPG that is) is Bard's Tale II, the DOS version.

you guys might not believe this but the first RPG i ever played is ...... Eschalon Book I
it was the game that really opened my eyes and made fall in love with the RPG genre and i then played Final Fantasy XII on PS2 and Devil Summoner 2 Beat Down if you can really count it as an RPG and of course the best one of them all Fallout : Brotherhood of steel which was Great since the most loved RPG's by me Are isometric Games ... i now Can't wait for Eschalon Book II i would kill for some beta testing hahhahh well i currently im planning to play siege of avalon which i bought two weeks ago hopefully it's good as in eschalon book good you know .

Woaaah, you guys are so much older than me

*feels small and insignificant*

First RPG I ever played was over a friend's house. It was Tunnels of Doom for the TI99. And it was awesome.

I then played or watched people play Ultima IV, Sword of Fargoal, and Bard's Tale II on the C64.

First RPG I bought with my own money was Bard's Tale III for the C64.

You almost gave me a heart attack. BoS is not an RPG- it is almost blasphemy to call it fallout

Go play Fallout 1 and Fallout 2 right now. They're dirt cheap on gog.com, you'll thank me afterwards.

When you are done, play Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, they are also fantastic & dirt cheap these days. Another favorite is Arcanum (although unlike the other games I mentioned, I only enjoyed it the first time I played it).

-Ido.

You know, it's really tough to remember back that far... but I believe that my first RPG was Ultima IV for NES. I never beat the game, but spent as many hours as my parents would let me playing it.

If you asked me what first RPG that really moved me, it'd be Final Fantasy II for the Super NES (a.k.a FF IV). I actually first played this over a friends house, and there were three of us... we stayed up the whole night playing the game, taking turns controlling the characters and fighting over who got to control the "walker" (walking around on the overland map), and which characters we'd get to use (the game supported splitting characters between the two controllers).

If you asked me about the first RPG that had what I would consider a profound effect on me, it would be Final Fantasy III for the Super NES (a.k.a. FF VI). To this day I hail it as the "best rpg ever." The number of characters and the amount of story that went into the game was incredible, and the graphics for the time were quite amazing.

Now I know you all are saying "pssshaw, those are just console games (aside from U4, of course)," but I've spent far more time playing cRPGs than anything else... and at the time, the console games I had looked better and played easier than the PC counterparts. That and most of the computer games I had were of the Shooter or Adventure Game variety.

The NES controller is one I'd consider among the best. Every game should be playable with a d-pad (or a mouse) + 2 buttons. Modern consoles have controllers with so many buttons (14 I believe) that's it really start to negate the supposed simplicity advantage of consoles in my opinion.

-Ido.

My first RPG was Phantasie 1 on my Atari 520 ST, sometime around 1986. Now that was a great game. Party-based with many races and classes, dungeons to explore, and turn-based combat. Graphics were pretty good too, for the time. (Most ST games had good graphics.)

After beating it I still had a lot of fun trying to kill gods. I don't remember if I ever managed to take down Zeus or not...

i ment fallout BOS on the PS2 not tactics on pc and i really think that BOS on PS2 in an rpg and a good one to

I stand corrected.

I still think that if you have enjoyed Eschalon and isometric RPGs in general, you should play both the first Fallouts and the Baldur's Gates. I think you will enjoy them.

-ido.