But as a newbie start with QBasic. There are several 3rd party libraries out there that will help you put sound and better graphics in your game.
Game programming has many facets all of which are not solely based on the fact that you can indeed put it all together and make it work. Getting it all to work is about 1/3 of it, making it fun and entertaining is about 2/3 of it.
Any game project will present you with enough problems to turn you into a very very good programmer.
For the technical portion here is a start of what you should be concentrating on:
Graphics
Sound
Music
Fast input
Framerate
Before you start working on another game make sure your first is a completed project and make sure it has sound and/or music and looks polished. This is prob the most important part of game programming - finishing the darn thing.