Favorite Games from before the NES

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Metrocross was another of my favorites. This was difficult

Text adventure games like Zork, Altir 4 and The Hitchhikers Guide.

I loved the sarcasm in some of the games.
You'd get frustrated and try anything to advance

"stroke the wombat"
"why do you want to fondle a wombat you weirdo."

Like Tetris, Pong and Pac-Man, these are games I enjoyed too, but only once I got them on my Gameboy which came after the NES. So many of those good old games were really addictive.

I've been playing lots of Robotron. It's a great balance of luck and skill.

I've not played Robotron, but I did enjoy Llamatron on my Atari ST back in the day.

Talking of Infocom, there was A Mind Forever Voyaging. In a sense it was like the equivalent of GTA as an adventure game; the premise was that you control an AI viewing the same city through multiple simulated time periods as a sociological experiment. As a game it was really interesting! The writing and setting don't really hold up to any serious analysis, but it's a fantastic experiment and precursor to the open-world games that followed.

Llamatron! I used to enjoy playing the DOS version of that on my 486. It's a very bizarre, but fun game. Jeff Minter is a genius.

I still vividly remember my first encounter with Donkey Kong. It was Christmas '83 and my folks had gotten a Colecovision console along with the DK game. Even though I was only 3 at the time, I remember being drawn in by the sound effects, the music, the colors, the gameplay, everything. Naturally, I didn't get to play it as much as I wanted, but I recall that game as an important turning point in my life as my first experience with home consoles.

I've never actually played a Colecovision, but I've emulated it and I was amazed how good the graphics were for its time. I'd say it's almost on par with early NES games.

We had a copy of that on the IBM PC Jr. I liked it, but man was it NOISY >_<
It's not as colorful on the PC though, it's just cyan/magenta CGA graphics.

I've actually been playing Zork lately. I think I'm almost to the point of being stuck, but I'm not ready to give up and check a walkthrough yet.

I'm still stuck on the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy game. I've never managed to get past the Heart of Gold. I really don't want to consult a walkthrough.

You can play it on the BBC website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN2PLZG/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-game-30th-anniversary-edition

I am sad that I am too young to post in this thread, I was born in 1990 and my first games were on my brothers dos computer and our shared snes. I don't even remember the nes that well though my brother owned one and as old as I go now seems to be the early 90s. I do like tetris and nethacks but nethacks came years after the nes.

80s were before my time,

Wizard of Wor (1980)
BurgerTime (1982)