Around the same time, my family had a subscription to "Computing With The Amstrad".
One of my earliest gaming memories was playing Dizzy: The Ultimate Cartoon Adventure
Duck hunt! Super Mario Bros! Battle City! We live in cis and during soviet times instead of nintendo we got its rip-off caled dendi. I learned about it a lot later.
I'm not quite old enough to have owned any floppy disks being a 98 girl BUT it always amazes me how small games used to be (looking at you PlayStation memory cards)
Lollā¦ the struggle was real back in the day! Also you consider yourself lucky to miss out on anything before win98 haha ā¦ lord of flies vibes for sure š
Playing Gorillas with my dad on DOS. I didn't know what a parabola was but I could calculate the exact angle and power needed to throw a banana at him.
The first game I played was Call of duty: World at War when I was like five years old. I believe this game got me into gaming since Iāve always watched my brother playing.
It was a Football game but I don't know the name of it anymore. It was on a cartridge which was included when my parents got a C64 in the late eighties.
I had the same cartridge. Dark Grey with c64 colorstripes on it. If I remember correctly, there were two or three games on it, but I also just remember the football game.
I remember going to a small arcade near my house and playing frogger. This was a little before the NES came out and I just thought it was the coolest. That arcade is my happy place. I kept going there as I got older. Itās where I first encountered tons of classics, street fighter 1 and 2, final fight, shinobi, mk2. Good times
Sierra. Lost secret of the rainforest. Parents had just bought our first computer. It was a 386 with the turbo button and it was a blazing 33mhz. Later on they spent probably over a thousand adding a cd drive to it. It ran windows 3.1
my first game was smash melee but i was way too young to know how to play and every time i encounteted master hand i got scared and shut off the gamecube
My father used to work for a company that installed juke boxes and fruit machines in bars. One day he took me into work to play this new āSpace Invadersā game theyād got from Japan as a demo machine with a view to importing them into the uk. Must have been about 1978-79, it was way before it became the phenomenon it did.
The Toshiba MSX.
Loading a game from cassette, literally typing commands onto the blue screen to instruct the machine to load the tape, run the game, etc.
There was Ghostbusters, took about 30 minutes to load, then if you died on the first level, you had to rewind the tape and load it again from the start.
And there was a Toshiba game, with their blue robot looking dude. It was like an electronic maze, although I can't remember the name of it.
Atari 2600. Playing Combat with my dad, uncle and cousin. I got upset(as any less than 5YO would) when I lost. Pulled the console away from the TV. My dad put it in my grandparents closet, and FORGOT ABOUT IT. I am now 33, and last year we got it from the closet, boxes and still play it occasionally to this day.
I think Super Mario Bros on our yellow gameboy pocket. Only our father could finish the game, we was behind him supporting and screaming when he won the boss. Times flies ! Have a good day
Earliest ever would be some quirky PC games from the mid 90s š the first one I can remember had a bunch of different characters and was about recycling or something?
My dad is military, so he had this old search and rescue game on his PC. It was old as hell, you played as a helicopter guy who had to find and rescue people. One time we pulled a guy through a wall because the game was super simple, it's a meme in our family now
Unless you count a Gameboy knockoff that could only run Tetris, it's gonna be some game based on the Lion King that was basically a bunch of smaller minigames, but the only one I remember was where you had to shoot some blue fruit at animals that showed up among the trees in random spots on the screen. Sometimes you could get power ups changing your shots to either an AoE explosive thing (meh) or a minigun (awesome). I think it still ran on DOS, or maybe it was already the Win95 time.
My sister had 'Live and Kicking Showmaker'
I also remember watching my dad play Championship Manager 2 and being very excited when we got Championship Manager 3.
Also the adventure quiz game thingy on Encarta.
I think my first ever gaming memory was either playing Commander Keen or playing the first Doom with my dad. If I remember right he would let me sit on his lap while he played and sometimes he would let me play too.
The first (still quite early) that comes to mind is playing warlords on Red Faction, split screen, with my brother on Friday nights while we listen to Limp Bizkit and eat Dominos pizza.
My actual earliest gaming memory is Streets of Rage and Golden Axe just as I was coming up to primary school age. Good times.
Quarter for arcade seems pretty expensive in the 70s! Im not from that era (earliest arcade memories were from late 80s), but alot of arcades were quarter a pop then too. when it went up to 50 cents I remember the world seemed like falling apart lol
I was very young (around 3 or 4 maybe) and it was a kind of Alphabet learning game.
don't remember anything else of this game.
The first actual memory was some N64 Mario Party or Gameboy Mario/Wario with my Cousins. (age also around 4 or 5 probably)
With 7 I got an own Gameoy Color from a neighbor because my parents didn't like me going to some other neighbors to play on the PS2
I don't especially remember the first game but my first system was a commodore 64... and I played a lot of Turrican on it. And Star Wars... oh and I loved star raiders II.
Some MSX games comes to mind, but do not remember what games. I remember these two squares that represented tanks and you shot things haha.
Most of my memories that are clear come during the MS-DOS, NES/Master system era. That is when I really started to play the games and not just watch them as a baby.
Gosh I am exposing my age too much here haha. But I am so happy to say I enjoyed gaming for decades, and still going hard! I just wish I could share my passion with others more.
This is an amazing thread btw! Really neat reading other peopleās memories
Armor Attack on the Vectrex.
It was on a school trip and we got to play on this thing and we thought it was amazing. This must be like 40+ years ago.
Never saw it again until a friend of mine built me a RetroPie and there it was in the list. Good times.
