I had a
Commodore 64 for a good part of my childhood. A couple years after I got it, I finally got a Commodore 1541 floppy drive, and was finally able to play disk-based games. Prior to that, I'd been a Solar Fox addict; early disk faves were
Jumpman and
Telengard; once I got a little older, I bought a little game called
Gunship, and I was hooked. The learning curve was so steep that once I was able to successfully fly the sim Apache, my 12-year-old mind thought I was ready to enlist in the Army and fly the real thing. I've never played a flight sim that good since--in fact, I haven't really played ANY true flight sim since.
Oh yeah, I also learned a little bit of BASIC programming on that puppy, too.