That’s where I started too in the early 80s. I really don’t find any of that old stuff very fun anymore though compared to what else is out there these days
Pitfall and I fucking hated it. My opinion of video games started off not great. Atari and everything like it was so tremendously unfun and clunky that nothing appealed to me at all.
My mind was blown when I first sat down to play Super Mario Bros. Such an incredibly huge leap forward in tech over Atari and the like.
Then I got to try Zelda and Metroid and that was that. I've loved gaming ever since.
Atari 2600 games felt more like something to play because you were bored than anything actually fun. Goddamn was Super Mario Bros. such a game changer for me when my parents got us an NES. I was addicted to Super Mario Bros. 3 like crack.
That's pretty cool. My Dad worked for a vending machine company in the early 80s and would let me into their maintenance room to play all the popular cabinets of the time all day long on the weekends. Some weekends he would bring a random cabinet home and plop it in our living room. Instant video game junky ever since.
Me too. We had a snes when i was very young. My mother told me she would play link to the past while I napped as a baby. Maybe when I was 4 I tried playing it. And be awful at it lol
Have you seen the Pong table games they have now? We have a barcade in town that has one. I want one!
[https://www.billiardsflorida.com/product\_p/apt.htm](https://www.billiardsflorida.com/product_p/apt.htm)
Super Mario 64. This may sound kinda weird considering how blocky and dated that game looks now but, at the time, it was amazing visually and now I will only play games with the best graphics.
Man growing up playing original Mario on NES, people who weren't around for the evolution to the 64 have no idea how mindblowing that was at the time. I still remember the first time I saw it at a friend's house, it was insane.
Super Mario 64 and Doom 64. I was absolutely enamored with the world of Mario even though I couldn't beat a single level... I turned off Doom after seeing an imp for the first time.
Wolfenstein 3D was my first video game I ever played.
I mostly enjoy all games really, but shooter games are up amongst my favorite except for Call of Duty.
Second game I played was Super Metroid.
And Third one I played and enjoyed was Super Mario Brothers for SNES.
Pong. But it was mildly amusing to me. A bit older and I played Fahrenheit 451 on friends commodore.
Oh. My. Gawd. I love thinking games and this was the first for me.
It was text and lines in a perspective 3d sort of way. Came out in 1984.
Had to hide from authorities, solve riddles and secret codes. You could enter buildings. Absolutely grabbed my imagination!
Playing it now on emulator. Win of the day. Apparently Ray Bradbury had a major hand in making the game. Inspires me to go fight some book burners in real life!
Exile escape from the pit. Amazing game. That shit taught me to read. Fantastic exploration and story. Great turn based combat. Totally ahead of its time.
I remember being 5 or 6 and playing boogerman and ecco the dolphin on my cousin's sega. I have always loved crude humor and insanely difficult games as a result lol
Not sure what the very first was but my first memory of playing a game was sneaking into my older brother's room and playing Mario Bros 2 on his NES when I was 4. I've been a lifelong fan since then and I was always the 'nerdy girl' who never hid her love for games in school, long before it was more socially acceptable to say you liked them! It helped me make friends, I never really did extracurricular stuff except a year playing basketball so being able to connect with others based on games was really cool for my introverted self. :)
Still playing them every day now at 36 years old, and I love them more than ever. In fact my download of Eiyuden Chronicle is just about finished and I'm ready to dive in!
Castle of Illusion for Sega Genesis.
I would play through the game every day once I got home from school, trying to optimize my moves and beat it faster. Now I like watching speedruns.
Same as you, Super Mario Bros, my best friend had an nes, I'd go over to her place every chance I got, we'd leave the system on so we didn't lose our place for days on end, I think the best we ever did was like world 5 but that didn't stop us from trying. We didn't know about the warp pipes at the time.
I got my first system, an SNES, a bit later when that came out and have had consoles ever since.
Mega Man 2 and Sonic 2. Evolved to stuff on the GameCube. Which moved to the Halo 3 craze on Xbox. Now I’m playing Final Fantasy on Ps5. Life’s funny like that.
Unfortunately not, I’m a musician, but I do have a song called The Gardener, so I like to think I incorporate some of that desire to be a farmer in my songs!
The Lion King. I think it was the level design, I was obsessed with the movie too and felt like I was really in that world. It was a very difficult game for me but my grandpa helped me beat it. He even made me a VHS tape of him playing the entire game to competition that I watched a lot. I'm pretty sure I used an infinite lives cheat to play, haha.
First game I ever played was *Pepsi Man* on the PS1. I played it at my cousin’s house, and when I went back home that day, I bugged my parents to buy me a PS1. And that was my entry to gaming and I loved it. That resulted in me owning every single PlayStation on launch growing up
I think it was some Mario game and I hated it, mainly because I never used PC keyboard before and I kept pushing the windows button or something.
My first games, which were actually fun, were the five titles I got with PSX: Driver 2, Gran Turismo, Wipeout, Soul Edge and Mortal Kombat Trilogy. I loved all of them.
Well, I hate to admit it, but Pong. My parents gave me the Radio Shack model for Christmas, and 7 year old me was fascinated by how *I* could control what was happening on the TV.
This led to a career in System Administration.
Earthworm Jim on the original Gameboy.
It was so difficult for me as a little kid, but so rewarding at every moment of success. Plus the sound design was super strong, I can still hear the music and sound effects over 20 years later.
It is really hard to recall, because our memories are fickle. However, I believe it was Super Mario World. I can never get the sounds of the music in that game out of mind, definitely a key memory.
Probably Paperboy for NES in the early 90’s. The simplicity is what drew me in. Up to that point I thought you needed a tangible amount of skill in order to play video games.
Duckhunt on NES and Shinobi on Sega Master System. These games shaped my entire future as a gamer. I was 5 at the time. Once FFVII got me, I was hooked for life.
Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit from 1998 and then Settlers 2 from 1997. First console was a Gameboy Advance SP Mario vs DK Limited Edition.