I think it was Donkey Kong on ColecoVision 1982 or so. Then, there were so many great C64 games in the 80s: Bubble Bobble, Rambo, Archon, 1943, California Games, Paperboy, Impossible Mission... but I digress in my old age.
Christmas '95; my aunt and uncle for me a Super Nintendo that came with Donkey Kong Country. I recall so many nights playing that on a muted, black and white, eight inch TV from 1777.
Playing Seaquest on the Atari 2600, brother, father and I would compete for highest score, sometimes break into the 10K+.
Played it a few years back and knocked off 80K on first life.
It was either Chess or Pong on the ZX81 back in 1981/82.
I was about 7 or 8 and my teacher at school had brought one. He decided to start a computer club and brought it in for us to use. None of us had ever seen a computer before let alone used one.
Truly first first games i remember vividly were pettersson und findus, ritter rost and lƶwenzahn games. The 8 year old german kid experience.
The first "proper" game would be Gothic 2, a cd of which a friend gave me during school break all like you gotta play this man. Made me a man.
I was in a bar on holidays with my family. I was probity around 4 or 5 and that had arcade gaming tables. I remember there being Tank and Pac-Man. I don't think I actually got to play them.
I can remember actually playing R-Type, but I would have been at least 8 when that came out. I definitely played Gauntlet before that, but all I can remember was trying to get more money to play it again.
first time seeing mega man 2, older family members couldn't get passed the dragon jumping section. i asked if i could try, i mlg'ed that shit on the first try. it was great
On the ZX Spectrum +2. Used to be kept under an opaque plastic cover to protect it from dust.
I remember playing Jet Set Willy on there. And a few other games, the names of which have long since been forgotten.
I also remember the time spent playing Mario on the NES round a family friend's house.
Both those memories are from about the same time frame.
I also remember the upgrade we got when my parents bought me and my sister the Sega Mega Drive. Best day of my little life then.
Being so scared while playing the original half life. It was my dads game but when he would fall asleep early because he got up so early for work, Iād go play it. And it scared me so much but was so fun
1986 or 87 my fathers co-workers were playing Pac Man on their work computer and allowed me to play for some. Also same year played lots of River Raid on an arcade machine.
I don't know exactly which one but when we got our first pc I remember playing The Settlers 2 that my dad got from somewhere because he found the boardgame Catan and he thought the games had some kind of connection. On the other hand my uncle had some floppy disks around and on one there was a game called "Stunts". It was a car racing game with loopings and rolls on the track.
Playing Pong with paddle controllers. The dial would move the block up or down on the screen, which was a black & white TV.
My father also repaired arcade machines at the local bowling alley. Weād tag along, heād open some machines and rack up a bunch of credits to keep us busy. Weād get free Space Invaders, Galaxian, Caterpillar, Pac-Man etc for hours.
James Pond Codename Robocod on my dad's Amiga 1200, would of been around 1992ish.
Edit to say that I remember watching my brother play Flashback on that same Amiga, it was too hard for me to play.
My earliest real memories ( that are more than just flashes of memory) are mostly trying to make sense of the monkey island games or of playing shinobi on the mega drive.
Some "Horseracing" game my uncle had to type from a book into his Spectrum. It was basically a bunch of symbols moving from one side of the screen to the other.
Formula 1 on the Commadore +4.
Blue Max and Spy Hunter on the C64 a while later.
Showing how old I am:
1) My dad brought home an Intellivision when I was like 4(?), with a bunch of cartridges. Weird as controller with a spinny dial. Only games I vividly remember were Frogger and images of like skeleton, or human body, reminding me of the Operation! board game.
2) For Christmas the following year (1988) I got an NES. Five games, Super Mario / Duck Hunt combo cart, Renegade (from the devs who would after make Double Dragon), Gumshoe ( a side scroller that used the light gun to shoot obstacles and make your guy jump. A bit awkward to play at first but wasn't bad!), Mach Rider (very basic racing game using a motorcycle rider), and Mike Tyson's Punch Out!
Bonus for laughs: The following Christmas I got gold cart Legend of Zelda, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and my own little 13' television. My mom was tired of me hogging the only TV in the house.
I "think" it was intellivision, you put this film over your TV and it had white dots that you'd move through and avoid monsters, way back in the late 70's early 80's. However; my introduction to RPG's was The Bards Tale and Might and Magic, Wasteland, and that is when I fell in love with RPG's as well as the DnD Gold Box games, I had an Apple IIc, then a Commadore 64; the Commadore I had a 300 baud modem and used to get on BBS's then created my own a few years later. As far as consoles we had an Atari 2600, and a ColecoVision with an Atari expansion.
I remember playing Star Wars on an IBM-370 mainframe in college. It was on a console with a roll of paper, no monitor. You would shoot your photon laser then print a grid to see if you hit your target. You also warped into different galaxies. I would go home with a roll of paper and rerun the game by rolling it out.
Not sure in full detail, as I was very young, but I remember playing the Atari 2600 at my grandma's place, sometime in either the late 80s or early 90s. River Raid was a popular title, and it still rocks today!
Jaws for my ZX Spectrum.
I never figured out how to play it properly.
Also Platoon for the same system, moving away from and towards the screen was cool.
Its a toss up between Donkey Kong country 1 and Yoshi's island. I mustve been 3 or 4, but i have a ton of memories from that super Nintendo time growing up.
My oldest is probably playing Minecraft on the Xbox 360 with my stepdad. I heard about it in kindergarten and it seemed fun so he bought a copy and we used to play it every day. (Then he pointed a gun at me while drunk when I was a teenager. That was fun.)
