I think it is interesting, though, that when I looked back at my history, that I was a pretty much a non-gamer throughout high school.
This thread got me thinking about that: I played a lot of games throughout my youth, but never considered myself a gamer. I barely played in high school, and only casually in college, up until my junior year or so. So while there's been tons of games that I have played, I'd say I never defined myself as a "gamer" until I got into Unreal Tournament and Deus Ex.
When I was young (like 6 or so) we have spent countless hours in front of my cousin's Atari 800XL, usually four people together (cousin and his sister, my brother and I). The best part was when we could play into the night, even after the parents were asleep. My first computer was father's work notebook, which could play Doom (it had 4 MB RAM!) and my first overnight gaming session with it was with the original Pirates! Good times.
When we bought my first computer, the then hellishly fast 486DX2, I knew I was hooked for life. The proof? After three days of almost non-stop playing of X-COM: UFO Defense I got a sore muscle in my shoulder from so much mouse gaming that I needed to go to the doctor, got the medicine for muscle relaxing and got out of school for a few days. Of course, with muscle relaxant I was right back at the computer, killing and researching the alien nasties 
We did have a NES clone at home as well, but it was more my brother's playground. He did finish Super Mario Bros. and was even good in Contra, but I was never that nimble. He beat me in Bomberman everytime.
Great thread.
I think i've always been a gamer. I'd even argue that it's in my genes. My Dad became addicted to playing games on a C64 with a friend of his while i was growing up - because we had no console at home. I think at some point i was bought a NES and on that grey monolithic piece of plastic i played my first games TMNT and another game - that i have no memory of (i didn't have duckhunt or Super Mario).
Then, when my mum got a 386 to write her thesis on (which my Dad managed to wipe at least once *Smacks forehead*) he and then later, I began playing games like Secret agent and Duke Nukem. At around the same time we also acquired a C64 from somewhere (complete with musical keyboard overlay) and some games such as Microdot, Impossible Mission and Koronis Rift. I never completed one of the games but i had lots of fun trying.
1992/93 were the busiest years of my gaming life up until around 2000+. In those few years i spent an entire summer trying to complete Dune 2 with two of my friends - often playing for the whole day (with my Dad getting frustrated because he couldn't get on the PC 
), i was scared but overcame fear to complete DOOM, i blasted aliens in Blake Stone and fought the empire in X-wing.
The first real time i suppose that it dawned on me that i was a real gamer was when my Dad brought back a game from visiting relatives in Canada called Diablo. Our Puny, upgraded 486 couldn't handle the game and in a secret pact between myself and my Dad we bought a Pentium 200 MHz along with the motherboard and RAM to run the game (though he never played it)....
In the interim i had sold my NES to buy a Gamegear... which was then sold to buy a SNES... we inherited a MegaDrive from our soon to be uncle and then got a replacement (MegaDrive II) when he took it back. After Diablo though and through most of the rest of highschool i didn't play many games - at least not new ones. I was already "retro-gaming" by loading up DOS games in win95 or using win 3.1. Never owned an N64 - and even the first playstation passed me by until i bought one in the summer before going to university and i also bought a PC that summer too... though surprisingly i didn't take either one of them with me to uni.
After i got to year two of university i moved into a house with some friends - one of them had Baldur's Gate 2 (just bought) but didn't have a PC to play it on and by this point in time i had brought my PC with me to my new abode... so we played through several weeks of that before stopping (uncompleted)... it was also around this point in time that i was introduced to quake 3 arena. I was crap at it and i didn't play online and in hindsight the game ran like crap on my PC. What i did play lots of was Civilization 2. I almost constantly played that game... loved it so much.... The next year i moved into a house with another gamer. He and I went through so many games that it was unreal (never played that game btw) and it was ultimately that experience that moulded me into the hardcore gamer that i am today.
I played plenty of games on consoles while growing up (NES, SNES,) but really didn't think of myself as a 'gamer' necessarily until my parents got our first PC and I loaded up Mechwarrior 2. That was probably the point of no return for me.
The NES for me. We had a 2600, and I remember playing that some, but I was probably too young for that to really take hold. But the NES was great. I think the first games we got for it were Contra and Double Dribble. Although after the NES, I went on console hiatus for a while. I had a friend that had an SNES and I enjoyed playing that. My little brother got a PS1 at some point, and I played some on that, but my focus had shifted to the PC. The next console I owned was a PS2 (let's not discuss that week I had with the N64).
We had a Tandy 2000, and I played on that thing all the time. F-15 Strike Eagle, Gunship, and Flight Simulator 2.0 were some of my favorites, and that sealed the deal for me. I remember upgrading that computer from 256 K of RAM to 512 K. This involved the insertion of ICs into slots on the motherboard. At some point down the road, we upgraded to a 486/66, and I remember playing Doom, Doom II, and Quake on that machine. Quake would barely run, I think I had to have the sound off to play. There was also the fun of hacking your config.sys and autoexec.bat to be able to allocate the memory necessary in order to play there games. Good times.
Like Bennard we had a 2600 while growing up but I wouldn't say I was a gamer then. An NES followed and I played the heck out of Baseball Simulator 1.000 (ugh if I'd only known the goodness that was Baseball Stars back then).
I played some games on my parents Apple IIc, but it wasn't until I sprung for a Compaq 486sx with no sound card that I became a gamer. FPS Football Pro was an addiction for me.
And Bennard thanks for reminding me of F-15 Strike Eagle, I loved going over to my friends house to play that.
Star Wars: Dark Forces, Caesar 3 and Age of Empires (the original) on the PC. I had played my NES and SNES growing up like most people, but I stopped playing games when I graduated high school (1993), so I missed the whole PS1/Nintendo 64 era. I got my first computer (Gateway 2000) in 1997 and bought those three PC games at Best Buy. It rekindled an addiction for the next 10 years.
Atari 800. Now, I'd played a lot on the 2600 and the Intellivision, but the Atari 800 was just da bomb. I think our first game was The E*Factor, which actually loaded off of a cassette player. Then we got The Eidolon, one of the earliest games from Lucasfilm Games (LucasArts). My brother used to get all kinds of games from his friends, back when "copy protection" meant typing in word X from page X of the manual. Ultima 3, Wizard's Crown, Alternate Reality, Archon 2, Zork, Boulder Dash, Lode Runner, Jumpman, Summer Games; these are the games that made me a gamer.
I played lots of board games before PC's were popular; Steve Jackson Games, SPI & Avalon Hill. And pen and paper Dungeons & Dragons, of course. Any of you guys remember Rune Quest by Chaosium? I actually liked those rules better than D&D.
I'd have to say the PC game that really hooked me hard was Duke Nukem. I used to drag my PC over my buddies house and we'd play Co-Op. It was great fun. I even wrote levels for Duke. (Still waiting for Duke Nukem Forever.)
i didn't own a console system until about a year ago when I bought my buddies PS2 when he upgraded to a Xbox 360.
Gaming has always been my favorite past-time. There was always a console and PC in my house growing up. Those systems were shared, so I didn't start identifying myself as a gamer until I bought my own PC in high school. Three things about that system really cemented the 'gamer' title:
1) Half-Life
2) Thief
3) Modem. Access to up-to-date information about the industry and upcoming games was invaluable.
I started gaming with chess and Ancient Art of War back in the 80s, but I don't think I realized that I was part of some subversive murder-simulation cult until I got into early 1990s PC games like Civ1 and KQ5. I mean, everyone played games in the 80s. I wouldn't stay up too late playing games either -- until those magical Ultima nights...
Awesome topic.
I think I can pick two moments that cemented it for me: The first was when I was 10. I bought my own Super Nintendo. Thinking back I'm amazed I bought my own console so young, but I saved up my allowances and gift money and I did it. I really wanted Mario Kart so I didn't get the bundle with Super Mario World and an extra controller - but after I got the system my family caved and got the extra controller and Super Mario World (for my older sister).
The second was just a few years later. We got AOL pretty early and I got into the RPG scene there. MUDs and chat room RPGs. I was a regular at Parthos, and played a lot of Gemstone III and Terris. AOL was pay-by-the-hour (minute) at that point and I racked up a $100+ bill and I had to work my debt off. That was a lot of cars washed.
At the same time (Middle School) I began to really dislike school. I started playing D&D (a teacher DMed for us, she was great) and then Shadowrun, Cyberpunk, GURPS, and Battletech with friends.
Those are pretty defining moments for me - the investment shows my interest and that it was my choice, and the importance that online and social gaming would have.
We had an Atari 2600 when I was really young. I remember a racing game and Bricks, but that wasn't enough to really get me. And one day my father, for reasons beyond my comprehension, simply got rid of the Atari.
We had a NES as well, which I loved to pieces and paved the way for the SNES, but the SNES was really mine.
It started with Pac Man but The Legend of Zelda pushed it over the top.
I played a lot of games growing up, starting with my C64 and moving onto the IBM platform with such classics as Space Quest, Wasteland/Fallout, etc. I naturally grew into the Nintendo era and spent hours upon hours playing Final Fantasy and the like.
That said, the first time I ever really classified myself as a 'gamer', vs 'someone who plays games' was when I started playing Quake II online. the competitve nature of the game and the team aspect were what turned it from a hobby into an obsession. Long live team =[R]=!
My console gaming history has a big-ass gap in it that spans from the SNES all the way up to the release of the PS2. I played a lot of PS1 games and a lot of 64 games, but only with friends at their houses. Never actually owned any of those systems myself.
I have the same gap - never owned an N64 or PS1 (or Genesis), but played them regularly at friends' houses. I didn't get a PS2 at launch either - that was freshman year of college and my best friend had one, then a "communal" NES and Gamecube the following year.
Astrosmash! for the intellivision was the first marathon game I played at home. Galaxian at the arcade was the first true game I ever played. Later on I got a 1200 baud modem for my brothers PC. There were games that you could play on line back in those days but they were costly. Later on came Quake but what really got me hooked was Tribes.
1st Edition D&D, Battletech, and Napoleanic minatures. And no, I'm not going to tell you what year that was.
If you require electrons, it would be the first time I wrote my own game and typed it into my friend's Vic20. It was a Breakout variant that was absurdly over-complicated and was barely playable. But it ran and the rest was history.
I am unsure which it would be but one of MULE, Ultima 4, Master of Magic/Orion, or Superhero League of Hoboken.
All 4 games are games I have played again in the past 2 years, all have fond memories for me, and all have held up over time for gameplay, story, and/or humor.
It's all begin with a Colecovision and Montezuma's revenge.
The next step was the NES with Wizardry 1 and 2.
C64 cemented it. Gunship, in particular.
Went through a "dead" period where the NES was old and busted and we didn't have a "Family" computer at the time. Then this happened:
1992/93 were the busiest years of my gaming life up until around 2000+. In those few years i spent an entire summer trying to complete Dune 2 with two of my friends - often playing for the whole day (with my Dad getting frustrated because he couldn't get on the PC ), i was scared but overcame fear to complete DOOM, i blasted aliens in Blake Stone and fought the empire in X-wing.
Get out of my life, Duoae! Got back into it with the exact same games. Been playing pretty constantly on either a PC or a console (or Both) since then.
Zaxxon on Colecovision
Zaxxon on Colecovision
Do you hear the sound it make when you shoot the green fuel tanks and it explode?
I played games before Half-Life. I beat FFVI and Chrono Trigger when I was around 9 or 10 years old. But HL really woke me up. It was like Valve kicked me in the stomach and said, "This some serious shit, son."
Crouton wrote:Zaxxon on Colecovision
Do you hear the sound it make when you shoot the green fuel tanks and it explode?
No, but I remember the sound your ship makes when you collide with a brick wall. It sounded like the dropped glass from Tapper.
Ah.. another coleco vision owner. I still have mine and last time I checked it actually still worked 
Candyland. I used to spawn camp at the molasses swamp.
Games were around before electricity.
Doom on the PC.
Although I've been playing video games since I was twelve years old (arcade stuff, 2600, colecovision, NES, SNES), it wasn't until I discovered Doom that videogaming became a passion for me.
I was 13 and we got our first windows pc. I begged and pleaded and my parents agreed to put he computer in my room. Then, I saved up enough money to buy my first game for PC. My love of all things Star Wars (at the time) led me to buy Star Wars: X-Wing. To this day, I cannot remember a happier gaming experience than playing 2 years worth of X-wing. I cancelled plans with friends because I was getting far in the 4th tour of duty. It was a gateway game that prompted me to invest more money and time into gaming. Yes, Tie Fighter is a superior title, but it didn't capture the joy of playing for me. I don't think anything will top that experience in gaming. I played other games, but it was always there coaxing me into playing a bonus mission or two. Tragically, the CD was thrown out on accident when my mom cleaned house one year. I'll never forget it though. I still have the X-Wing Stratagy Guide I got on my 14th birthday. That's partially what inspired me to sell the Nintendo (I still lament that) and buy a sega, which lead to PS1, which lead to a Dreamcast, which lead... well... you get the idea.
When I became a gamer? Hmm... I'm a wee bit younger than Rabbit (12 in 82) but my start goes a bit farther back than all of you. I could probably say that my video game start happened with the Intellivision with Astrosmash, Burgertime and the sports games (baseball, basketball and football). The transfer to computer games happened with King's Quest series or perhaps Wizardry. By the time of AD&D gold box games and Wing Commander (late 80's) there was no going back.
As for my first exposure, it would have to be one of the Pong machines that were the precursor to the 2600. Also of note is my dad bringing home the IBM PC's predecessor (intel 8080 cpu) and dialing in to his work so that I could play Adventure in all of its XYZZY glory.
Candyland. I used to spawn camp at the molasses swamp.
Games were around before electricity.
;)
Yeah, but not many of the goodjers were.
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