[crabapple]

This is the evil twin of that other poll.

Why did you first play an Adventure Game?


1. Saw a friend playing one. Got interested.

2. Saw parents or other relatives playing one. Got interested.

3. Saw an ad in a movie, comic book, on TV - someplace other than a game shop.

4. Saw one in a non-game shop like Staples, Walmart, etc. and bought it out of curiosity.

5. Saw one in a game shop when looking for a different game.

6. Got one free with computer hardware.

7. Other.

[Royal Fool]

My dad introduced me to them, he's also a gamer.

My uncle sent my brother Monkey Island 1-3. Got interested.

[Dragonrose]

My family played adventures together since I was born. I'd be in a baby carrier thing on the computer table, my sister in either my mom or dad's lap, with my parents taking turns reading the messages and typing. At least, this is what they tell me. I obviously don't remember.

[reno6]

My dad and half-brother used to play Sierra games all the time. They started with Space Quest I, and that sparked a huge interest that lasted them through nearly every mainstream Sierra title. This got me involved at a very young age -- I can very clearly remember Dad letting me type in the names of his saved games, hitting Enter after typing in text commands, and even my first adventure gaming experience. I was six years old, and after Dad was done playing King's Quest 6 for the night, I asked if I could play and he let me. He even let me save my own game!! I was ecstatic!

Ironically, these days, it's me that turns HIM on to new adventures. I've branched him out into LucasArts and some underground adventures (namely the King's Quest remakes and Fatman), and when he visits every week, we generally end up talking about Sierra games and the company's history.

So why did I start? Because it looked fun. I took the 'family tradition' on when I became old enough to really understand the complexity of the games, and plan on forcefeeding Roger Wilco down my son's throat when I become a father.

With my luck, though, he'll be more interested in asking me if I ever played Halo.

[artwking4]

I was introduced to adventure games a short time ago, when I had broken into the LucasArts main office and in a safe I saw thousand's of adventure games, including a finished version of Sam & Max 2 and like seventeen more sequels on top of that. They had made and completed these games, but never released them because they thought no one would ever buy them.

And I've loved adventure games ever since.

I'm lying of course. Except about loving adventure games. Just seeing if anyone was reading this. I think I was ten or twelve and my dad brought some home after either borrowing/buying them from a friend at work. I remember a Space Quest game, either the 2nd or 3rd one, and also Quest for Glory 1 (although it back then it was called Hero's Quest). And also the first Leisure Suit Larry, but I didn't get to play that. I think they let me watch for a very short section when there wasn't any naughty bits happening.

[LauraMac]

we had a prototype MAC that we were testing some early graphic applications on for them and it had a few games loaded. There was this great game involving the Murmansk base and submarines and was sort of a atari looking strategy game. The other was Zork.

[Maquisard]

I saw my big bro playing Secret of Monkey Island. I must've been like 9 or 10. Shortly afterwards, I played through it using a walkthrough (they used to print these in gaming mags). I'm not sure what exactly appealed to me...the beatiful graphics? I probably understood nothing of the humor, or even very little of the language back then. For some reason though, I was hooked. Must be, as Jake had mentioned in a different thread, the way it reminded me of cartoons (which are another way I started learning English early on)

[ConcreteRancor]

I saw some friends of mine playing an early beta version of The Secret of Monkey Island and was fascinated. (Their mom's law firm was apparently working with LEC at the time, so they got to test out the games. Lucky bastards.) I did actually play a bit of the game myself, but I don't count that as playing my first adventure game since I only got about fifteen minutes into the game. You couldn't save your game either, since it was such an early test of the game.

Later on, when we got our first computer with CD-ROM, my dad bought us Myst to go with it. And I was hooked.

[Antoinetta]

"My first game was a charming, although tough little gem called Altered Destiny. This was back in '92, when I was 40 years old. The game came on six or seven 3.5 inch floppies. I didn't even have a computer then, but my neighbour had a 386 and introduced me not only to the game, but to computer gaming as well. Altered Destiny has a score-counter, like the Gabriel Knight games, and as I recall we got about a third of the way through the game. The game was part point and click and part text, you had a text-bar with a cursor as well as the mouse cursor. You would move your character via point and click, then type in various questions/commands when you had moved the character (this dude that gets transported into an alternate universe by being sucked into a TV set he is watching) to where you wanted to perform the action. Usually, these were simple commands like "take sword" or "grab vine", but the game's vocabulary wasn't that extensive, and there were some frustrating times trying to come up with the exactly proper wording.