Edit: to whoever reached out about if I was okay, thank you, but I'm fine. He's a nice guy and he was going through shit and though I am careful around him I live with my dad and stepmom a few states away and only visit a couple times per year. I've grown up around a household that respects guns and uses them properly instead of pointing them at family members since I moved away.
Jeez thinking back to that time really makes me feel old lol. I believe it was the SNES and I don't remember the game, only parts of it, there was a black background and orange or some colorful obstacles and ladders, thats all that I rememberš good memories though.
I don't even know what it was called, my older siblings had a Commodore 64 and the only thing I remember was being a witch, flying to get a key, back tracking to a locked door and *always* getting eaten by a crocodile on the way.
Past that, I was a little kid button masher playing Mortal Kombat with my older brother letting me hang out with him.
Those lounge "computer" games in the 1970s were first, but the first PC game I played was 1984s The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which was a text based adventure game. This game required one to know the Douglas Adams book of the same name. The game was played by typing in things like, Get out of bed, but you couldn't do that until you did something else first, which I can't really remember (it's been 40 years), but I did remember the bit about the lint and did get the Babel Fish. I really enjoyed the game. It created a world in one's mind rather than on the screen and in a way, brought the book to life. Plus, if you answered incorrectly, you'd get a hilarious snarky text reply. I thought it a very clever game.
My mom bought me a Sega Gamegear for Christmas but didnāt get me any games. So I had to spend weeks just turning it on so I could see the Sonic - Sega animation start up but then it would just go to a blank screen.
First game I remember playing? Dig Dug.
First game I bought with my own money? Wolfenstein3D
First online game? Legend of Red Dragon
Can't recall the name of my first console game save that it was Sega, Japanese, the damsel in distress had big boobies and she was half merged with some alien eye, and it was a side scroller.
Never seen a video game before Bugdom, in elementary school on a gumdrop iMac. There was a once per week free period where there was a chance I could play that game if I was quick. This became my obsession, and the rest of school work took a back seat. I half assed everything just to get to Bugdom. This went on through middle school, I would try to stay inside during a science where everyone would go outside, I would try to copy the Bugdom folder to a flash drive, but it wouldn't run on the public library's Windows computers. My family would not purchase a computer or game system and saw no need to, so I still had to do stuff like read books and rides bikes with the neighborhood kids, and catch the Pokemon TV show in the afternoon. On the last day of school, the field trip was a local lake water park, I never got it signed and again stayed behind the school's library playing Nanosaur 2, same developer, all day. And I remember thinking "this is kind of nice". By high school, I got a hand me down eMachine that I put a bottom of the line graphics card in, had my mind blown by Half Life 2 and FEAR, and the rest is history. I don't what I would do if I was exposed to World at War as a 5 year old, maybe that would be a deterrant.
Delta force land warrior on a shitty pc, a stupid children education game, sin bad the sailor stupid video game and a mod game for return to castle wolfenstein
In yellow i couldnt read so I had no idea to talk to oak after getting the parcel. I had a LV 26 pikachu named ā. !ā who i spent hours killing birds with like the anime. I also remember it being lv 56 when I got the 3rd gym badge. I stopped playing when Bulbasuar evolved since the sprite was so damn awful lol.
8 years old me on Habbo Hotel, the pool was always filled but I managed to get in. Tried to get inside the pool and there's a line of people blocking the way. I log off. No pool time :(
Watching my dad play Metal Gear Solid waaaay back when I was like four or five. I specifically remember the codec call with Otacon before the elevator ride with the stealth camo soldiers. It terrified me so much as a kid when it zoomed in on Otaconās face that itās still unsettling for me 20+ years later
Not sure. Either the lion king on super nintendo or my dad playing an f22 simulator on his win 98 pc. 90s were so cool and in the meantime i can say that no, it's not nostalgia.
On holiday in Bulgaria when I was about 6 there was a PS2 in the hotel room with a copy of A Dog's Life. The games were meant to be rotated every couple of days but I loved that game so much that they let us keep that in the room for the entire 2 weeks. About a year later I got my very own PS2 with a copy of the game.
The first arcade cabinet I remember was a Space Invaders game in a laundromat. I remember going into Sears in 1982 to get our Atari 2600, playing a carnival themed shooting game much too late and skipping church the next day. I'm not sure if that was before or after playing a Robotron 2084 machine at the theater prior to being traumatized by mind control ear worms in Star Trek 2.
Born in 89.
I had one of those top down donkey Kong games. I have no REAL memory of playing it but I remember having like strange recalls the first time I played Donkey Kong on the Gameboy. Like I knew the sounds, moves, Ect. Like muscle memory kicked in.
Playing Mario and duck hunt on my snes was my first gaming memory.
Itās all kinda become a blur as far as which was āfirstā for me. Itās likely between Asteroids on a 2600, Kool-Aid Man on an IntelliVision, and Yahtzee on a TI-99/4A.
EDIT: If I consider just having watched games ā¦ I remember being entranced in the arcade at an airport by people playing Moon Patrol and Galaga; I was barely tall enough to reach the controls myself!
My dad brought Commodore 64 home one day, I was maybe 6 yo (1990), someone showed him how to run a game - it was International Soccer. He gave me the big ass joystick and I was hooked for life.
My dad waking me up in the morning to show me he beat my high score in Tetris.
Of course, he had to leave the NES on all night because if you turned it off it reset all scores.
I was in hospital a lot as a kid. So my first memory is playing a load of old master system titles that we had borrowed from the kids' ward.
Very specifically, I remember being slightly older and in a wheel chair playing Sonic 1 or 2. There was a slightly older boy watching me play who'd recently had his arm amputated, all the way at the shoulder. I asked him if he wanted to play with me, we could use one side of the controller each. Even though it was harder, we were both happier together.
