orcishgamer: Wasteland, Bard's Tale, Kung-Fu, and Karatica, off the top of my head.

HereForTheBeer: - Autoduel (Cars Wars on the computer)
- Lode Runner

RaggieRags: My favorite was Manhole, which I played on the neighbor's Mac. Now I'm glad to own my GOG copy of it. :-)

I once wrote a story of my childhood gaming experiences on another forum, and people seemed to be amused by it. I'll repost it here in case it'll amuse you too:

When I was a little girl, we didn't have a videogame system or a computer. The kids next door, however, had a ton of games on their Mac. I practically moved to live there. My first game love was Manhole, a children's game from Broderbund in the style of Myst (but, you know, with greyscale graphics and no puzzles). I played Manhole like crazy until the neighbour kid realized it's not cool to play with girls, and I was banished from their Macintosh (as well as their house).

"Playing videogames" got a whole different meaning for me after that. I built my own computer from cardboard boxes and designed a whole line of games for it. If I had a friend over and we "played videogames", I gave my friend a stack of floppy discs (also made from cardboard), each one with the name of the game written on it. Then I hid inside the cardboard computer and waited for my friend to slid a disc through a hole ("disc drive"), and started the game. Each game consisted of a stack of drawings, each one with a different scene from the game. The games were controlled by sticking fingers trough holes on each side of the screen, so I could see even from inside the box which way the player wanted to move. Then I'd just swap the appropriate drawing on the "screen". Sometimes my friend had to yell commands like "Okay, I'm gonna kill the dragon with the sword" and I'd swap the dragon drawing with a picture of a treasure.

A couple of weeks ago I was cleaning up, and found a cardboard floppy disc with "Manhoul 2" written on it with wonky letters.

So, about a year ago I was watching over my niece, and I showed her my DS to keep her occupied for a while. It turned out she absolutely fell in love with it, and she's begged me to lend her the thing every time we meet. Once she complained how much she'd like to have her own DS, I told her about the cardboard computer I made when I was her age. The next time we met, she proudly showed me a cardboard DS she'd made, complete with a stylus and all.

I wonder if I could play my Manhoul 2 on it.

Virama: Stay young forever! I loved the story, thanks for sharing. Brought a smile to my face :)

P.s. Happy new year! :P

RaggieRags: Happy New Year!

Here's a little update for my story.

My niece got her own DS for Chrismas, and her family has a Wii as well so it looks like she won't grow up game deprived like me. She's now 9 years old --you know how when kids get into something in that age, they REALLY get into it? Well, for her, Super Mario is That Thing. Her favorite things in the world are Super Mario Galaxy, everything Mario, Bowser, Luigi, and me doing Wario impersonation. I've done a great impression on her with my Super Mario knowledge (see, gaming IS useful! At least for impressing 9-year-olds!). She's always struggled with reading, but she's now constantly reading her game manuals for Mario information. She's also writing her own Super Mario stories. Her walls are covered with drawings of the different planets in Super Mario Galaxy. They appear to be some sort of motivational posters, as they have things like "I will win this soon!!!" written on them.

I'm really hoping she won't throw them away. Maybe 20 years from now she'll be cleaning up and finds an old stack of drawings from her closet... And she'll laugh and show them to her family, and tells them how she almost used to pee in pants in laughter when her aunt yelled "I''M GONNA WIN MARIO!" in her best Wario voice.

orcishgamer: Get her Pokemon: SoulSilver on her DS and Pokemon Battle Revolution on the Wii; you can actually battle with your DS team via WiFi on your Battle Revolution game. You'll be the coolest uncle on the planet. And all little girls love Pokemon, whether they know it yet or not.

Also, Super Smash Bros on Wii is really very good.