Game:

3-Demon (1983)

Duration: 5:09

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I thought I'd make a series of videos about the first games I played, because I'm in the mood to be a nostalgia weenie.

Kicking off with this series is the 1983 shareware game 3-Demon. My father got me into computers around the age of 5 or 6, and along with learning spreadsheet and word processing software I also got into games from a floppy disk he brought home from work one day, courtesy of his coworker, packed with a bunch of games. I still have this floppy laying around somewhere, but no means to read from it anymore.

I would play this game on my dad's Compaq Portable, a single-unit computer with a tiny monochrome monitor, two 5.25" drives, and a keyboard you tacked back onto the system's front like it was a part of the unit itself when you aren't using it, or when you carry it around. It was heavy, and carrying felt like like smuggling an obese midget in a briefcase at an airport.

A Pac-Man-esque game in first-person perspective, this was probably my most-played game until I got my Nintendo Entertainment System on Christmas of 1986. I had played 3-Demon so often that I could navigate the mazes without looking at the map and breeze to level 8 or, on a good day, 9. Not like riding a bicycle, these days I can barely squeeze through Level 4 before Game Over.

One interesting detail -- the "John D. Price" fellow credited as this game's author is listed by Mobygames as having worked on one other game over a decade later: Fallout. Same person, or coincidence?

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