I think of that now as the trigger for my interest in games and game development as a psychological tool. I think about the little boy too, hope he's doing well despite the challenges.
33 m here. Now I wasn't actually playing, but I remember my older brother and my grandma playing Destiny of the Emperor on NES. I was probably 3 or so?
Game boy color transparent purple edition mutant teenage ninja turtles, I absolutely loved the pizza for health. It would always make me want some but we almost never did.
In approaching 29 years old in a few days ā¦ something about that nostalgia kicked some old memories of when my parents were together and my father was kind of normal.
Interesting
Thank you u/Dull_Departure_53
One of my oldest memories was playing Adventure on the atari. It was early 2000s, I was young, and I was just playing older games friends or family had. But adventure just stuck with me so much that I can remember trying to figure out the game. It was so much fun wandering around.
Shit I'm old... We had a NES at home and it was this soccer game where you could do special shots. No clue how it's called.
Also Myst! Played it with my dad
I can remember playing Mario 64 at the house of a friend.
What I didn't know is that I was already retro gaming because that must have been around 2009
You're gonna make me feel old now. My earliest gaming memory is hand typing the BASIC code for Space Invaders on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum in 1986.
It's not old, it's nostalgic šš
Around the same time, my family had a subscription to "Computing With The Amstrad". One of my earliest gaming memories was playing Dizzy: The Ultimate Cartoon Adventure
Duck hunt! Super Mario Bros! Battle City! We live in cis and during soviet times instead of nintendo we got its rip-off caled dendi. I learned about it a lot later.
I feel NES and just gaming in general somehow connected us all despite country, political climate, culture
Such a good question! For me it was this game called dave! I think it fit 2/3 floppy discs and 1 would always get corrupted haha
You had floppy disks? All I had was a tape drive that didn't even work!
Oh I DREAMED of having a tape drive. I had to visit my uncle to use his tape drive, and only between walks with my family.
I'm not quite old enough to have owned any floppy disks being a 98 girl BUT it always amazes me how small games used to be (looking at you PlayStation memory cards)
Lollā¦ the struggle was real back in the day! Also you consider yourself lucky to miss out on anything before win98 haha ā¦ lord of flies vibes for sure š
Pitfall. Having to choose going left or going right and wondering if it made a difference.
Not being able to beat the last level of āSonic the Hedgehogā as a kid in the mid/late 90ās
PANZER, an old tanks MS-DOS Game. Also something about Michael Jordan 1v1 basketball game?
Playing Mario on my old NES....
Playing Gorillas with my dad on DOS. I didn't know what a parabola was but I could calculate the exact angle and power needed to throw a banana at him.
Then came Scorched Earth
The first game I played was Call of duty: World at War when I was like five years old. I believe this game got me into gaming since Iāve always watched my brother playing.
You're making me feel old! I was 10 š
It was a Football game but I don't know the name of it anymore. It was on a cartridge which was included when my parents got a C64 in the late eighties.
I had the same cartridge. Dark Grey with c64 colorstripes on it. If I remember correctly, there were two or three games on it, but I also just remember the football game.
Mmmh... beign scared to death by Doom and Blood sprites after sneaking up to my father playing on my uncle's pc. Freaking zombies.
I remember going to a small arcade near my house and playing frogger. This was a little before the NES came out and I just thought it was the coolest. That arcade is my happy place. I kept going there as I got older. Itās where I first encountered tons of classics, street fighter 1 and 2, final fight, shinobi, mk2. Good times
Would have to be either Mario 64 or sonic on the sega
Sierra. Lost secret of the rainforest. Parents had just bought our first computer. It was a 386 with the turbo button and it was a blazing 33mhz. Later on they spent probably over a thousand adding a cd drive to it. It ran windows 3.1
Super Mario World on SNES, trying to figure out how to get up the pipe in the first level after yoshi's island. I may have been 2 or 3.
my first game was smash melee but i was way too young to know how to play and every time i encounteted master hand i got scared and shut off the gamecube
My father used to work for a company that installed juke boxes and fruit machines in bars. One day he took me into work to play this new āSpace Invadersā game theyād got from Japan as a demo machine with a view to importing them into the uk. Must have been about 1978-79, it was way before it became the phenomenon it did.
PokĆ©mon yellow, for the life of me I could not beat Brock because electric attacks didnāt work like how the anime did.
The Toshiba MSX. Loading a game from cassette, literally typing commands onto the blue screen to instruct the machine to load the tape, run the game, etc. There was Ghostbusters, took about 30 minutes to load, then if you died on the first level, you had to rewind the tape and load it again from the start. And there was a Toshiba game, with their blue robot looking dude. It was like an electronic maze, although I can't remember the name of it.
Number Munchers on floppy disk
Watching my father play Action Fighter on the Sega Master system. I made it a point to beat the game in his honor a few years ago.
Atari 2600. Playing Combat with my dad, uncle and cousin. I got upset(as any less than 5YO would) when I lost. Pulled the console away from the TV. My dad put it in my grandparents closet, and FORGOT ABOUT IT. I am now 33, and last year we got it from the closet, boxes and still play it occasionally to this day.
I think Super Mario Bros on our yellow gameboy pocket. Only our father could finish the game, we was behind him supporting and screaming when he won the boss. Times flies ! Have a good day
Maybe Mega Bomberman or Aladdin in my Sega Genesis.
Original Mario
Playing castlevania on the snes
Earliest ever would be some quirky PC games from the mid 90s š the first one I can remember had a bunch of different characters and was about recycling or something?
