mfeury: First was in 1977. I could have sworn the brand was Spectravideo, but looking it up just now says that was a USA co. founded in 1981. Mine was a Canadian co, whatever the name was. Got it for �25 in my town's first computer store.
It was mainly a keyboard plus cassette deck. Type basic programs in from magazines, save them on cassette, and then hook into the TV for visual playback. The first computer game I played on it was a Four-in-a-Row, had a lot of fun changing the code to see the effect on the game! Later I would lust after the 16K RAM in the ZX Spectrum--never got one though.
My first computer was like that - it had 8k memory and a cassette deck. The keyboard was like a calculator keyboard. It was a Commodore PET. As well a typing games from magazines there were books of basic games. I remember typing in a very long poker game which never worked properly. I spent ages trying to debug it. The problems were not only my mistyping but misprints in the book!
I later had a Spectrum, a Sinclair QL, an ST and then moved on to various PCs.
The first game that really blew me away was Dungeon Master. I *lived* in that game for months.
There was also an online text based multiplayer game called Shades that took up a huge amount of my time. I don't think any game since has involved me more than those two.
