My first experience with computers was with an old TRS-80. My dad worked in a machine shop, and I believe the TRS-80 was either given to him or brought home to help with programming CNC equipment. I may have the details wrong, he may have purchased it to get me interested, I’m not 100% sure. I just know that he turned me loose on it.

That magical thing came with a couple manuals and a few books on BASIC programming. I read them all. I was probably 12 at the time…that sounds like a great age to claim to remember, and it fits the timeline. I was always reading gaming and computing magazines and in some dark arcade spending quarters. I wanted to program. I was hooked.

My parents bought me a TI 99/4A computer. I have no idea why I didn’t know until now that it had cartridge capabilities, but I never once owned any cartridges. Now when I look back, I feel pretty stupid for not knowing I could have had a gaming console. What they did give me was a book on Programing in BASIC and a book collection of BASIC games that I would spend hours typing in. I had no storage so I would just sit in the floor in my room typing and debugging these programs. I’m still shocked as I sit here watching a video about the great games that were available and I was in there all day copying programs from a book and typing in my own ‘guess your number’ programs. Apparently there were 239 titles….that’s just ridiculous, now I want them all.

My first gaming console was an Atari Video Pinball machine with Breakout (Model C-380). That was the year I waited until everyone had gone to bed, snuck out of my room, and played breakout all night long. They were shocked the next day when I had completely finished the game by mid afternoon. I think it only had 2 screens. When you cleared one, it started fresh…and when you cleared the second one you just bounced the ball off the back wall until you gave up.

Next came the Intellivision. I absolutely loved that console. Looking at a list of the games I definitely had AD&D, Lock ‘N’ Chase, BurgerTime, Night Stalker, Space Battle, Pinball, Horse Racing (gambling for kids)…ASTROSMASH….that was my favorite. Football, Baseball, and of course Space Armada.

1990 I got married. I was still playing games…am…still playing games. I had bought the NES before the kids were born and was driving my wife crazy. She really can’t stand Zelda now, but she loved Super Mario. We would rent videos and games from local video stores and play all the time. I got a Gameboy right before the babies were born and man that helped out with that long intensive labor. As much as my wife loved Tetris, she was not a fan at that particular time. We, or I should say, I, upgraded to the SNES just before moving into our home.

At that time I was reading computer game magazines. I read about Steve Jackson Games and Operation Sundevil. I convinced my wife that buying a Packard Bell 286 Home computer with 4MB RAM and a 40MB hard drive and a 2400baud modem…pre-loaded with Dos 4.01 and GW Basic. It was more than we could afford, and much more that I should have spent, but it sure was a learning experience. I learned the DOS commands like mad and still default to a command prompt when feasible. I updated to DOS 5 almost immediately with QBasic, and then eventually to DOS 6.22. I was running Norton Utilities to look into all the files with a hex editor and wondering how they worked….I also started doing everything I could to get that 2400baud modem online. Once that was accomplished, I never looked back.