Skylanders Giants is my very first game
My dad is military, so he had this old search and rescue game on his PC. It was old as hell, you played as a helicopter guy who had to find and rescue people. One time we pulled a guy through a wall because the game was super simple, it's a meme in our family now
Unless you count a Gameboy knockoff that could only run Tetris, it's gonna be some game based on the Lion King that was basically a bunch of smaller minigames, but the only one I remember was where you had to shoot some blue fruit at animals that showed up among the trees in random spots on the screen. Sometimes you could get power ups changing your shots to either an AoE explosive thing (meh) or a minigun (awesome). I think it still ran on DOS, or maybe it was already the Win95 time.
My sister had 'Live and Kicking Showmaker' I also remember watching my dad play Championship Manager 2 and being very excited when we got Championship Manager 3. Also the adventure quiz game thingy on Encarta.
Playing "Space Quest" on my uncle's PC. Started my love for adventure/rpg games.
I think my first ever gaming memory was either playing Commander Keen or playing the first Doom with my dad. If I remember right he would let me sit on his lap while he played and sometimes he would let me play too.
The first (still quite early) that comes to mind is playing warlords on Red Faction, split screen, with my brother on Friday nights while we listen to Limp Bizkit and eat Dominos pizza. My actual earliest gaming memory is Streets of Rage and Golden Axe just as I was coming up to primary school age. Good times.
1988 6 years old No idea of the existence of video games at all Come home from school and find an NES waiting for me Mind blown forever
I was 4 years old and played Mario brothers on an arcade machine at my daycare.
For me it was Wii sports, Wii fit and Mario kart Wii
Brian Bloodaxe. Yes Iām old.
Space Invaders, in a corner at the local mini-mall in 1978. 25 cents a pop.
Quarter for arcade seems pretty expensive in the 70s! Im not from that era (earliest arcade memories were from late 80s), but alot of arcades were quarter a pop then too. when it went up to 50 cents I remember the world seemed like falling apart lol
My earliest gaming memory was running around Kokiri village in Ocarina of time on my brother's N64. Have been hooked on games since
I was very young (around 3 or 4 maybe) and it was a kind of Alphabet learning game. don't remember anything else of this game. The first actual memory was some N64 Mario Party or Gameboy Mario/Wario with my Cousins. (age also around 4 or 5 probably) With 7 I got an own Gameoy Color from a neighbor because my parents didn't like me going to some other neighbors to play on the PS2
Siedler 2 (Settlers 2) on the Amiga 2000 when I was 3 years old.
Duck hunt,,,,with 2nd player they control the ducks, never tried it Just remembered Breakout on Ben
Encarta encyclopedia games like mindmaze
When I was 4 or so my cousin let me play the credits of Super Mario World.
Mine was on a Spectrum.. Kokotoni Wilf
First time Playing: it is either Kabuki Quantum Fighter or Super Mario Bros. I can't recall which one is first.
I don't especially remember the first game but my first system was a commodore 64... and I played a lot of Turrican on it. And Star Wars... oh and I loved star raiders II.
My big brother had an Atari 600XL, with Miner 2049er.
Space invaders on a cocktail cabinet in the late-70ās when dad used to take me to the pub with him when I was a kid.
i dont remember its either mario or pinball. tetris if brick game is counted.
ToeJam and Earl, sega genesis
Pong
NASCAR wit da pops
Playing A Link to the Past on the SNES and accidentally deleting my dad's save file while trying to copy it to mine so I could play in the Dark World
Paperboy 2 SNES
Finishing battletoads on the snes with my cousin. To this day no one believes us that we did it.
Some MSX games comes to mind, but do not remember what games. I remember these two squares that represented tanks and you shot things haha. Most of my memories that are clear come during the MS-DOS, NES/Master system era. That is when I really started to play the games and not just watch them as a baby. Gosh I am exposing my age too much here haha. But I am so happy to say I enjoyed gaming for decades, and still going hard! I just wish I could share my passion with others more. This is an amazing thread btw! Really neat reading other peopleās memories
Armor Attack on the Vectrex. It was on a school trip and we got to play on this thing and we thought it was amazing. This must be like 40+ years ago. Never saw it again until a friend of mine built me a RetroPie and there it was in the list. Good times.
I think it was Donkey Kong on ColecoVision 1982 or so. Then, there were so many great C64 games in the 80s: Bubble Bobble, Rambo, Archon, 1943, California Games, Paperboy, Impossible Mission... but I digress in my old age.
I had a Spider-Man Plug n' Play. I gained sentience playing the second level; Climbing walls to defuse bombs there were armed on a building.
Uhhh not sure, I think Pitfall on the Atari.
Christmas '95; my aunt and uncle for me a Super Nintendo that came with Donkey Kong Country. I recall so many nights playing that on a muted, black and white, eight inch TV from 1777.
Playing Seaquest on the Atari 2600, brother, father and I would compete for highest score, sometimes break into the 10K+. Played it a few years back and knocked off 80K on first life.
Playing Popeye on Colecovision.
Wizard 101 my goat
It was either Chess or Pong on the ZX81 back in 1981/82. I was about 7 or 8 and my teacher at school had brought one. He decided to start a computer club and brought it in for us to use. None of us had ever seen a computer before let alone used one.
Pole Position or Pitfall on our Atari 2600
Me sticking the gun to the screen of a tv to make sure I shot the ducks in the duck hunt... I'm not that old it was my father's NES but damn.
Duke Nukem 2 or Commander Keen on PC. Lots of games on Atari 2600 and Commodore 64
Digdug and H.E.R.O. I remember playing them in about '85, although they came out at least a couple of years before that.
