The first Civilization game came out in late 1991 (according to Wikipedia...my memory is fairly good with dates but I don't presume to be so good as to remember when now-ancient games were released) and was immediately hailed as the best comprehensive strategy game for computers ever. Period. And many, including myself still ascribe it as the high-mark of the 4X genre. Hell, it created the 4X genre!
Sid Meier became the defacto master of these types of games and Microprose, the then-publisher, became the leading producer of quality strategy games that were fun to play. Strategy games up to then had been produced for the growing PC games market, of course, ("Empire" being one of my personal favorites) but they focused primarily on battle strategy and tactics, not the whole picture including economy management, science development and cultural achievements behind your military forces.
Aside from those multipliers it was, as far as I can remember, the first strategy game to inspire the all important "What if" factor. Since you could take a culture and guide it along a myriad of paths towards evolution through time, you weren't bogged down by many historically-prescribed limitations. You could boldly go where your people had never gone before. It really did a lot to impart a sense of responsibility and personal ownership into your empire. And this was the key to keeping you hooked. This was why, if you're like me, it's so hard to stop playing. You have to guide your people through thick and thin, fending off enemies and exploiting good fortune to build a magnificent civilization.
This is the ultimate God game.
I gazed at the newly-installed display in the winter of '91 at the Electronics Boutique in the Emerald Square Mall with envy and bittersweet longing. Boxes of gold and blue, featuring an awe-inspiring illustration of an Egyptian sarcophagus buried beneath a skyscraper-encrusted modern city.
I'd read about the upcoming computer game in magazines for months and knew it was my type of game for sure. But my heart sank when I saw that it'd been released for Macintosh, Amiga and IBM-PC compatible (as was still the fashion to describe what today are simply "PCs") only. Not available for the Commodore 64, the only computer I had, and not likely to become available since by 1991 Commodore 64, an immensely popular and prolifically-supplied home computer throughout the '80s was in its twilight years. What's more, Civilization had great graphics for its day not to mention a then-CPU challenging amount of computations in its code. Commodore 64's just couldn't run it.
I was relegated to playing a demo version available on the Macs at the Discovery Store, also at Emerald Square. But they frowned on people playing for hours on these display computers and you couldn't save of course so it was a pale and hollow play experience.
Once I'd finally bought my first PC (yes, Mildred I) I still had to wait since I had to save up to swap out its monochrome monitor and Hercules graphics adapter for CGA-compatible equipment. But by the fall of 1992, I was able to lay down my first capital city of my first civilization. (I don't remember which civ I played for that first game but I suspect it may have been Rome)
Of course, through the years, I bought every single expansion and new version of the entire series. Almost always as soon as they came to market; sometimes I had to wait 'till I could afford the necessary upgrade to my hardware. Many a Mildred was replaced simply because she wasn't "Civ Ready".
It boggles my mind to think how many hours I've played over the years. Now with Civ V (and G&K) on Steam, the launch screen in my Steam library tallies up the hours played. According to it, I guess I'm currently at 782 hours. That's over a full month. Add in the years playing all previous versions, and I'd guess it'd come in around a whole year.
A whole year of my life, playing (essentially) one computer game.
A whole year.
Sing it, boys and girls: