What were the first games you ever played?

Shadowfire

The first game I ever played was Pac-Man at the bar my father always went to. The first ones I owned were Zelda 2, Mario 2, and Dragon Warrior... got them all the same Christmas I got my NES.

Mr Fuzzbutt

Alley Cat!

The music from this game is indelibly etched into my subconscious, and the room in which you steal food from the sleeping dogs haunts my nightmares to this very day.

Also, judging from YouTube, I'm apparently the only one in the world who knew about the special move key that let you do things like travel through the holes in the giant cheese or give presents to the ugly lady cats to make them leave you alone for a while.

galenblade

Oh god, memories. Midnight Rescue in particular, I loved that.

I've been playing video games for as long as I can remember, I can't even recall what the first game I played was. Maybe King's Quest, the original.

But then there's these:

Corbius

My first strong video game memory is playing Secret of Monkey Island. I know I had played some stuff on my computer before that. I have vague memories of loading some kind of tempest clone off a 5 1/2 floppy.

Sixfortyfive

Super Mario Bros. Not a bad start, I don't think.

I can still remember how fascinating it was when I first saw it. It took me a few minutes to figure out what I was witnessing, but it blew my 4-year-old mind when I did. "Oh my god, my uncle is playing TV!" Life-changing experience, that was.

[Michael] wrote: »

Midnight Rescue

Man, I haven't seen this in forever. I used to play it on the classroom PC in the morning before class began.

Monger

You old people are so old.

Spoiler:

Okay, seriously:


and


are as far back as I can remember. I think I would've had to have played Galaga or Pac-Man or something at an arcade at some point before I got my NES, though.

Shadowfire

Mr Fuzzbutt wrote: »

[URL=""]Alley Cat![/URL]

The music from this game is indelibly etched into my subconscious, and the room in which you steal food from the sleeping dogs haunts my nightmares to this very day.

Also, judging from YouTube, I'm apparently the only one in the world who knew about the special move key that let you do things like travel through the holes in the giant cheese or give presents to the ugly lady cats to make them leave you alone for a while.

Oh man, Alley Cat. Awesome!

You know, for some reason I was thinking only of console titles as we talked in here. I owned PC games before the NES... King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest, Quest for Glory.. awesome times. I remember my mom telling the school I was "sick" the day King's Quest 2 came out so we could play it together.

TheCrumblyCracker

I was spoiled.

Spoiler:

Project Mayhem

First game I ever remember playing, and Pitfall. After that it was TMNT and Ducktales on the NES.

Those were the days...

I'm 24 for reference.

EDIT: Obviously Maze Craze was out for a while when I started playing it, but it was still my first game...

GothicLargo

Long ago... long before there were spreadsheets in space... there were arrays of arrays in space; and I flew them.



We've come a long way.

Funguy McAids

My parents came hoe one day with a Tandy 1000 somewhere in the mid 1980's. My brother and I each got to choose 1 game. He got King's Quest 2, and I got marble madness.

Since we were around 4-6 years old we didn't understand some things. The only time we saved in King's Quest 2 was after we had died. Every time we got farther in the game we would save on the disk right after we died which resulted somehow in corrupting the floppy so we never did finish it. Dracula's castle scared the fuck out of us.

For Marble Madness I discovered my first glitch. By holding down escape the game would pause/unpause quickly giving me a sort of slow-motion, resulting in me beating an otherwise impossible game for such a young guy.

Judge-Z

Space Invaders at the Midway Amusement Park's arcade in good ol' Chautauqua County, New York. I was small enough (I was 5) that my Dad had to hold me up and push the fire button, while I moved back and forth using both hands.

I was hooked from the start. A hobby was born. It was awesome being a kid in the heyday of arcades, when every pizza place had two or three uprights, the Atari 2600 was king, but the kids who had a Coleco or Intellivision were like the cool Indie dudes. The only drawback? There were never enough quarters.

RoyceSraphim

OMG! Alley Cat! I totally forgot about my mom playing that and wanting to play it.

