Best computer game ever -- not necessarily a VIDEO game.
I'd have to go wayyy back to one of the earliest interactive fiction computer games (ca. 1977-1982), (click →)
Wikipedia: Zork (ca. 1977-1982) including:
- Zork: The Great Underground Empire – Part I (later known as Zork I),
- Zork II: The Wizard of Frobozz, and
- Zork III: The Dungeon Master.
These were
text based games,
no video,
no images; they were all the more an intellectual exercise than a video game, because
you had to keep the developing game scenario in your head (or on many iterations of an evolving a hand-drawn map hanging on the wall — yes it was that big!).
Here's a (click →)
Yoot Toob video demo showing how it worked.
(the full video is 23 min. + 11 sec. Feel free to quit watching when you've seen enough.)
You have no idea how many
hundreds of hours I spent wandering around the Zork environment, climbing rickety ladders, "falling in a pit and breaking every bone in my body", dodging knives, slaying the knife throwing dwarves, picking up more objects that I could carry, wandering the "maze of many passages, all alike" and the "maze of many passages, all different", finding the "barren room" (a room with an ill-tempered bear in it!), collecting goodies, etc. All the time drawing and redrawing and redrawing a map of all the interconnected places I'd been.
Yes, played via our GE/Honeywell time sharing system at the office!
I even played the game at home, having hauled home a humongous carrying case bearing a "portable" (click →)
ASR-33 teletype and an acoustic modem (tuck your telephone receiver into it) at 110 baud. and later at the then "blinding electronic speed" of 300 baud!