For me, it was 1986 on Atari 2600 trying out Superman. The game amazed me just because it was my first game much like how my mom first watching a TV in the early 50s watched boxing as a kid despite knowing nothing and not liking boxing but it was the novelty of it. I never owned an Atari 2600 but have played my fair share. 1 year later I owned my first console. The NES.
No sure on the age but the first arcade game I ever played was Asteroids in the local youth club where my mum taught dancing lessons. I remember I had to stand on something to reach the controls!
My first computer console was a ZX Spectrum in about 1987, all my friends already had one so it was a long wait!
1983 when my Cousin got a Zx Spectrum and then I begged my mum to by me one, but had to wait until 1984 when I got my own Zx Spectrum with Gift Of the Gods, in 1985 I broke my femur and was in Hospital for 4 and half months and so my mum also bought me a new Portable Colour TV along with a Mattel Intellivision and also a Philips Philips Videopac G7000 and those were my 1st tase of console gaming. After a came out of Hospital we all went on a holiday and then in the Arcades was 2 games that looked and sounded like no other Arcades games around at the time, they were Hang On and Space Harreir , I was too small to play Hang On with out the aid of my Family, but I feel in love with the movable version of Space Harreir, a year latter we go on hoildays again and there was this game that just looked and sounded increabile and that game was Outrun. I began to notice that on Hang-On, Space Harrier and Outrun all shared the Yellow start button and the same SEGA hoilgraphic badge and thus began my love of SEGA and when the Master System started to appear in various catalogues, that was all I wanted for Christmas 87 and so began my LOVE of SEGA forever
Commodore 64, 1989-ish, first game was Buggy Boy. Must have gotten hundreds of hours out of that game, I ADORED it.
Saw a Buggy Boy arcade machine on holiday in Barmouth once and it blew my mind!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u19GkWOJ-MY
1978 in Germany in a small American station. They had a small lounge with a few Arcade games. My 1st ever was a vector graphics unit I think which was called "Tank". I never looked back since.
Difficult question, I remember as a kid reading through these toy catalogues and being amazed by these Atari 2600 screenshots/artwork.
and my neighbors across the street had a C64, so I'd like to say my first gaming experience was a game like Defender on the C64.
Thus dating it to around 1983/84.
The music on the radio was great, tv shows were cool as fuck, gaming was super brand new, and cartoons on saturday morning.
I WANNA GO BACK!!
My parents had an Intellivision with a lot of games they'd bought on firesale back in the day, when Mattel was turning off the lights. My Mom loved Burgertime especially, so I think it was that or maybe Astrosmash.
Must've been the early 90s, 91 if I remember right... I recall it was some Famiclone game, back when me and my family were visiting our relatives in Eastern Europe, right after the fall of the Iron Curtain. That's pretty much all you could buy there at the time; and well, later on Genesis, since SNES and all the British computers (all your Spectrums etc.) were practically non-existent there anyway. I think it was either Battle City (an enormously popular game in the CIS countries, never came out in the west AFAIK) or SMB3. I remember that the cart prices were very low, in the range of 2-3 euros, unlike 40-50 in Ireland. Those were the times. ;) In Ireland it must've been some SMS game, Alex Kidd IIRC.
It would have been in the late 70s when I discovered my mother's discarded Odyssey 300 in a cardboard box in the hallway closet. I would have been about 5 at the time I guess. Then I can remember playing breakout and freeway on an old heavy sixer 2600 that my mother's friends owned. Eventually in '82 I would get my actual 4 switch 2600 for Christmas along with Space Invaders and Defender plus Combat that came with it at the time. Been gaming ever since...in one form or other between consoles and computers and now both these days.
I wouldn't say I "started gaming" in 1986, but it was around that year when I first encountered a video game of some sort: a racing LCD game. Back then we called everything "an Atari". And that's what video games were to me until I was 14. "Did you play Atari?". "I just played some Atari". Later circa 1990-92, I saw more of those LCD racers and I also played PopEye, the arcade game. It was the most impressive thing EVER!!! And later Galaga and Centipede arcade. Also I managed to play some version of Pac-Man on a PC. These are one-time experiences, mind you.
Then in 94, I came to the States and, after playing various different consoles/handhelds at my cousins', I ended-up buying a Model II Genny with Sonic 2 and MKII. The rest is history.
It all started with my aunt's B-17 Bomber and Bomb Squad on the Intellivision II that had the Intellivoice add-on in the summer of 1983 as my first home console experience.Edit
Edit: But man I remember controller's d-pad was just so dumb to use.
Quote:
Originally Posted by EyeDeeNo76
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOLHbjJuBS8
From Episode 44
My dad, always a slave to fads, had an Atari 2600. He got tired of it pretty quickly, and eventually I was allowed to move it into my room. I think I was 5 or 6 at the time. This would have been right in the middle of the famed “crash,” which for as much as it’s talked about now, amounted to totally nothing to kids at the time. My friends and I still played games as much as ever, and traded cartridges back and forth. If anything, all it meant was that I was slightly more likely to receive them as gifts.
Then we all seamlessly migrated to the NES, and my 2600 was packed away forever. I don’t even know what happened to it.
