f13.net

I was late to the top 20, but made me think about all the games I've ever played.  Among them were Adventure for the Atari 2600 and Tunnels of Doom for the Texas Instruments TI-99. 

Adventure - Atari 2600 - 1979 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_(Atari_2600)
Tunnels of Doom -  -Texas Instruments - TI-99/4A - 1982 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunnels_of_Doom

Post some of your earliest gaming memories.  Only the good ones though ;)

Well, first gaming was done in arcades. Tempest, various pinball machines, Frogger, Pac-Man, the usual.

First home machine was a Vic-20, I believe. It was my brother's. Had a cool Buck Rogers game on it.

I've mentioned fairly often that my first game was on a mainframe, probably the FORTRAN version of ADVENT/Colossal Cave/Adventure and a Star Trek game that was graphical based, with character and text graphics.

Then TRS-80 stuff and then the C64 opened the world of gaming up wide. Also some arcades and of course the Atari, but I've always had an anti-console bias :)

My dad got us Pong when it first came out. I was the envy of all my friends. Then a year or two later he got us a Vic-20 and we played Dracula's Castle on it which was my first text adventure game.

Same, played on a terminal in my dad's office (your tax dollars at work!).  After that was the 2600 and a shitton of shareware (particularly Jumpman and MS Flight Simulator) on our PCjr.

My first major gaming memory is space invaders and asteroid on the Atari. I wasted hours of my childhood on those.

My first good gaming memory is probably Zelda 1 or Castlevania on the NES.

Probably some shit like Colecovision (Smurfs?). Pfah. Everything before the Nintendo was trash. I can't find rose-colored glasses rosey enough.

Needless to say, Mario 1. And Golf.

Ironically when the SNES came around, my earlier two games were SMW and Hal's Hole in One Golf. Fuck I loved Hal's.

My 5200 had Mario 1.. So there you go. Pre Nintendo goodness.

Smurfs was shite. Colecovision had a good Donkey Kong though.

Pong, bitches. The deluxe Pong version that had like 5 or 6 different versions of a pixel bouncing against other pixels.

Probably Pac-Man on the Atari 2600. I played a lot of that, Defender, and Yars Revenge.

Many, many, many.


However, the first I remember with a degree of Clarity (due to actual OWNERSHIP) was Gems of Stradus.

It was Balls.

Oh yeah, forgot that one. Wedge that between the mainframe stuff and arcades. Pong, tennis, so many variations on double-digit pixel goodness.

And THAT was my first anti-console bias after puzzle solving and exploring that white house in Colossal Cave Adventure or flying through space fighting Klingons with graphics and menus that weren't replicated again until the TRS-80 a few years later. Bah.

First games I really remember owning were Conan: Hall of Volta (http://www.mobygames.com/game/apple2/conan-hall-of-volta) and Zaxxon (http://www.mobygames.com/game/apple2/zaxxon) on the old Apple IIc. Also had two text adventure games, Forbidden Castle (http://www.mobygames.com/game/pc-booter/forbidden-castle) and Voodoo Island (http://www.mobygames.com/game/pc-booter/voodoo-island).


edit: Added links.

Boo, I only had the original Pong.  lol.

Moon Patrol, Jungle Hunt and Space Invaders for the Atari 2600.  Not sure in which order.  The first game I picked out to buy myself was Legend of Kage, when my mom took me to buy an NES.  I remember liking the box art at the time.

Sears' little Pong console (http://myrearinsears.blogspot.com/2007/04/pong-anyone.html) was technically my first video game experience, but when Space Invaders rolled into the (all-pinball & pool) gameroom of the bowling alley that I frequented, the shit was ON.

P            
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Console with two controlers. No buttons, just a rotary knob. Had four different game modes!

My parents had an Atari I would play Pac-Man and Pong on it, as well as some game where some criminal guy dropped bombs you had to catch in water buckets. 

After that, there was Duck Hunt and Mario on the NES. 

That I can remember, Pakacuda (http://www.games-db.com/Game/106242/).

First contact with gaming was an Atari 2600 at a friend's house.  There, we enjoyed many terrible renditions of Pacman and Missile Command.  Combat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m86ftny1uY) was pretty good, though.

My very first on a personal computer that I owned would have to be Radar Rat Race (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radar_Rat_Race) for the ViC-20.  (C64 version footage (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwnzsIH_1Uk).)

After that, I moved on to the Commadore 64 and played what probably amounted to hundreds of games over the next few years.  Some of my favorites were Ultima III, Impossible Mission, Archon, Racing Destruction Set, Mail Order Monsters, and PSI-5 Trading Company.

Pac-Man was my first, I'm pretty sure.  I was 3 years old and my dad brought me to the Musee Mechanique at the Cliffhouse, which had recently started adding some of those newfangled electronic contraptions to their antique collection of mechanical penny arcade machines.

Shortly thereafter I started stealing time on my uncles' Atari STs to play stuff like Centipede, Time Bandits, and Spy Hunter.  Good times.