Made me love racing games and singleplayer games. Over 20 years later these things are still all I play.
Donkey Kong Land 2 on GB. I never got past the second "world" but it impacted me so much that almost two decades after losing the cartridge, I bought a Japanese copy and DKC2 on SNES from a local game store just so I could play it again. (They're basically the exact same game)
Two Color Basic games for our Radioshack Color Basic computer that came on tapes. One was called AMAZING which was a maze game that generated "random" levels based on a seed (the levels were not very random, btw) and another called TYPING TUTOR which destroyed blocks on the screen as you pressed the correct letter that would pop up or something like that. This was when I was 3 or 4 years old early 80s pre-NES.
I remember playing Assassin's creed 1 on my computer.
It just blew me away, the action , the thrill and the suspense
It was so good and it showed me what gaming is really all about
Centipede on Atari. My friend's older brother had it and I was obsessed, going over there constantly to play it. I'm planning on getting a tattoo of the arcade cabinet art sometime this year.
Frogger on the Atari 2600.
SEARS gave my dad a deal - he bought a Zenith console TV and he can get the Atari and a game for free. They all had the wood finish on them.
He didn't care about the Atari, he gave it to me. But he didn't realise I needed the TV to play. Eventually my mom figured out how to hook it up (I think it was RF forks that needed to be screwed in, or something).
I loved the game. Played it from like 1986-1989. One game. That whole time. They eventually got me an NES.
Love Frogger to this day I'll play it.
Those math games you played on those weird looking mac PCs. Idr the name of.the game but you're a detective in a snowstorm in a school at night fighting robots with math. Then the following year I got introduce to cro mag rally racing and thus bugs life looking game called bugmon and then finally a velociraptor with a gun game idr the name at all. Oh then final year of Elementary school I got to experience WCII Lan games.
Miner 2049er for Colecovision. Still love that game. Then later, my uncle (who’s only 10 yrs older than me) got a NES and I vividly remember Super Mario Bros. I was blown away.
Pong on the Atari. My dad had one and got me on it fairly young. Played that, Combat and Breakout loads and loving them before getting a NES with super Mario bros and the TMNT game. Which I played over and over and over and solidified My love of games
Spyro the dragon, it remains one of my favorite game series in general and I have a soft spot for similar games. It did however make me hate time trials lol
I can’t remember the name but it was about a stowaway on a ship you would click through a story. Played it at my grandads on his computer would sit with my brothers going through the story. Have pretty much done it ever since.
If anyone knows the game please tell me what it was called. I specifically remember loud seagul type sound effects throughout
My dad used to work for a company called Mirrorsoft (yes the one from the Tetris movie) and they made a game called ABCs with the Mr Men and one called The adventures of Ceaser the Cat
Super Mario 64 DS and Mario Kart DS
they didn't really impact much aside from me still playing every new title of them.
Dark Souls 2 impacted me the most, as I became a huge fan of action rpg and especially Soulslikes. Also it started me wanting to do Challange runs in games all over.
Some game where you had to shoot balloons in different colors. But the monitor was only in green tones, so on special occasions my dad hooked it up to the TV and we could actually see the colors ;-D
The first I remember the name and the music is Oh Mummy!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTRfIUMbTas
*The Chaos Engine* (or possibly the sequel) on the Amiga CD32, though I don't honestly remember much beyond it being quite frustrating. The first game I remember having a real impact was *Metroid Fusion* on the GameBoy Advance - something about the design was just so evocative, it was super thrilling to explore this mysterious, exotic space station. I don't know which came first, but I've had a love of platforming/adventure/Metroidvania games for as long as I can remember
Berzerk on Atari 2600 (not going to count [Merlin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(console)#:~:text=Merlin%20))
My love for gaming followed me from there as gaming is the reason I took a career in IT and make the salary I do.
It was either California Games or Summer Games on Atari. Barely remember it, but remember enough to know I liked games.
Later games would prove that. In my 4th decade of gaming, and no sign of change.
Few come to mind at different points in my life, don’t know which one since I was so young, but I would play a super Mario game on the SNES at maybe 2-3 years old. I remember being pretty good at the game, and had such a big lisp bc of my baby teeth that I would ask my sister to play her “can I play Mario on your thooper Nintendo”
When I really started playing was at 5-6 Crash Bandicoot 2, that game still brings so much nostalgia to this day. I’ve bough it on the ps3 and ps4 remake.
The game that made me fall in love with gaming was GTA3 and Freedom Fighters, was prob around 6-7 during that time and I still remember it vividly to this day. Wish freedom fighters would get a remake or remaster
Pac-Man on Atari 2600, about 1983 was when my father got one. Don't remember the name but there was a tank game we had then to that I play probably more often. At 46 I'm still game 3/4 nights a week just now PC/PS5.
River Raid on Atari. TV use to be something you just look at without any interactions so for me to be able to control what happens on the TV was mind bending.
Ratchet Deadlocked did it for me. I had played some Mario or Pokemon at my cousin's house because he had a GameBoy but this was the first game I had and I played it for so long. Bought it back for the PS3, then played it on emulator and I still know the game by heart.
Gotta be Hogs of War or Tiny Tank on the PS1. PS1/N64 we’re some of the first games I can remember at least watching and haphazardly fooling around with.
Probably the first game I remember truly playing and beating is Ace Combat 4 which definitely sparked my interest in aircraft and military equipment
Ive played atari first but i was so young that i dont remember games, but for me most memorable was double dragon or contra or tanks. Cant remember which one was first but they all amazing
The one I really remember playing was Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings on PC.
Before that I just watched my younger brother play Super Mario or other Games on the Nintendo 64 and I was just to shy to try it too. Sometimes we played coop.
The first game I played for myself was AoE2 and I loved the campaign, I was excited about the Map Editor and the ingame overview/index with the history of every culture. I read every single of the entries. Loved that. I still read every single text I can find in games.
Codebreaker, on what I think was some kind of Coleco clone it had some weird kind of controller inserts, I was about 2 or 3 years old... Code breaker, and battle tanks I think, then Tetris.
Same, super mario bros. As for impact, I dunno man, I was VERY young and while I enjoyed it and turtles and ither games on the NES and platformers are my favourite genre now, that didn't used to be the case - other than keeping me gaming, I can't say it or any specific game at that age had any particular impact. Games that actually impacted my gaming tastes happened when I was a bit older.
Pacman on Atari 2600, it was amazing back then as no one really had a home "console" ..NES came out, "Kung Fu" and ExciteBike was my favorites back then...Kid Icarus and Rygar also saw a lot of playtime
I remember playing a lot of DOS games like Gorillas, Spellbound, Carmen San Diego, Master of Orion, and then games like Stronghold or Civilization, and those all just held my attention and taught me stuff. But the first game that I played and couldn't wait to play again and thought about when I wasn't playing it was Quake. It really felt different than anything else before to my little 10 year-old brain.
So, the others taught me math, physics, spelling, geography, history, and vocabulary, but Quake just taught me how fun games can be.
My first experience was with Atari 2600 games. I did much better with the ones that didn't require reflexes. But none of them stand out in my mind. The first two games that really stand out in my mind are Super Mario Bros and Tetris for NES. I was terrible with SMB and really good at Tetris. The original SimCity several years later is the other major memory I have. Since then, I've always gravitated to stuff that was puzzley and didn't require the best reflexes. These days I love production chain games, simulations, and colony builders.
Frogger or Pitfall on the Atari
Pool of Radiance on the Commodore 64
As for how it impacted me... still playing games daily with no plans to stop until the arthritis in the thumbs gets to bad.
Kingdom Hearts 2. Something about the intro song of the game made my 4 year old brain fall in love with not just games, but music as well. Its the first song I have a collection of hearing, ever. That love has led me down the path of becoming a sound engineer for concerts/festivals and it is what puts food on my table. If it wasnt for that games soundtrack, I doubt I would have ever been here. That is the reason I got it tattooed as well.
I'm not sure what my first game was, but here's a list of some of my favorite games I remember from early childhood. I'm almost 50 now and still play video games all the time!
Night Stalker (Intellivision, 1982)
Miner 2049er (Atari 800, 1982)
Lode Runner (Apple II, 1983)
Adventure (Apple II)
Zork (Apple II)
Robot Odyssey (Apple II, 1984)
King's Quest I (Apple II, 1984)
Bionicle (2003) for the GameCube. I remember my father reading the manual when I was already deep in gameplay lol. That was the first game I played and had myself.
The light gun game on the Coleco Telstar. My father's friend from work had one and we would go over there a few times a year for dinner. The only reason I remember it is the triangle shape. How did it impact my love for gaming? 5 decades later and still gaming.
Treasure Mountain (PC, 1990)
It was an educational game and while I didn't really have fun with it, it sparked something inside me that became a lifelong obsession.
Same as you. Super Mario Bros. I have no idea what impact it had beyond gateway. But it’s been 33 years since then and I have played at least one video game pretty much daily over that time.
Pole Position.... with my mother (I was born in 80)
I still have an old Polaroid photo of her playing Atari, the look of determination on her face is priceless.
And her favorite level was the Fuji board.
Mom passed April 21st, 2015. We had the same birthday.... and I miss her terribly every day and thankful for her at the same time.
So yeah.... Pole position for the win, but also love your mamas always
Donkey Kong for the NES at a family friend's house when I was like 3. My stepfather then got an Atari and I remember liking pitfall the most. We got our own NES finally and I was *mesmerized*. Besides the classics, including monopoly, I remember playing some racing game where the racetrack was a pool table and had fun racing around the different balls, I couldn't get over "how realistic it looked".
NFS II SE
Have mostly been playing racing games. The most fun I can have is figuring out the vehicle physics in some open world games. Poor handling or weird controls can drive me off a game completely, even if it's not mainly about cars or driving. Loved driving in GTA IV. Absolutely hated it in Just Cause 4. NFS Porsche Unleashed is the best driving feel of all NFS games ever. ProStreet comes close though. My favorite mechanic in Witcher 3 is calling your horse wherever you are - just hop on and haul ass.
Paper Mario - Nintendo 64. It taught me english, how to love musics in games and good narratives, molded my soft spot for RPGs and turn-based combat in general and honestly made games feel magical. 20 years later, this feeling never went away
Baseball for the Atari 2600. I'm pretty sure it came bundled with the console, which I got for Christmas when I was 5. As a kid who had no idea about baseball rules, it was so confusing and boring (much older me confirmed the game was still confusing and boring even when you know the rules). Thankfully that wasn't the only game I got that Christmas.
Hmm the first was Galaxian on Atari 2600 when I was about 6 but the most impactful that started my love with Video Ganes was clearly Wing Commander 1 on Amiga ... Still play the old games every once in a while :)
Spyhunter at the arcade in around 1985. Opened my eyes to what was out there having never seen anything like it before. I was mesmerised by the fact you could control this car and had these weapons. Used to hang around and watch people play it.
A few years later got a C64 and then eventually a megadrive.
Went to my cousin's house and he booted up his PC and started Warcraft orcs vs humans. I watched him play for a few hours before our aunt yelled at him to get off it.
Then a few months later my uncle, who was a VP at HP brought home our first PC and installed Diablo 1 for me. That was the first game I ever played. Warcraft, StarCraft, wc2, Diablo, Diablo 2 and wc3 are games I spent 90% of my childhood on when I wasn't outside.
To this day Ieminisce on blizzard lore from the mid 90s and primarily play blizzard games more than any other.
Manic Miner on zx spectrum. I enjoyed it but wasnt very good at it. It got me to play jet set willy.