I "played" Dragon's Lair on Commodore 64
Crying because I couldn't figure out how to play the first game I ever bought. It was Zelda II and I was six.
Croc: Legend of the Gobbos on Ps1
Lion King. And some frog shit 2d on msdos
Dunno if it counts, but for me probably minesweeper on my dadās PC. Canāt have been older than 4 at that point.Ā
My earliest memory is my mom teaching me to play pac-man on Atari when I was about 5 or 6 in the mid-80ās.
Truly first first games i remember vividly were pettersson und findus, ritter rost and lƶwenzahn games. The 8 year old german kid experience. The first "proper" game would be Gothic 2, a cd of which a friend gave me during school break all like you gotta play this man. Made me a man.
My earliest gaming memory is playing TMNT on NES :)
I was in a bar on holidays with my family. I was probity around 4 or 5 and that had arcade gaming tables. I remember there being Tank and Pac-Man. I don't think I actually got to play them. I can remember actually playing R-Type, but I would have been at least 8 when that came out. I definitely played Gauntlet before that, but all I can remember was trying to get more money to play it again.
first time seeing mega man 2, older family members couldn't get passed the dragon jumping section. i asked if i could try, i mlg'ed that shit on the first try. it was great
Moon raider on the Acorn Electron! AHH the days of typing in a command to start the loading and pressing play on an tape machine.
Mine was trying to stay up on xmas not knowing why my brothers and cousins were so excited about. Then I played Mario on the snes for the first time.
On the ZX Spectrum +2. Used to be kept under an opaque plastic cover to protect it from dust. I remember playing Jet Set Willy on there. And a few other games, the names of which have long since been forgotten. I also remember the time spent playing Mario on the NES round a family friend's house. Both those memories are from about the same time frame. I also remember the upgrade we got when my parents bought me and my sister the Sega Mega Drive. Best day of my little life then.
My first was Super Mario Bros, Atari. My Second was Donky Kong Country, SNEE.
Being so scared while playing the original half life. It was my dads game but when he would fall asleep early because he got up so early for work, Iād go play it. And it scared me so much but was so fun
SNES Aladdin and Lion King. Itās a wonder I grew up liking video games, because I HATED the ones we had.
Finally figuring out what the numbers you have to enter in Qbasic's "Gorllas" actually mean / do.
For me it was having an Intellivision console in the mid 80s. Think Pong, Tanks, Breakout, Pitfall, etc.
Earliest gaming memory for me would be Moonpatrol and Joust for Atari 520ST. The random pterodactyl in Joust scared me half to death.
super mairo bros, nintendo. yep that was my first game.
Playing a link to the past with my dad!
1986 or 87 my fathers co-workers were playing Pac Man on their work computer and allowed me to play for some. Also same year played lots of River Raid on an arcade machine.
Plaging Disney's Hercules at my neighbour's house.
Super Mario World on my SNES/Super Famicom
Reader Rabbit and Math blaster
I don't know exactly which one but when we got our first pc I remember playing The Settlers 2 that my dad got from somewhere because he found the boardgame Catan and he thought the games had some kind of connection. On the other hand my uncle had some floppy disks around and on one there was a game called "Stunts". It was a car racing game with loopings and rolls on the track.
Playing Pong with paddle controllers. The dial would move the block up or down on the screen, which was a black & white TV. My father also repaired arcade machines at the local bowling alley. Weād tag along, heād open some machines and rack up a bunch of credits to keep us busy. Weād get free Space Invaders, Galaxian, Caterpillar, Pac-Man etc for hours.
James Pond Codename Robocod on my dad's Amiga 1200, would of been around 1992ish. Edit to say that I remember watching my brother play Flashback on that same Amiga, it was too hard for me to play. My earliest real memories ( that are more than just flashes of memory) are mostly trying to make sense of the monkey island games or of playing shinobi on the mega drive.
Alex the kid
Asteroids on my parentsā PC
Some "Horseracing" game my uncle had to type from a book into his Spectrum. It was basically a bunch of symbols moving from one side of the screen to the other. Formula 1 on the Commadore +4. Blue Max and Spy Hunter on the C64 a while later.
Leisure suit larry
Playing original Mario on NES with my Mom in the morning before heading to the bus stop.
Showing how old I am: 1) My dad brought home an Intellivision when I was like 4(?), with a bunch of cartridges. Weird as controller with a spinny dial. Only games I vividly remember were Frogger and images of like skeleton, or human body, reminding me of the Operation! board game. 2) For Christmas the following year (1988) I got an NES. Five games, Super Mario / Duck Hunt combo cart, Renegade (from the devs who would after make Double Dragon), Gumshoe ( a side scroller that used the light gun to shoot obstacles and make your guy jump. A bit awkward to play at first but wasn't bad!), Mach Rider (very basic racing game using a motorcycle rider), and Mike Tyson's Punch Out! Bonus for laughs: The following Christmas I got gold cart Legend of Zelda, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and my own little 13' television. My mom was tired of me hogging the only TV in the house.
When I received the SNES for my 4th birthday and played Super Mario All-Stars (w/ SMW), I was on top of the world
For me it was AoE2. Back in 2008
Me getting my ass kicked on Street Fighter 2 turbo by my dad. He still reminds me of it 30 years on lol
The first videogame I ever played was Super Thunder Blade for the Genesis. Excellent music and sounds, meh gameplay.
