Im new to all this programming but i am really interested in doing it and was wondering if anyone could help out a beginner. i would like to learn how to program games. Any help is appreciated.
I know there is a program out called Darkbasic, www.darkbasic.com have a read about it and if it is what u are after i think u can download a free trial on their site.
You can get Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1 from MSDN; completely free and it works fine. Takes up a lot of RAM and Power, but its a great tool. Undeniably the best for all Languages; Visual Basic when you start off and C# after that... of whatever you get into.
Something like Ping would be extremely easy to do... Frogger too, Snap, Memory is a good suggestion for some Randomization.
It really depends what you'd like to do really. Start off with Visual Basic though.
I wouldn't call myself a great (or even good) programmer but i think for any beginner start out with vb and make a game like pong, memory, or anything simple. Then rework your code to take out what you dont need and to tweak settings. Then move on to something harder.