I dunno what system it was but it had 3 switches in the back with two positions each (2 X 2 X 2) giving 8 games. I know all left was a shootemup and all right was donkey kong. I remember boxing was the most fun my brother and I had.

darkmayo

Pong, and Slot car racer for Colecovision are my first two video game memories. I still have my Pong machine.

Coffey

Asteroids on Atari 2600.

PolloDiablo

Mostly I played PC games, Monkey Island, Loom, and Darklands immediately spring to mind. Those were my favorites.

We had an Atari, but I was a little young for that. We did have a Galaga machine in the basement, though. Holy shit, I played the crap out of Galaga when I was a kid. I became Galaga Jesus.

Blackbeard7

I started on an NES when I was old enough to remember, and I think I started out with the original Super Mario Bros, followed by Mike Tyson's Punch Out. Those 2 games stick out the most in my mind.

Macera

BahamutZERO wrote: »

You know the magic school bus was a series of books before it was a TV series, right?

Oh yes. I spent hours copying dinosaurs out of the one, uh, with dinosaurs. When I learned it was a TV show my brain basically exploded.

Ah, the golden age of kid's TV.

edit: My mom is really into mysteries and for a while she played this:

[IMG]

Now, back when I was little, the computer (this was in the day when households had only one computer) was in the living room where my toys were. Needless to say, The 7th Guest terrified me, so when she played it I always left the room. But since I thought it was so cool my mom played video games I never told her why.

cooljammer00

I don't recall, actually. I wanna say Mario? My brother and sister got the NES the day I was born because they were antsy and bored waiting for stuff to happen while my mother was in labor, so my uncle either gave them his NES or got them one.

Godfather

Tetris on the Game Boy!

GreasyKidsStuff

Seriously why is everyone so oooooooold?

First game for me was Mario Kart.... 64. Yeah. Got that shit when I was like, nine. And that was only rented. The first game I actually owned was Diddy Kong Racing.

So there!

MegaMek

My father bought a Nintendo sometime after I was born. My earliest memories are of playing Mario Bros. and this game where you were a bee and you shoot up enemy insects so you could collect honey from flowers.

Graviija

First game I ever remember actually playing was the original Legend of Zelda. A Zelda fanboy was born.

Beri

Holy god... whoever posted Ancient Empires - you awoke some memory of me wasting hours on that.

I think most of my earliest games are faded memories, but that's because I was playing them on this thing:



Then one Christmas my parents busted out a 'Hi-tex', which I later found out was a pirate famicom clone. It had a cart with some weird number of games, like 87 in 1 or something. Stuff like "Super Plumber Brothers" (guess what that was) and "Ninja Garden". But it DID have cool stuff like Excite Bike and Mappy the Mouse as well.

But the ones that stand out from my early PC days (when my dad paid something like $4000 AU for a 486 with 4mb ram and a 260mb HDD) are games like these:


Mother-effing Wacky Wheels


Secret Agent


Blake Stone

Bartholamue

Mine was probably Dig Dug on the Atari 2600 or some game on the Intellivision II, but I wouldn't know since my dad had a bunch of games for it, so Who knows. All I know is that it was something from either of those systems.

cooljammer00

MegaMek wrote: »

My father bought a Nintendo sometime after I was born. My earliest memories are of playing Mario Bros. and this game where you were a bee and you shoot up enemy insects so you could collect honey from flowers.

Wasn't that a Donkey Kong game? I know what game you mean, I think, but I think I had it on a bootleg where it was a DK game. The final boss was a gorilla you shot in the ass until he wore a beehive as a helmet.

Monger

MH79 wrote: »

Seriously why is everyone so oooooooold?

First game for me was Mario Kart.... 64. Yeah. Got that shit when I was like, nine. And that was only rented. The first game I actually owned was Diddy Kong Racing.

So there!

Oh, man.

Daycare is :arrow:

Spoiler:

23 isn't really old enough to act crotchety, but it sure is fun.

Chrono Helix

Bare Knuckles aka Streets of Rage on the Genesis. Or was it Golden Axe...

