The very first load you made... :D

[arcaic]

BBC Micro Welcome tape - No idea what was on it. It's getting near 40 years ago!!

[Whiteball]

Typed lots of stuff from a couple of books into the ZX-81.
First game actually loaded though was Catacombs by J. K. Greye Software. Played that for ages. Loved it.

[rowan]

Easy : the Psion "Horizon" demo tape ...

Same here and let's be fair it was a great introduction to home computing.
After that my brother typed in Zag Blasters with my dad from one of the magazines because he wanted to try programming.

Also the orange BASIC manual was really well written too as an introduction.

I really miss good documentation in modern computing. Often it's missing completely but when it's there it's too-frequently a substandard mess of hyperlinked shit that is impossible to
* know you have read all of as it has a start, middle and end
* study away from the computer
* open alongside the screen instead of it covering up what you are looking at [yeah OK 2nd monitor can mitigate that these days]

[oktup]

Penetrator by Beam Software on the Speccy.

[rowan]

Penetrator by Beam Software on the Speccy.

My slightly straight laced uncle & aunt bought that for their kids one Christmas who couldn't believe their luck.

Turns out they saw it being demoed in the shop and it happened to be on the level editor & due to the logo on the cover they thought it was some drawing software called pen-e-vator

[Mayhem]

The C64 dad got was second hand, so came with a few games... I'm not sure which one may have actually been loaded first, but seeing as Matrix was in there, it may well have been that...!

[WiredWorm]

I know we messed around on my cousins ZX81, but the first game I actually recall playing was Penetrator on the Spectrum.

Pretty sure that was on my uncles machine. We got our own and the first two games we played on that were definitely Mr Wimpy and Manic Miner.

[(o)(o)]

So this has probably been done to death (perhaps). But...

What was the very first thing you loaded into your first home computer?

Well err.. my Dad helped me connect to a mainframe in East Anglia from Cheshire with one of these :



We played a text adventure remotely, and downloaded mazes that he coded an entire room of mainframes to produce in downtime using I think Prim's algorithm. I can't remember the home computer used. It was a briefcase type thing.



Then BBC micro model B came, Game of Life was possibly the first games loaded from a cassette... or maybe the Sphinx text adventure.

[tufty]

I know we messed around on my cousins ZX81, but the first game I actually recall playing was Penetrator on the Spectrum.

Pretty sure that was on my uncles machine. We got our own and the first two games we played on that were definitely Mr Wimpy and Manic Miner.

These days if your uncle asks if you want to play "penetrator"...

Actually, those days too.

[Foozwah]

Manic Miner on my 48K Spectrum - an unusual machine to own here in Orstraylya (as it was not at all widespread/popular - the C64 was king, and even the BBC Model B, Apple II and Atari 8-bits were more popular than the Speccy), but which I bought cos a mate had one, mainly.

The Spectrum only lasted with me about six months before I sold it and a handful of games to fund the purchase of the beige brick of a C64 which I absolutely adored for many many (many) years, and which gave me my introduction to Yak's creations, first by way of Gridrunner (one of the first games ever loaded on it, albeit on a tape of random pirated games), then later when I bought Batalyx, Iridis Alpha, etc. direct via mail order.

[Deckard]

Same here - friends dad was a doctor and he got a spectrum and MM - I remember we played it between 4 of us ALL weekend - we didnt turn it off and I still remember the Solar Power Generator and Skylab landing bay rooms giving us nightmares.

Also played a lot of Cruising on Broadway for some reason.

[Kelloggs]

My dad bought us a Spectrum (16k) from WHSmiths one Saturday morning as a surprise. The surprise was on him when we returned that afternoon for a cassette recorder (d'oh!) and picked up a couple of games while we were there. So I think mine would have had to be Space Raiders from Psion, in finest Sinclair livery.

That one, I think, died due to power cable crapoutage. The next died with a faulty power socket. With the third, I may have gone looking for the RESET line on the edge connector (to save the power connector), and inadvertently given it a reprogramming it never forgot. By then, there were no 16k models in stock, and we ended up with a 48k instead. Yay!

[pyroxian]

Probably the first program off this tape:

[Stephen]

I guess MEMOPAD doesn't count, so it would have been States & Capitals, via cassette on my Atari 400. Was my 7th b-day present in 1982. Second thing (which got WAY more use) was Star Raiders of course!

[Whiteball]

...So I think mine would have had to be Space Raiders from Psion, in finest Sinclair livery...

I remember having space raiders for the ZX81 and never being able to load it, until one day after trying for what seemed like the millionth time, it loaded. We didn't want to turn the machine off in case it never loaded again. It was after all 'space invaders' in our own home.