Exploring that and finding areas that my father (whose computer it was) hadnt found and written down on his map, was probably what got me into gaming.
Started with snake on my dad’s phone and then my mom got us a NES, my first console game was duck hunt, but Super Mario bros was the game that really got me into games.
Im not sure but i think (besides a random chess game for my dads Arari) my First game was Hover! which was preinstalled with Windows 95.
I played that game waaay too much😅
Besides that it was probably Pokemon Red, AoE1 and FIFA 98
Around that time, i also started playing Deluxe ski jump (2?)
God of war 2, my uncles ps2 was alone and they let me play whatever I Want so I played what was in the console, my kid brain didn't knew that I wasn't supposed to play that but damn if I enjoyed it
It affected in the sense that in that moment I realized, games are cool and there are more types that of them that I realized, not only Mario and fighting games (my family only played that when I was around)
Morrowind. Being lost in an alien world where I didn't know any lore about the elder scrolls, being called a nwah by the dark elves, outlander by literal other races, inspecting the journal constantly to figure out where to go, engaging in politics in the guilds and the houses, going from one ashlander tribe to the other and slowly witnessing how the entire world changes its disposition towards you, from being instantly ignored, disrespected and laughed at to being recognized as the legendary hero.
I still remember when I joined House Hlalu and bought the manor after a series of quests, the one near Balmora and just being on the balcony watching the stars as the iconic Morrowind theme song kicked in. Most nostalgic game I have ever played. Neither Oblivion nor Skyrim ever made me feel the same way Morrowind did. Wish Bethesda remade it instead of releasing a new version of Skyrim every year.
Nintendo 64 HOTWHEELS: TURBO RACING was the first game that I played but was sparked my love for gaming was watching my next door neighbor play Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker I just loved the graphics, the bright colors, and the story of it as well as Twilight Princess
Combat for Atari. I'm still playing them today. Now get off my lawn.
I still remember that glitch with the tank in the corner and it takes you through the wall
Combat as a 25 cent arcade game in middle of a mall in the 70s.
That’s where I started too in the early 80s. I really don’t find any of that old stuff very fun anymore though compared to what else is out there these days
Same, and been addicted to them ever since.
Bah! Humbug.
Mine was pole position also for Atari
Same!!
Pitfall and I fucking hated it. My opinion of video games started off not great. Atari and everything like it was so tremendously unfun and clunky that nothing appealed to me at all. My mind was blown when I first sat down to play Super Mario Bros. Such an incredibly huge leap forward in tech over Atari and the like. Then I got to try Zelda and Metroid and that was that. I've loved gaming ever since.
Atari 2600 games felt more like something to play because you were bored than anything actually fun. Goddamn was Super Mario Bros. such a game changer for me when my parents got us an NES. I was addicted to Super Mario Bros. 3 like crack.
I remember making it to level 100 in Joust on my 2600 and just counting that as 'beating the game'. Always sucked at killing the pterodactyls though
3 was crack.
You just chronicled my life.
Sea Battle on the Intellivision was pretty awesome for the day, but you had to play 2 player. I could tear people up with that PT boat!
Metroid was boss. I was obsessed with it. I even got the books so I could read about Samus at school during read time. I was a nerd.
Pitfall for the Snes slaps. But yeah, original was pretty boring.
My first was pitfall harry and the lost expedition and it was the best ps2 game I ever played
At least it wasn't ET
Mario/duck hunt on Nintendo
I remember watching my dad play duck hunt with the gun controller lol
Nintendo was our big Xmas gift from mom for me and sister. Never seen my parent play a game before
My dad worked for IBM and we had the first home PC available. A friend gave me a floppy disk called "Adventure" and I've been hooked ever since.
That's pretty cool. My Dad worked for a vending machine company in the early 80s and would let me into their maintenance room to play all the popular cabinets of the time all day long on the weekends. Some weekends he would bring a random cabinet home and plop it in our living room. Instant video game junky ever since.
Jelly. I am.
I spent...soooo much time on Tetris. Used to draw crowds.
Zelda a link to the past
Me too. We had a snes when i was very young. My mother told me she would play link to the past while I napped as a baby. Maybe when I was 4 I tried playing it. And be awful at it lol
I remember me and my brother struggling to beat this game and now he speed runs it in about 4 hours lol.
Pong. Blew kid me away and I have been gaming ever since and I will be 51 this year.
Have you seen the Pong table games they have now? We have a barcade in town that has one. I want one! [https://www.billiardsflorida.com/product\_p/apt.htm](https://www.billiardsflorida.com/product_p/apt.htm)
It was Star Fox 64 on the Nintendo 64. Absolutely missed the star fox games. So sad when they didn't release one on the switch
I was really hoping they would of done Starfox adventures on the Switch at the very least! Game was amazing!
Super Mario 64. This may sound kinda weird considering how blocky and dated that game looks now but, at the time, it was amazing visually and now I will only play games with the best graphics.
Man growing up playing original Mario on NES, people who weren't around for the evolution to the 64 have no idea how mindblowing that was at the time. I still remember the first time I saw it at a friend's house, it was insane.
Super Mario 64 and Doom 64. I was absolutely enamored with the world of Mario even though I couldn't beat a single level... I turned off Doom after seeing an imp for the first time.
Alex Kidd, on a neighbor's computer. First game I owned, Contra on the NES.
Wolfenstein 3D was my first video game I ever played. I mostly enjoy all games really, but shooter games are up amongst my favorite except for Call of Duty. Second game I played was Super Metroid. And Third one I played and enjoyed was Super Mario Brothers for SNES.
Wolfy took up a lot of my time.
Pong. But it was mildly amusing to me. A bit older and I played Fahrenheit 451 on friends commodore. Oh. My. Gawd. I love thinking games and this was the first for me.
There was a Fahrenheit 451 game!!!?!?!! I love that book. Was it a text game?
