Where it all began

A post over at my old stomping grounds got me thinking about how god-awful long I've been playing video games. My first, was a Space Invaders machine at a little Bar and Grill near my home in Pittsburgh when I was impossibly young. Well, at least that's the first one I recall.

Where/what was your first video game? Home system or arcade? How long ago?

- Elysium

Piece of cake. Pac Man in the local pizza establishment, I believe. I begged my mom to let me play it. She had to hold me up to see. She read the directions for me so I would know how to play: ""Apparently you have to eat all these dots and the ghosts.""

waka waka waka...hey here comes a ghost...waka waka CHOMP...byeooo byeooo byeooo byeoooooo.

Weird. I died? Never mind. I have two more guys.

waka waka waka...hey here comes another ghost...waka waka CHOMP...byeooo byeooo byeooo byeoooooo.

Hey. These ghosts are bad. I''m not supposed to eat them!

waka waka waka...AAHH GHOST! RUN! RUN!!!...waka waka waka waka...ARGH! THEY''RE EVERYWHERE!!!...waka...byeooo byeooo byeooo byeoooooo.

Thus was born a madman.

Thank you for those amazing sound effects Sway, I couldn''t stop laughing

I believe I was first exposed to such classic as Frogger and Qbert on my parent''s commodor 64. Load up the cartridge, leave for a while, come back and play. I spent hours upon hours playing on that thing. From there it went on to the Nintendo, Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis until it was in my blood and I turned into a gaming monster. Gwaaaaargh!

Microsoft Flight Simulator version 1 and the joys of crashing planes that my father had spend an hour trying to get off the ground.

Hmm... the first game I played was Asteroids I *think*.

The first game I got totally hooked on was Karate Champ.

Bushu, Star, Nunchaku, Pole, Feedle.....

You know what I''m talking about.....YIE AR KUNG FU!

I played that, and the machine next (Mario Bros.) to death in the arcade as a kid....

After that came Neuromancer and Ultima III on the Apple II GS...the rest was all downhill from there...

Pac-Man, Donkey-Kong, Space Invaders, Venture are some of the first games I played at the Arcade. My first console was a Colecovision equiped with the thingie that let you play Atari 2600 games.

Karate Champ Sinatar! Man that game kicked ass!

Im not sure about first videogame ever, but my first PC game I do remember. Master of Orion. Oh yeah. I was hooked on that game for so long it was sickening! Every time I hear that *click* and the silence that the galaxy map has, I know what game it is. The music always gets me too.

I was a huge fan of one of the Atari systems, though I don''t recall which. Our friends had it (2600?) and we''d always play Blueprint and Pitfall 2. I didn''t get hooked until we got the NES in ''87, is that right?

Got hooked on PC gaming with Civilization, and couldn''t back out when I got my own PC and was playing DOOM on it.

Went into a lull in High School, and got hooked again on the PlayStation in college. At that time, I also started picking up tons of old NES games for about $2 a pop, and remembered why I think Contra is the greatest game ever made. And why nobody has ever improved upon Tecmo Superbowl.

Pong, on what at the time my brother and myself called the ""brown game"" because it was the size of a cable box and this nasty brown color. We used to have to sit right next to each other to play it becase it didn''t have controllers as we know them today, instead the controls were sliders on each side of the ""brown game"" about 14 inches apart. I actually think I still have it in a box in my parents basement.

**Side note. The brown game actually had pong and a modified version of pong with double the bars to hit the ball. 2 games in one! Simply amazing....at the time.

Donkey Kong was my first, i remember a coleco vision... not completely sure, but I think that''s the first one I can remember anyhow!

I think Asteroids was the first for me too. The first game that totally sucked up my alowance though has got to be Mario Brothers. I had been playing games for awhile at that point, but that damn plumber was the first to addict me. Ahh, good memories.

There are so many fun games I''ve played over the years I can''t even remember half of them.

Tempest in the arcade was the first one I remember getting hooked on. Then I got my Intellivision, and a bunch of games for that. I also remember playing Buck Rodgers on an ADAM (nothing like gaming from a cassette drive) and thinking it was really cool.

