About two years into playing D&D my father got a TRS-80 computer from RadioShack. His words "don't touch this" were very effective. Within months my sister and I were well along with learning BASIC. I recall trying to figure out how to use the computer as part of playing the game. But at that point in time, the effort to do anything with the computer was too significant compared to the simple fun of just playing D&D. The TRS-80 graphics were horrid and the read/write to/from storage (which was at that point a cassette tape player) was awful. So, we thought about it but merrily continued drawing maps by hand, scribbling out character sheets by hand and those of us creating dungeons continued to use spiral notebooks, pencils and crayons.PeteMork wrote:I also regret having not been the right age for this when it reached its heyday. I am absolutely convinced I would have been hooked. My only connection of any kind to this is in playing and thoroughly enjoying the original text-based game called Zork. I obtained the Fortran source code from a friend at Berkeley, and proceeded to write my own version. I was soon immersed in the complexities, and frustrated by the limitations of a text-based adventure game. By the time the graphics were good enough to be worth the effort (Myst, Riven, etc.) I had moved on to other interests. That, however, did not stop me from playing these fabulous games. I tended to like this type as opposed to the shoot-em-up, kill the bad guy types of interactive games.
I rather miss all that, to be honest.