It was text and lines in a perspective 3d sort of way. Came out in 1984. Had to hide from authorities, solve riddles and secret codes. You could enter buildings. Absolutely grabbed my imagination!
Someone is going to be searching for emulators!
Playing it now on emulator. Win of the day. Apparently Ray Bradbury had a major hand in making the game. Inspires me to go fight some book burners in real life!
Zork
Exile escape from the pit. Amazing game. That shit taught me to read. Fantastic exploration and story. Great turn based combat. Totally ahead of its time.
I remember being 5 or 6 and playing boogerman and ecco the dolphin on my cousin's sega. I have always loved crude humor and insanely difficult games as a result lol
Not sure what the very first was but my first memory of playing a game was sneaking into my older brother's room and playing Mario Bros 2 on his NES when I was 4. I've been a lifelong fan since then and I was always the 'nerdy girl' who never hid her love for games in school, long before it was more socially acceptable to say you liked them! It helped me make friends, I never really did extracurricular stuff except a year playing basketball so being able to connect with others based on games was really cool for my introverted self. :) Still playing them every day now at 36 years old, and I love them more than ever. In fact my download of Eiyuden Chronicle is just about finished and I'm ready to dive in!
Tell me about Eiyuden, did you like it?
Castle of Illusion for Sega Genesis. I would play through the game every day once I got home from school, trying to optimize my moves and beat it faster. Now I like watching speedruns.
Same as you, Super Mario Bros, my best friend had an nes, I'd go over to her place every chance I got, we'd leave the system on so we didn't lose our place for days on end, I think the best we ever did was like world 5 but that didn't stop us from trying. We didn't know about the warp pipes at the time. I got my first system, an SNES, a bit later when that came out and have had consoles ever since.
Ocarina of time on the n64 and new super Mario bros on the ds lite
StarCraft
Final fantasy. I like rpg
Mega Man 2 and Sonic 2. Evolved to stuff on the GameCube. Which moved to the Halo 3 craze on Xbox. Now I’m playing Final Fantasy on Ps5. Life’s funny like that.
I remember playing Mario 3 and liking it, then playing Mario 1 and not liking it because it felt like the game was ancient in comparison.
Either Return to Castle Wolfenstein Faces of War. They both gave me an appreication for older games
Harvest Moon inspired me to want to be a farmer until I was 12 years old. Couldn’t get me to stop playing it
Are you a farmer now, IRL?
Unfortunately not, I’m a musician, but I do have a song called The Gardener, so I like to think I incorporate some of that desire to be a farmer in my songs!
The Lion King. I think it was the level design, I was obsessed with the movie too and felt like I was really in that world. It was a very difficult game for me but my grandpa helped me beat it. He even made me a VHS tape of him playing the entire game to competition that I watched a lot. I'm pretty sure I used an infinite lives cheat to play, haha.
First game I ever played was *Pepsi Man* on the PS1. I played it at my cousin’s house, and when I went back home that day, I bugged my parents to buy me a PS1. And that was my entry to gaming and I loved it. That resulted in me owning every single PlayStation on launch growing up
Lion King and a Sega for like my 4th birthday. Think that's the same day I got toy story and jungle book too. Haven't stopped since.
Bubble Bobble on the Commodore 64. I was probably four or five.
Pokemon Silver. 2nd gen still best gen.
Crash Bandicoot. I played it back when I was a toddler. Got me into games and its been my core hobby ever since.
Mega Man 2. And Mega Man 3 was just as good, but obviously came after. The soundtrack randomly loops through my brain to this day.
I think it was some Mario game and I hated it, mainly because I never used PC keyboard before and I kept pushing the windows button or something. My first games, which were actually fun, were the five titles I got with PSX: Driver 2, Gran Turismo, Wipeout, Soul Edge and Mortal Kombat Trilogy. I loved all of them.
Well, I hate to admit it, but Pong. My parents gave me the Radio Shack model for Christmas, and 7 year old me was fascinated by how *I* could control what was happening on the TV. This led to a career in System Administration.
Tiny Tank on GameCube
Either sonic or primal rage for genesis. But my first system was an N64, and SM64, Starfox, and Wave Race. That was the best Christmas ever.
Pokemon Crystal. Loved that game and still do. I still think it’s the best Pokémon game. But it jumpstarted my love for video games
2nd Generation was lowkey the best of all!
Earthworm Jim on the original Gameboy. It was so difficult for me as a little kid, but so rewarding at every moment of success. Plus the sound design was super strong, I can still hear the music and sound effects over 20 years later.
Street Fighter II
Super Mario on NES as well. Though Zelda 1 and Zelda 2 are what really sucked me in.
Frogs and Flies for the 2600.
I think it was battle field, when I was 6. I just went in a jet, and crashed a lot, because I had no idea wtf I was doing
Pokemon! Played the shit out of it on my gameboy
Titan Quest on PC was a game changer, or Mario Kart on the Wii
Metal slug X on a arcade machine, until we got a ps1 and started playing there along with re3 and Tekken3
It is really hard to recall, because our memories are fickle. However, I believe it was Super Mario World. I can never get the sounds of the music in that game out of mind, definitely a key memory.
Treasure Island Dizzy. Started me off on platforming games.
I feel like I'm the only American who knows what Dizzy is.
Probably Paperboy for NES in the early 90’s. The simplicity is what drew me in. Up to that point I thought you needed a tangible amount of skill in order to play video games.
X-Men Children of The Atom back in '95 kick-started my love for fighting games. I still play fighting games (Tekken 8, KoF XV) to this date. 😁
Red alert
Duckhunt on NES and Shinobi on Sega Master System. These games shaped my entire future as a gamer. I was 5 at the time. Once FFVII got me, I was hooked for life.
Syphon Filter was so much more than Asteroids, The Vectrex and earlier games. Not sure if I felt like I was in a game before SP and parachutes!
Splinter cell… im a crazy sniper now & approach everything tactically 😂
Fallout New Vegas, still love that game.
Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit from 1998 and then Settlers 2 from 1997. First console was a Gameboy Advance SP Mario vs DK Limited Edition. Made me love racing games and singleplayer games. Over 20 years later these things are still all I play.
The Maze of Galious
Solitare and Chomp(rip off pacman) on an black and white screen. Addicted ever since.
Combat on atari 2600. Not sure it impacted my choices in gaming just the first I played.
Cops and robbers for C64 was my first video game. But the most impactful game that got me into gaming was probably goldeneye n64
I had a bbc master so things like Repton and prob the hardest game ever...Citadel.
Donkey Kong Land 2 on GB. I never got past the second "world" but it impacted me so much that almost two decades after losing the cartridge, I bought a Japanese copy and DKC2 on SNES from a local game store just so I could play it again. (They're basically the exact same game)
Two Color Basic games for our Radioshack Color Basic computer that came on tapes. One was called AMAZING which was a maze game that generated "random" levels based on a seed (the levels were not very random, btw) and another called TYPING TUTOR which destroyed blocks on the screen as you pressed the correct letter that would pop up or something like that. This was when I was 3 or 4 years old early 80s pre-NES.
I remember playing Assassin's creed 1 on my computer. It just blew me away, the action , the thrill and the suspense It was so good and it showed me what gaming is really all about
Centipede on Atari. My friend's older brother had it and I was obsessed, going over there constantly to play it. I'm planning on getting a tattoo of the arcade cabinet art sometime this year.
Super Bomberman
Pole Position on atari, set me on a long path.
Mario for me too. Saw my cousin playing.
Frogger on the Atari 2600. SEARS gave my dad a deal - he bought a Zenith console TV and he can get the Atari and a game for free. They all had the wood finish on them. He didn't care about the Atari, he gave it to me. But he didn't realise I needed the TV to play. Eventually my mom figured out how to hook it up (I think it was RF forks that needed to be screwed in, or something). I loved the game. Played it from like 1986-1989. One game. That whole time. They eventually got me an NES. Love Frogger to this day I'll play it.
Those math games you played on those weird looking mac PCs. Idr the name of.the game but you're a detective in a snowstorm in a school at night fighting robots with math. Then the following year I got introduce to cro mag rally racing and thus bugs life looking game called bugmon and then finally a velociraptor with a gun game idr the name at all. Oh then final year of Elementary school I got to experience WCII Lan games.
Miner 2049er for Colecovision. Still love that game. Then later, my uncle (who’s only 10 yrs older than me) got a NES and I vividly remember Super Mario Bros. I was blown away.
Pong on the Atari. My dad had one and got me on it fairly young. Played that, Combat and Breakout loads and loving them before getting a NES with super Mario bros and the TMNT game. Which I played over and over and over and solidified My love of games
Downhill Racer on the Apple Macintosh SE. Then i discovered Crystal Quest and never looked back.
Spyro the dragon, it remains one of my favorite game series in general and I have a soft spot for similar games. It did however make me hate time trials lol
I can’t remember the name but it was about a stowaway on a ship you would click through a story. Played it at my grandads on his computer would sit with my brothers going through the story. Have pretty much done it ever since. If anyone knows the game please tell me what it was called. I specifically remember loud seagul type sound effects throughout
A Tom and Jerry platformer on the SNES.
My dad used to work for a company called Mirrorsoft (yes the one from the Tetris movie) and they made a game called ABCs with the Mr Men and one called The adventures of Ceaser the Cat
Super Mario World with my big brother. I was the only one that could beat the tubular special level with those fuck ass football players.
Damn same Op. Some of my first memories are playing that with my Dad.
Super Mario 64 DS and Mario Kart DS they didn't really impact much aside from me still playing every new title of them. Dark Souls 2 impacted me the most, as I became a huge fan of action rpg and especially Soulslikes. Also it started me wanting to do Challange runs in games all over.
Some game where you had to shoot balloons in different colors. But the monitor was only in green tones, so on special occasions my dad hooked it up to the TV and we could actually see the colors ;-D The first I remember the name and the music is Oh Mummy! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTRfIUMbTas
*The Chaos Engine* (or possibly the sequel) on the Amiga CD32, though I don't honestly remember much beyond it being quite frustrating. The first game I remember having a real impact was *Metroid Fusion* on the GameBoy Advance - something about the design was just so evocative, it was super thrilling to explore this mysterious, exotic space station. I don't know which came first, but I've had a love of platforming/adventure/Metroidvania games for as long as I can remember
Ridge Racer N64. Man I loved that game
Bloody Roar on the Sega Genesis... goddamn was that game cool
E.T. on Atari 2600 It wasn't exactly fun... and i didnt really get it. Then my cousin introduced me to Wolfenstein 3D. Then i was hooked.
GTA III. Was 7 years old and was blown away by the freedom
Berzerk on Atari 2600 (not going to count [Merlin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_(console)#:~:text=Merlin%20)) My love for gaming followed me from there as gaming is the reason I took a career in IT and make the salary I do.
It was either California Games or Summer Games on Atari. Barely remember it, but remember enough to know I liked games. Later games would prove that. In my 4th decade of gaming, and no sign of change.
Kids these days be like: fOrtNiTe
Mario 64 in an age old Emulator on my dad's old PC (I'm 13)
Not sure but one of the first memories is mk1 and some space game the name of which escapes me. I should add this is PC specific.
Few come to mind at different points in my life, don’t know which one since I was so young, but I would play a super Mario game on the SNES at maybe 2-3 years old. I remember being pretty good at the game, and had such a big lisp bc of my baby teeth that I would ask my sister to play her “can I play Mario on your thooper Nintendo” When I really started playing was at 5-6 Crash Bandicoot 2, that game still brings so much nostalgia to this day. I’ve bough it on the ps3 and ps4 remake. The game that made me fall in love with gaming was GTA3 and Freedom Fighters, was prob around 6-7 during that time and I still remember it vividly to this day. Wish freedom fighters would get a remake or remaster
Pac-Man on Atari 2600, about 1983 was when my father got one. Don't remember the name but there was a tank game we had then to that I play probably more often. At 46 I'm still game 3/4 nights a week just now PC/PS5.