Then, one day in the latter part of 1993, we forgot about Altered Destiny pretty much for good. My friend, Jan came over and asked me to come down and look at what she had up on her machine which by now I believe, had been upgraded to a 486. I went over, and I stared when I saw, in all its colour and crystal-clarity, Achenar's bedroom in the original 256 colour version of Myst. So we plugged away at Myst for about two years, making good progress, but not finishing the game. All this, of course, was before you could just jump online for a moment to snag a walk-thru when you get stuck. But then Jan moved away, and I didn't play any games until I got my first "real" computer, a Pentium II laptop early in 2000. And the first game I played then, that I bought at the same time I bought the computer, was Gabriel Knight III......and a year or so after that, I went back and finally finished Myst."

I posted the above on another thread, but it is applicable here as well. While Altered Destiny was cute and fun, I don't think it would have got me hooked. No, it was the blowaway graphics and general surrealistic quality of Myst that got me addicted. Prior to the Pentium II laptop, I had in 1998 aquired an antique Compaq with Windows 3.1 and no CD-ROM drive. This was sufficient for my work, but ever since my friend had moved away, I HAD to finish Myst, so as soon as I could afford it, I bought the Pentium II, with its CD-ROM drive. A chance observation of the name "Rennes-le-Chateau" on the Gabriel Knight III box (I had recently finished reading "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln) caused Gabriel to be the first game I completed, but then after finishing Myst, there was Riven....and yes, I was hooked.

Antoinetta

[Ninth]

A friend of mine received Planete Aventure 4 for his birthday. It was a box with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Maniac Mansion, Explora 2 and Les portes du Temps (dunno their english names).
We tried playing Indy, and we were floored.

[Supreme Goddess]

Our kids killed the old 286 so we upgraded in 1995 to a sleek black IBM with a split cd rom which could be closed. Ha. Had them fooled for the better part of a year.

Starfleet Academy came free but I sucked at it big time. The shop assistant suggested Timelapse - a puzzle game and I've been looking for similar stuff ever since.

[Wormsie]

I first played Loom when I got it as a present from my American pen pal. Then I read a review of The Curse of Monkey Island and bought the game. The Loom experience actually had very little to do with that - I bought CMI mostly because of the pretty hand-drawn graphics, and also because the reviewer praised the game to heavens. I loved CMI, and thought that the first two games were probably good, too, so I bought them. And then Grim was reviewed by the same person and I bought it, too. At this time I had already discovered Mixnmojo, Scummbar and AG. Back then adventure games were just another genre for me - I also played Red Alert, Worms 2, Battlezone (3D) and XCOM3. Later on I found DOTT and Sam and Max on an abandonware site...

So I voted Other.

[stepurhan]

I went for other. Started gaming generally on the Commodore 64 and I'd just give any game I could get my hands on a go really. Adventure games hooked me because, unlike other games, there always seemed to be such a variety of things to do. With most other genres, going further just meant you had more of the same, only harder. Adventure games meant bouncing on beds wearing a colander one minute and repairing a map with a glue made from toast the next.

[ragnar]

Trough a review in a gaming magazine I think (well, it was a very long time ago, so I can't remember everything) or perhaps it was a game of my brothers/dad.

[colpet]

I voted for other.
I always loved to do puzzles. We got a hand me down computer in 1994, and I found out about playing games like solitaire and tetris. In 1997, someone told me that people were playing more involved games on the computer, and one of them was Riven. At that time, we got a new computer at work, so I got the game and dabbled. In 2000, we got a new home computer, and the rest is history. Perhaps that's why I still prefer puzzles driven adventures over the Lucas Arts type games.

[Zanthia]

Befor I got a comp I used to play games on my cousins' comp. One of them was MI2.

[Risingson]

I should answer "why not?". I've always been open to any kind of computer games.

[100ja a.k.a. mr_mitja]

other: my dad bought me a bunch of games for c64 when I was a kid, one of them was a Spiderman adventure (so technically this is the first), but never liked it (never figured it out) cause it was text based (I don't get them even now ) . I was actually hooked when I played Larry 1 with my friend a bit (but then again, it probably had nothing to do with it being an adventure game either ).

[crabapple]

It looks like we've got 14 "others."
Of those who posted, most people were either introduced to them through friends or family, including a couple who said they voted for "other."
A couple of people said they'd try any game.
One said they tried one after reading a review.
But what about the other "others?"