MegaMek

cooljammer00 wrote: »

MegaMek wrote: »

My father bought a Nintendo sometime after I was born. My earliest memories are of playing Mario Bros. and this game where you were a bee and you shoot up enemy insects so you could collect honey from flowers.

Wasn't that a Donkey Kong game? I know what game you mean, I think, but I think I had it on a bootleg where it was a DK game. The final boss was a gorilla you shot in the ass until he wore a beehive as a helmet.

I never really got that far in the game, but the only enemies I remember were insects. Also, I don't remember owning a Donkey Kong game, so...

Oh, we had like, a monster truck racing game too. I could never get used to the controls so I'd end up turning the wrong way all the time, then I'd get frustrated and throw that shitty NES controler at the console.

Man, it's really hard remembering all this crap.

Bionic Monkey

My very earliest gaming memories would have to be on this fucking beast.


I guess my brother's school had some with games or something, because he pirated the fuck out of games for that thing. Q-bert, Montezuma's Revenge, Pitfall, you name it, we had a 5.25" floppy with the name scralled on it. This was, of course, before Kindergarten, so I didn't know how to read yet. Try getting a 4-year-old to correctly type out "b load: montezuma's revenge." I fucking loved that game, but almost never played it, because I couldn't fucking spell it 4 times out of 5.
Imagine this:

in glorious, monochromatic green, and you have a taste of my earliest gaming memories.

I also remember going to a pizza place with the family, and I'd play the fuck out of DigDug.

Ahh... memories.

BritishDavid

[IMG]http://www.slashfilm.com/wp/wp-content/images/starwarsatari.jpg[/IMG cut my teeth playing these games, then got myself an amiga and shit really hit the fan

shadow of the beast scared the crap outta me, i didn't make it past the first level, but then i got into these:





but the game I have the fondest memories of are Chuck Rock 2



great art direction, humour and dino's!

Honk

These were the first PC games I played - on an ancient Windows 3.14 machine. That computer is still intact, and in my possession, so I fire it up from time to time when I want to be nostalgic. And really, SimCity 2000 is the best SimCity by far so I actually use this old computer quite frequently.

Before these games though, I got a NES. Also use that sometimes but it's in much poorer condition unfortunately.

Monger

Honk wrote: »

And really, SimCity 2000 is the best SimCity by far so I actually use this old computer quite frequently.

I could never get anything accomplished in 2000. Water pipes can go eat a dick. SNES SimCity was my preferred version by a lot.

Coffey

MegaMek wrote: »

I never really got that far in the game, but the only enemies I remember were insects. Also, I don't remember owning a Donkey Kong game, so...

Fantasy Zone?

Bartholamue

I used to play Vette! a lot. That was great.

toaster_oven

Buck Rogers - Planet of Zoom on the Adam! That thing loaded from a casette tape! You had to wait roughly 10 minutes for it to load, then you died in about 7 seconds, then you had to wait 10 minutes for the tape to rewind so you could play again! But it was awesome nonetheless!

And going back to the Pitfall conversation... it can be beaten. Apparently back in the day anybody who could actually do it was encouraged to send in a screenshot (photo of the TV) to Activision and they'd actually send you shit back. My dad sent in his picture and now has a sew on patch for a shirt that says something like "Pitfall Adventurer's Club!"

It's been a long time since a game was so hard the developers would actually give people stuff if they could beat a game.

Morrandir

[Michael] wrote: »

There was some other game, but I don't remember much about it. It was kind of like the Exile games I played a few years later, in that it was tile based and an RPG and you equipped your character in a similar way, but the thing that stands out the most is that I'd always end up running into a manticore early in the game and I'd get killed.

That would be Castle of the Winds, which I also grew up on.

I'm with the Atari 2600 crowd, though. All the space games were awesome.

Especially Star Ship

UnbreakableVow

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7j3XM2Xcvw

Game fucking ruled.

Darksier

I'm pretty sure there were others, but this is the first that I can remember. My dad would hold me up to the controls so I could play.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayw6LbAWIk4

Antihippy

Pokemon Red.
Pokemon Blue.
Pokemon Green.
Pokemon Yellow.

Yeah...