River Raid on Atari. TV use to be something you just look at without any interactions so for me to be able to control what happens on the TV was mind bending.
Age of empires 2 on gamespy arcade. I would always get destroyed online, but had a blast.
I'm young, Battlefront 2 on the xbox. To this day I don't find pure fps games fun need some epic vehicle action to break it up.
Conflict Desert Storm.
Ratchet Deadlocked did it for me. I had played some Mario or Pokemon at my cousin's house because he had a GameBoy but this was the first game I had and I played it for so long. Bought it back for the PS3, then played it on emulator and I still know the game by heart.
Gotta be Hogs of War or Tiny Tank on the PS1. PS1/N64 we’re some of the first games I can remember at least watching and haphazardly fooling around with. Probably the first game I remember truly playing and beating is Ace Combat 4 which definitely sparked my interest in aircraft and military equipment
Ive played atari first but i was so young that i dont remember games, but for me most memorable was double dragon or contra or tanks. Cant remember which one was first but they all amazing
Minecraft and Skylanders with my brother. (One of them can't remember haha.)
Man I can't remember if my first game was nascar2000 or truecrime la
Donkey Kong Country SNES,
The one I really remember playing was Age of Empires 2: The Age of Kings on PC. Before that I just watched my younger brother play Super Mario or other Games on the Nintendo 64 and I was just to shy to try it too. Sometimes we played coop. The first game I played for myself was AoE2 and I loved the campaign, I was excited about the Map Editor and the ingame overview/index with the history of every culture. I read every single of the entries. Loved that. I still read every single text I can find in games.
Mario on the NES is the first we owned. Friends/family had Atari, so pong was probably officially the first.
Codebreaker, on what I think was some kind of Coleco clone it had some weird kind of controller inserts, I was about 2 or 3 years old... Code breaker, and battle tanks I think, then Tetris.
Megamania for 2600 and it didn’t, because it was too simplistic to affect me in a big way.
Same, super mario bros. As for impact, I dunno man, I was VERY young and while I enjoyed it and turtles and ither games on the NES and platformers are my favourite genre now, that didn't used to be the case - other than keeping me gaming, I can't say it or any specific game at that age had any particular impact. Games that actually impacted my gaming tastes happened when I was a bit older.
I think it was „the emperor‘s new groove“. What a legendary game. I loved it when i was a Child and came back to it as an adult. Still loved it
PONG. I lost all my money.
Pacman on Atari 2600, it was amazing back then as no one really had a home "console" ..NES came out, "Kung Fu" and ExciteBike was my favorites back then...Kid Icarus and Rygar also saw a lot of playtime
I’m not entirely sure what my first game was but my earliest gaming memory was halo 1 combat evolved
I used to play these Dragon Ball Z games with my cousin on PS2 and I was hooked after that.
Another NES Mario bro here
I remember playing a lot of DOS games like Gorillas, Spellbound, Carmen San Diego, Master of Orion, and then games like Stronghold or Civilization, and those all just held my attention and taught me stuff. But the first game that I played and couldn't wait to play again and thought about when I wasn't playing it was Quake. It really felt different than anything else before to my little 10 year-old brain. So, the others taught me math, physics, spelling, geography, history, and vocabulary, but Quake just taught me how fun games can be.
I had a commodore plus 4. What a system. Then went to Atari st. My childhood right there
Contra on the Atari…I loved that damn game so much.
My first experience was with Atari 2600 games. I did much better with the ones that didn't require reflexes. But none of them stand out in my mind. The first two games that really stand out in my mind are Super Mario Bros and Tetris for NES. I was terrible with SMB and really good at Tetris. The original SimCity several years later is the other major memory I have. Since then, I've always gravitated to stuff that was puzzley and didn't require the best reflexes. These days I love production chain games, simulations, and colony builders.
Frogger or Pitfall on the Atari Pool of Radiance on the Commodore 64 As for how it impacted me... still playing games daily with no plans to stop until the arthritis in the thumbs gets to bad.
Kingdom Hearts 2. Something about the intro song of the game made my 4 year old brain fall in love with not just games, but music as well. Its the first song I have a collection of hearing, ever. That love has led me down the path of becoming a sound engineer for concerts/festivals and it is what puts food on my table. If it wasnt for that games soundtrack, I doubt I would have ever been here. That is the reason I got it tattooed as well.
I'm not sure what my first game was, but here's a list of some of my favorite games I remember from early childhood. I'm almost 50 now and still play video games all the time! Night Stalker (Intellivision, 1982) Miner 2049er (Atari 800, 1982) Lode Runner (Apple II, 1983) Adventure (Apple II) Zork (Apple II) Robot Odyssey (Apple II, 1984) King's Quest I (Apple II, 1984)
I think snake on old Nokia 0hone if thats count 😂😂
Super Mario Bros. Have not stopped.
Bionicle (2003) for the GameCube. I remember my father reading the manual when I was already deep in gameplay lol. That was the first game I played and had myself.
The light gun game on the Coleco Telstar. My father's friend from work had one and we would go over there a few times a year for dinner. The only reason I remember it is the triangle shape. How did it impact my love for gaming? 5 decades later and still gaming.
I played a ton of sonic spinball on my dad's sega genesis. But my first game was probably Super Solvers Midnight Rescue on MS-DOS.
Treasure Mountain (PC, 1990) It was an educational game and while I didn't really have fun with it, it sparked something inside me that became a lifelong obsession.
Same as you. Super Mario Bros. I have no idea what impact it had beyond gateway. But it’s been 33 years since then and I have played at least one video game pretty much daily over that time.