Eek! Suddenly I remember how old I am and how long I''ve been playing video games. My first video game was good old arcade space invaders at the local swimming pool. I can''t (and don''t want to) remamber how many years ago that was!

Great, great game. PArticularly enjoyed spending ten minutes booting it from the tape drive.

I think Galaxian was the first arcade game to gobble up my quarter. An older neighbor had told me about this place with games, and I remember walking miles in search of it. It was standing just inside the entrance and I had exactly one quarter.

It was all down hill after that. So many games, so many quarters.

Ah, the memories! Maybe I''ll go install MAME again.

Ugh, tape drives. I had one of those for my old Atari 800. Bought it about 3 months before the new and exciting 5 1/4 drives hit the market. You know, I can''t think of many home computing evolutions that had as drastic an impact on load times than those first high-tech disk drives. Dropped my tape load speed down from about fifteen minutes (not an exaggeration) to a matter of seconds.

- Elysium

My first game was patience on some old windows 3.1 system at school I think. After that it quickly was NES and 486 gaming galore. I fondly remember playing Wacky Races and Rise of the Triad as a nine year old.

My family moved when I was seven, and we stayed at hotels and friend''s houses for a few months before our house was ready for us to move into. One of the houses we stayed at had a Donkey Kong coin-op in the basement. I had played Yar''s Revenge and Super Breakout on our 2600 until the joysticks fell apart, so DK wasn''t really my first game, but it stands out in my mind because of how awesome it was to play an arcade game for free...(not to mention that I was totally hooked by DK). I spent an ungodly amount of time on that thing and I hated to leave it.

I fondly remember playing Wacky Races and Rise of the Triad as a nine year old.

I feel so old now.

I feel so old now.

Know that feeling....

The first game I remember playing was...Dangerous Dave 1. On a 286 Black and White laptop with my dad. It was a nightly ritual for the two of us. Try to get as far in the game as possible before losing or before I had to go to bed. Good times...

Let us not forget the Leisure Suit Larry series. I remember thinking that game was really racy and dirty and all that. of course, I was 14, and there was no internet porn yet.

It''s murky but i think my first game ever was a tabletop centipede at some food hall in town. I was sitting on dad''s lap and he let me have a life.

From then my next memory is getting a hand held version of Mario''s Cement Factory for christmas one year.

Then when i was 4 years old dad got given a C64 and since then i''ve been hooked. Switched to a 386 a few years later, and bought myself a SNES in high school and the rest is history.

1st PC Game : Alleycat
1st Console Game : Super Mario Bros.
1st Arcade Game : Centipede.

I feel so old now.

Naw we''re not old, these guys are just very very young. OKAY!?!?

Yeah maybe I''m young but where you were astounded by the marvels of Super Mario Bros. and Metroid I crept through the corridors of the Black Mesa research facility and defeated communism in Red Alert. Enjoying games is something of all ages and purely a matter of perception 8)

Probably Asteroids or Star Raiders on my dad''s Atari 400. Ahh, those were the days...

I can''t help but to be jealous of all of you who have your father to blame for your addiction. My dad can barely sit through a hand of cards, let alone save the universe. The defining moment for me was when I could run faster than him, not when I could capture his flag. I know that when I become a parent, my child is going to have all the benefits of a videogame lifestyle. Hopefully that will make him cooler than I was as a kid.

Revived!

My first had to be:COMBAT, for the 2600. To this day, a simple, fun, timesink. I loved bouncing the shells off the corners to hit my brother....good times, good times.

My heart still belongs to Mrs. Pac Man, though. That solidified my addiction.

Donkey Kong for the Colecovision. I can still hear that music... DUM, duhduhduhduhDUM, duhduhduhduhDUM... try to get THAT out of your head.

I know that when I become a parent, my child is going to have all the benefits of a videogame lifestyle. Hopefully that will make him cooler than I was as a kid.

Yeah, nothing makes a kid cooler than spending a lot of time on videogames. The only thing that compares for ensuring social acceptance is Dungeons and Dragons...