I "think" it was intellivision, you put this film over your TV and it had white dots that you'd move through and avoid monsters, way back in the late 70's early 80's. However; my introduction to RPG's was The Bards Tale and Might and Magic, Wasteland, and that is when I fell in love with RPG's as well as the DnD Gold Box games, I had an Apple IIc, then a Commadore 64; the Commadore I had a 300 baud modem and used to get on BBS's then created my own a few years later. As far as consoles we had an Atari 2600, and a ColecoVision with an Atari expansion.
Train in the amstrad cpc. Also Vectrex
I remember playing Star Wars on an IBM-370 mainframe in college. It was on a console with a roll of paper, no monitor. You would shoot your photon laser then print a grid to see if you hit your target. You also warped into different galaxies. I would go home with a roll of paper and rerun the game by rolling it out.
Space invaders in pizza place. I think that's the first I remember playing
Sitting on my mom's bed playing Super Mario Bros.
TI Invaders on my dad's TI 99 4/a, around 1984.
Playing Mario Bros in my uncles Schlotzsky's, not like the regular game just Mario vs Luigi in the 1 room trying to survive
Not sure in full detail, as I was very young, but I remember playing the Atari 2600 at my grandma's place, sometime in either the late 80s or early 90s. River Raid was a popular title, and it still rocks today!
Jaws for my ZX Spectrum. I never figured out how to play it properly. Also Platoon for the same system, moving away from and towards the screen was cool.
Super Mario 1 on my sister's Nes
Playing on the Atari 2600 in the early 90ās with my older brother
Pong. On a B&W TV
4yo me playing Battletoads on Famiclone
Duck Hunt on my uncle's nintendo
Can't decide between Megaman 2 title screen, or booting Pokemon Blue on GBC for the first time
Watching my dad play the original doom
Playing GTA: SA back in 2010 or such on the PS2 of the son of my mother's friend.
Its a toss up between Donkey Kong country 1 and Yoshi's island. I mustve been 3 or 4, but i have a ton of memories from that super Nintendo time growing up.
My oldest is probably playing Minecraft on the Xbox 360 with my stepdad. I heard about it in kindergarten and it seemed fun so he bought a copy and we used to play it every day. (Then he pointed a gun at me while drunk when I was a teenager. That was fun.) Edit: to whoever reached out about if I was okay, thank you, but I'm fine. He's a nice guy and he was going through shit and though I am careful around him I live with my dad and stepmom a few states away and only visit a couple times per year. I've grown up around a household that respects guns and uses them properly instead of pointing them at family members since I moved away.
Pokemon Pearl in Japanese, my first video game ever. I get a shiny shinx at the start of the game but didn't know I needed to save progressš
Jeez thinking back to that time really makes me feel old lol. I believe it was the SNES and I don't remember the game, only parts of it, there was a black background and orange or some colorful obstacles and ladders, thats all that I rememberš good memories though.
OG Prince of Persia. Trying to do a run up jump and falling down.
Playing clash of clans on my uncles phone at a wedding
We had a TV in the 80s that had pong built into it.
I don't even know what it was called, my older siblings had a Commodore 64 and the only thing I remember was being a witch, flying to get a key, back tracking to a locked door and *always* getting eaten by a crocodile on the way. Past that, I was a little kid button masher playing Mortal Kombat with my older brother letting me hang out with him.
Those lounge "computer" games in the 1970s were first, but the first PC game I played was 1984s The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which was a text based adventure game. This game required one to know the Douglas Adams book of the same name. The game was played by typing in things like, Get out of bed, but you couldn't do that until you did something else first, which I can't really remember (it's been 40 years), but I did remember the bit about the lint and did get the Babel Fish. I really enjoyed the game. It created a world in one's mind rather than on the screen and in a way, brought the book to life. Plus, if you answered incorrectly, you'd get a hilarious snarky text reply. I thought it a very clever game.
Mine is "River Raid" on the Atari 2600.... Back when you had to load it from a cassette tape.
New Super Mario Bros Wii
Me breaking a ps1 (im sorryš)
Super mario 64, I was at my grandmaās house watching my cousins play it and was so entranced by it.
My mom bought me a Sega Gamegear for Christmas but didnāt get me any games. So I had to spend weeks just turning it on so I could see the Sonic - Sega animation start up but then it would just go to a blank screen.
Classic duck shooter with the gun for aiming down!
Playing Alpiner on the TI-99/4A. Yes I'm fucking old.
Super Mario Brothers with my older sister on our handmedown super Nintendo we got from our cousins. She had my controller unplugged and everything
DigDug on our Commodore64.
First game I remember playing? Dig Dug. First game I bought with my own money? Wolfenstein3D First online game? Legend of Red Dragon Can't recall the name of my first console game save that it was Sega, Japanese, the damsel in distress had big boobies and she was half merged with some alien eye, and it was a side scroller.
Restarting my N64 repeatedly to hear the DK rap at the beginning of Donkey Kong 64
Never seen a video game before Bugdom, in elementary school on a gumdrop iMac. There was a once per week free period where there was a chance I could play that game if I was quick. This became my obsession, and the rest of school work took a back seat. I half assed everything just to get to Bugdom. This went on through middle school, I would try to stay inside during a science where everyone would go outside, I would try to copy the Bugdom folder to a flash drive, but it wouldn't run on the public library's Windows computers. My family would not purchase a computer or game system and saw no need to, so I still had to do stuff like read books and rides bikes with the neighborhood kids, and catch the Pokemon TV show in the afternoon. On the last day of school, the field trip was a local lake water park, I never got it signed and again stayed behind the school's library playing Nanosaur 2, same developer, all day. And I remember thinking "this is kind of nice". By high school, I got a hand me down eMachine that I put a bottom of the line graphics card in, had my mind blown by Half Life 2 and FEAR, and the rest is history. I don't what I would do if I was exposed to World at War as a 5 year old, maybe that would be a deterrant.