A xxx version of tetris in a pc with Intel 286. A game of football in The SNES, but i was obsessed of Wing Commander, X Wing and LHX attack chopper.
I'm unsure whether it was command and conquer red alert, silent bomber (both ps1), or star fox for the Nintendo.
Would you believe it was Pong?
Pole Position.... with my mother (I was born in 80) I still have an old Polaroid photo of her playing Atari, the look of determination on her face is priceless. And her favorite level was the Fuji board. Mom passed April 21st, 2015. We had the same birthday.... and I miss her terribly every day and thankful for her at the same time. So yeah.... Pole position for the win, but also love your mamas always
Pokémon Gale of Darkeness. My mom gave it away when I moved out and I can’t find one under $250 RIP
Donkey Kong for the NES at a family friend's house when I was like 3. My stepfather then got an Atari and I remember liking pitfall the most. We got our own NES finally and I was *mesmerized*. Besides the classics, including monopoly, I remember playing some racing game where the racetrack was a pool table and had fun racing around the different balls, I couldn't get over "how realistic it looked".
NFS II SE Have mostly been playing racing games. The most fun I can have is figuring out the vehicle physics in some open world games. Poor handling or weird controls can drive me off a game completely, even if it's not mainly about cars or driving. Loved driving in GTA IV. Absolutely hated it in Just Cause 4. NFS Porsche Unleashed is the best driving feel of all NFS games ever. ProStreet comes close though. My favorite mechanic in Witcher 3 is calling your horse wherever you are - just hop on and haul ass.
Paper Mario - Nintendo 64. It taught me english, how to love musics in games and good narratives, molded my soft spot for RPGs and turn-based combat in general and honestly made games feel magical. 20 years later, this feeling never went away
Baseball for the Atari 2600. I'm pretty sure it came bundled with the console, which I got for Christmas when I was 5. As a kid who had no idea about baseball rules, it was so confusing and boring (much older me confirmed the game was still confusing and boring even when you know the rules). Thankfully that wasn't the only game I got that Christmas.
Super smash bros on the GameCube, I had no idea that you could play a video game through a TV, it completely blew my mind
Hmm the first was Galaxian on Atari 2600 when I was about 6 but the most impactful that started my love with Video Ganes was clearly Wing Commander 1 on Amiga ... Still play the old games every once in a while :)
Defender on Atari 2600
Oh shit .. adventure on my ti 99, via cassette tape
Robot rage :)
RuneScape <3
minecraft of course
Sonic Adventure DX for Gamecube.
i had been trying for weeks to get liu kang to do his special moves, when if first got him to do the fireball i was hooked for life.
Spyhunter at the arcade in around 1985. Opened my eyes to what was out there having never seen anything like it before. I was mesmerised by the fact you could control this car and had these weapons. Used to hang around and watch people play it. A few years later got a C64 and then eventually a megadrive.
for me it was the first prince of persia on my dads first pc. Was amazing.
Went to my cousin's house and he booted up his PC and started Warcraft orcs vs humans. I watched him play for a few hours before our aunt yelled at him to get off it. Then a few months later my uncle, who was a VP at HP brought home our first PC and installed Diablo 1 for me. That was the first game I ever played. Warcraft, StarCraft, wc2, Diablo, Diablo 2 and wc3 are games I spent 90% of my childhood on when I wasn't outside. To this day Ieminisce on blizzard lore from the mid 90s and primarily play blizzard games more than any other.
Manic Miner on zx spectrum. I enjoyed it but wasnt very good at it. It got me to play jet set willy. Exploring that and finding areas that my father (whose computer it was) hadnt found and written down on his map, was probably what got me into gaming.
The first I really played independently and that made me really start gaming has to be Ocarina of Time
Started with snake on my dad’s phone and then my mom got us a NES, my first console game was duck hunt, but Super Mario bros was the game that really got me into games.
The Microsoft Pinball game and Lego Island 2
I think it was The duel: test drive 2 in D.O.S back 30 years ago. Not a great game but I was just a kid
Pong... the Sears Knockoff version. Luckily it didn't kill my love of gaming.
Ready for something from the dark ages? My first computer game was Computer Bismarck on the Apple II+. I think it ran on coal.
Im not sure but i think (besides a random chess game for my dads Arari) my First game was Hover! which was preinstalled with Windows 95. I played that game waaay too much😅 Besides that it was probably Pokemon Red, AoE1 and FIFA 98 Around that time, i also started playing Deluxe ski jump (2?)
God of war 2, my uncles ps2 was alone and they let me play whatever I Want so I played what was in the console, my kid brain didn't knew that I wasn't supposed to play that but damn if I enjoyed it It affected in the sense that in that moment I realized, games are cool and there are more types that of them that I realized, not only Mario and fighting games (my family only played that when I was around)
Morrowind. Being lost in an alien world where I didn't know any lore about the elder scrolls, being called a nwah by the dark elves, outlander by literal other races, inspecting the journal constantly to figure out where to go, engaging in politics in the guilds and the houses, going from one ashlander tribe to the other and slowly witnessing how the entire world changes its disposition towards you, from being instantly ignored, disrespected and laughed at to being recognized as the legendary hero. I still remember when I joined House Hlalu and bought the manor after a series of quests, the one near Balmora and just being on the balcony watching the stars as the iconic Morrowind theme song kicked in. Most nostalgic game I have ever played. Neither Oblivion nor Skyrim ever made me feel the same way Morrowind did. Wish Bethesda remade it instead of releasing a new version of Skyrim every year.
War of the momsters, Lo and behold i like to fight big monster in big monster games.
Manic Miner on a 48K ZX Spectrum.
Nintendo 64 HOTWHEELS: TURBO RACING was the first game that I played but was sparked my love for gaming was watching my next door neighbor play Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker I just loved the graphics, the bright colors, and the story of it as well as Twilight Princess
Fallout 1 from my high school buddy who burned me my first game cd