What an interesting observation. I feel like that about virtually all the things I love, but are not successful or die out. 'Way I see it, less demand means less competition and more for me.
i was about 4 when my brother got a barstool for me to sit & play pac-man at beefsteak charlie's...good times
Thanks :DQuote:
Originally Posted by QuickSciFi
I wanted to add a little flourish to my post to mix things up a bit. I was torn between dragging the VIDEO GAME CRASH into the conversation, or switching my font to Comic Sans.
Quite honestly, I don't know as a 1 year old in 1993. Probably Sonic the Hedgehog or Ms. Pac-Man on the Genesis.
I couldn't put a date on it but I was about 2 years old. I grew up with gaming. my dad and his brothers were big into commodore 64 until 87 when they got amiga and that changed everything. since it was so easy to copy everything I played pretty much every amiga game, which there must've been thousands of. furthermore I had a master systen and mega drive eventually and so did many friends, so I played that a lot as well.
Join the Club, still have mine tooQuote:
Originally Posted by EyeDeeNo76
https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4699/...91281de4_o.jpg
Yeah was her way of watching me. She also had the just as bad maybe a little better ColecoVision but the Intellivision has stuck in my head all these years because of it speaking to me.
My first glimpse of a games console was my best friend's Sega Mega Drive. This would have been early '92 and I was 8yrs old. I was addicted to Altered Beast and Golden Axe. Then at Christmas time '93 (the greatest Christmas of all time!) I got my very own Mega Drive and never looked back. :)
Good thread. I remember going to the farm up the lane as a kid, maybe six years old, and they had an Atari 2600. It'd be 1985. We played Smurfs, Space Invaders and that game with the two tanks. Good memories. They had a Beta Max too!
When we were about ten it was Commodore 64 all the way until MegaDrive, but before that we had a Pong clone.
My memory is a bit hazy but I think it was the arcade game Knuckle Joe back in about '86? Played some others at the time as well, probably Galaxian or one of it's offshoots. I seem to remember being blown away by SEGA's Space Harrier around this time but that was perhaps a bit later (there were two arcades next to each other in my home town and Dad only took me to the one initially, the other was amazing with most of the classics represented by the end of the '80s).
Didn't get a home console until I was gifted with an Atari 7800 in November '88. So arcades were definitely my OG introduction to gaming.
Quote:
Originally Posted by BonusKun
I believe you played Key Games Tank. It has a black and white screen (like many of the arcade games in the 70's had). It was my 1st experience with an arcade game. I played it at the roller rink when I was 8. I believe it was around 1976. The family got an Atari VCS @1978 and it came with the home game of Tank on the Combat cart.
I don't think that vector graphics in arcades existed until @1979/1980, when Atari brought out Asteroids and Battle Zone.
First system was SEGA Genesis. Couldn't tell you what the first game was though. One of Sonic the Hedgehog, Mortal Kombat, General Chaos, Paperboy, or Ms. Pac-Man though.
There was Cinematronics' Space Wars arcade game in 1977 but it wasn't as popular as Atari's vector games a few years later.Quote:
Originally Posted by gamevet
I started playing video games around 1979/1980 with stuff like Space Invaders and Galaxian at the laundromat. I wish I could have fully experienced the '70s as it happened. I find that era fascinating.
Like a lot of guys here, I started in the mid 80s on my dad's Atari 2600. I played it a lot more than he did. The games I remember playing lots of back then are Space Invaders, Stampede, Combat, Outlaw and Pac Man.
By the late 80s, the kids at school all talked about the NES, and my neighbor had a Sega Master System. I recall playing lots of Reggie Jackson Baseball and Double Dragon at his house. But I was an Atari boy until I finally got a Nintendo as a First Communion gift in 89.
Being born in the early 80's I feel exactly the same about that particular decade and the games industry at the time. Would have been fantastic to have been old enough to appreciate it happening and experiencing it all first hand as a lot of you guys did.Quote:
Originally Posted by NeoZeedeater
I was 5 or 6 the first time I went to an Arcade. Can't remember anything, except a game about driving a fire trunk, top view. This looks a lot like what I remember, but I could swear it had a lot more colors :D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g84iWFcXeEw
My first system was a Commodore 64C. A friend got one for his birthday, and I begged for one. So many good memories, Popeye, Wonder Boy (this is where I learned the name Sega :D ), and a lot of others, all in cassette tapes. Then after a few years of inactivity except for Arcades, Famiclones became a big thing, and I discovered the magic of instant loading cartridges. Right after that, Mega Drives became the big thing here, and when I found out that the Sega that game me Wonder Boy back then, and Hang-on and Golden Axe in arcades had its own system, there was no doubt. Got one with Sonic, and 2 other games (I think Chuck Rock and F1 Hero) The rest is history :D
My cousins handed me down a Sega Genesis with a handful of games probably around 2000 or so, and it sat in a cabinet at my house until I was old enough to figure out how to hook it up, probably around 2003-04 era. The first game I popped in was Sonic 2 and I've been in love ever since. Also played a lot of Sonic 1, Sonic & Knuckles, Aladdin, Berenstain Bears, Talespin, and Math Blaster. My cousin also had one with some more "adult" games like Mortal Kombat and Altered Beast.