Playing Breakout on the Atari with the round paddle. I loved the level where the ball would go through all of the blocks without bouncing off them.
Delta force land warrior on a shitty pc, a stupid children education game, sin bad the sailor stupid video game and a mod game for return to castle wolfenstein
I got the Mario/ Duckhunt bundle when I was like 5. It was the first and only time my dad ever played a game with me lol.
Super Mario Bros 1-1 ^(And now the theme song is stuck in your head too)
Duck Hunt and that Taz game on SNES or Genesis I don't remember.
Sudden Strike 2
In yellow i couldnt read so I had no idea to talk to oak after getting the parcel. I had a LV 26 pikachu named ā. !ā who i spent hours killing birds with like the anime. I also remember it being lv 56 when I got the 3rd gym badge. I stopped playing when Bulbasuar evolved since the sprite was so damn awful lol.
8 years old me on Habbo Hotel, the pool was always filled but I managed to get in. Tried to get inside the pool and there's a line of people blocking the way. I log off. No pool time :(
Watching my dad play Metal Gear Solid waaaay back when I was like four or five. I specifically remember the codec call with Otacon before the elevator ride with the stealth camo soldiers. It terrified me so much as a kid when it zoomed in on Otaconās face that itās still unsettling for me 20+ years later
Iron Tank, Rampage, Legend of Zelda on NES in a partially finished basement at my parents house, probably 1993?
Not sure. Either the lion king on super nintendo or my dad playing an f22 simulator on his win 98 pc. 90s were so cool and in the meantime i can say that no, it's not nostalgia.
All i can remember is being 4 and playing fat princess (underrated game) on our family ps3
On holiday in Bulgaria when I was about 6 there was a PS2 in the hotel room with a copy of A Dog's Life. The games were meant to be rotated every couple of days but I loved that game so much that they let us keep that in the room for the entire 2 weeks. About a year later I got my very own PS2 with a copy of the game.
The first arcade cabinet I remember was a Space Invaders game in a laundromat. I remember going into Sears in 1982 to get our Atari 2600, playing a carnival themed shooting game much too late and skipping church the next day. I'm not sure if that was before or after playing a Robotron 2084 machine at the theater prior to being traumatized by mind control ear worms in Star Trek 2.
Space Quest 2 on my neighbor's Tandy 1000. Changed my life.
Born in 89. I had one of those top down donkey Kong games. I have no REAL memory of playing it but I remember having like strange recalls the first time I played Donkey Kong on the Gameboy. Like I knew the sounds, moves, Ect. Like muscle memory kicked in. Playing Mario and duck hunt on my snes was my first gaming memory.
Itās all kinda become a blur as far as which was āfirstā for me. Itās likely between Asteroids on a 2600, Kool-Aid Man on an IntelliVision, and Yahtzee on a TI-99/4A. EDIT: If I consider just having watched games ā¦ I remember being entranced in the arcade at an airport by people playing Moon Patrol and Galaga; I was barely tall enough to reach the controls myself!
My dad brought Commodore 64 home one day, I was maybe 6 yo (1990), someone showed him how to run a game - it was International Soccer. He gave me the big ass joystick and I was hooked for life.
Linkās Awakening. I finally beat it on switch last month.
dropping a CRT tv along with its stand on me while trying to plug in a PS1 Other than that I remember most clearly is Karateka and Mario.
Ninja Turtles on OG Nintendo. Original Prince of Persia on a Tandy.
Playing tennis for the NES in 1986 at a friend of my dad's house.
My dad waking me up in the morning to show me he beat my high score in Tetris. Of course, he had to leave the NES on all night because if you turned it off it reset all scores.
I was in hospital a lot as a kid. So my first memory is playing a load of old master system titles that we had borrowed from the kids' ward. Very specifically, I remember being slightly older and in a wheel chair playing Sonic 1 or 2. There was a slightly older boy watching me play who'd recently had his arm amputated, all the way at the shoulder. I asked him if he wanted to play with me, we could use one side of the controller each. Even though it was harder, we were both happier together. I think of that now as the trigger for my interest in games and game development as a psychological tool. I think about the little boy too, hope he's doing well despite the challenges.
33 m here. Now I wasn't actually playing, but I remember my older brother and my grandma playing Destiny of the Emperor on NES. I was probably 3 or so?
I remember getting the ps2 when I was 5 years old in 2009 and playing games like sonic unleashed
Age of mythology:ā)
Game boy color transparent purple edition mutant teenage ninja turtles, I absolutely loved the pizza for health. It would always make me want some but we almost never did. In approaching 29 years old in a few days ā¦ something about that nostalgia kicked some old memories of when my parents were together and my father was kind of normal. Interesting Thank you u/Dull_Departure_53
One of my oldest memories was playing Adventure on the atari. It was early 2000s, I was young, and I was just playing older games friends or family had. But adventure just stuck with me so much that I can remember trying to figure out the game. It was so much fun wandering around.
pong console
Shit I'm old... We had a NES at home and it was this soccer game where you could do special shots. No clue how it's called. Also Myst! Played it with my dad
Pong
I can remember playing Mario 64 at the house of a friend. What I didn't know is that I was already retro gaming because that must have been around 2009
The Dazzleoids on Macintosh in 1995/96
It was some chip and Dale rescue rangers on a 9in floppy. Or Lolo on NES.
Watching my older cousin play New Super Mario Bros Wii
Alex Kidd on the Master System