I think some people here are naming the first game they ever touched as opposed to the first they made a connection with.  Mine would be plain old Mario/Duck Hunt.  I'm sure I played games before that, but obviously they weren't fun enough to remember?

SMB, followed shortly by Legend of Zelda, when I was about 4 years old.

Zelda was the shit, though I'll admit I needed parental help with mapping out the final dungeon; that part of the game is still a bitch even today.

I honestly have no idea.  I'm pretty sure it was an arcade game at a Round Table Pizza near my house.  Or it could have been the NES with SMB, Excitebike or that other lightgun game that wasn't Duck Hunt. 

I just can't remember.   :|

Castle.bas (http://www.mobygames.com/game/castle-adventure) and Wizard.bas (http://www.mobygames.com/game/dos/wizards-castle/reviews/reviewerId,54276/).

You think you had it rough? I had to copy my games line by line out of Ranger Rick magazine!


Edit: Apparently the real name for castle.bas is Castle Adventure.

Wizardry on an Apple II+.  I played it with my mother and we actually used it as a learning tool as it was also one of the first things I read.  I  :heart: my mom.

Pong, the original sitdown arcade version, in the lounge of a Continental Airlines flight somewhere over Texas, if I remember correctly. This was back before airline deregulation here in the US and many planes had large sections dedicated to these lounge areas.

Adventure (the Don Woods version) on a TOPS-20 system, and a host of other games on said system.

Edit: tense

I don't remember the specific names, but it was some pitfall-esque game on one of those Atari's that used 5 inch floppy disks.  It was pretty damn sad.  Apart from that, my first distinct memories of a game were for the CGA version of The Secret of Monkey Island, which my dad had pirated no less with it's printed-out copy of that ridiculous face-wheel they used for a copy protection scheme.  I forced myself to learn DOS to play that game, and it was worth it.

(http://www.atariprotos.com/2600/software/junglehunt/jungle_1.png)
Vines! Can't get enough o' those vines.

Pinball.

Seriously, first video game was a good friend up the street that got one of the original Pong games that his dad spent hundreds of dollars upon (a lot of money in the 1970s!)…

Then, the arcade games as well as the old Atari but the home systems couldn't match the arcade… …space invaders, asteroids, pole position, etc.…emptied me of many rolls of quarters…

My personal favorite was a game called Frontline made by Taito that had 2 six pronged controls (one for movement, one to point your gun/tank) as well as 2 other buttons that I could milk 50 cents all night in the local 7/11…

…ah, those were the days.

The first game I actively REMEMBER playing was Space Invaders on a neighbor's Atari 2600 when I was 5 or 6.  1980 I think.

The game that truely made me a gamer?

Ultima 1 on the Commodore 64 in February 1989.

Not Atari, not Colecovision, not Nintendo.
The Commodore mothafuckin 64 made me a gamer.
Until then I just really really liked games.

I played all sort of old shit. We had some wacky Texas Instruments computer that I played "Hunt the Wumpus" on. Also an Atari computer (yes computer) that I played some Infocom games on, Temple of Apshai, etc. And an Apple 2 that I played Bard's Tale on among others.

I once got a game on tape. Cassette tape. Lollers. I think it was Boulderdash.

Even though I was alive then it seems like something someone would just make up to fuck with you - games on cassette tape.

The first game on a computer was "Hunt the Wumpus". Typed in myself from a book of basic programs on an old homebrew computer my father put together.

My first console was pong. I still remember that brown monster. I think it was the deluxe version Haemish talks about. I remember quite some variations in gameplay..

My first bought computer game was Manic Miner on the ZX Spektrum.

Edit: Oh, I forgot those Tricotronics (Game & Watch in America) -  Marios Cement Factory

My first "computer" game, I owned, was the little Mattel electronic sports "football" handheld game with the little dashes as people... I think I got the Atari 2600 later that same year for Christmas.

I'd probably say my first time gaming was playing Pong at the bowling alley on one of the original stand up machines.

First handheld game:     Tomy Electronic Football (at least I think it was Tomy)
First arcade game:        Space Invaders
First console game:       Air-Sea Battle - 2600
First computer game:    Star Raiders. - Atari 400
 
It's been a long magical journey since then.

I grew up in the back of beyond so we didn't have arcades.  I used to play a lot of those handheld LCD games like Snoopy Tennis, Donkey Kong Jr. and Parachute but they probably don't count.  I think the first video game I ever saw was probably Combat on a neighbour's Atari 2600.  First computer game I ever played was Harrier Attack on the ZX Spectrum. 

Perestroika (http://takegame.com/arcade/htm/toppler.htm). Ha, I bet no one can beat that :P

Pac-Man.

:awesome_for_real:

Choplifter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choplifter) and Lode Runner (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lode_Runner) on Commodore 64.

Oregon Trail, in 3rd grade.

Pretty much the exact same for me.

The first game I really remember sucking me into gaming though was Metroid on the NES.

Asteroids on a friend's Atari 2600.  My parents bought that Atari shortly afterwards and I received that along with a slew of games .  This was probably 1985 or 86.

The first game that sank its claws into me and wouldn't let go? Jet Set Willy in the C64 (followed by Elite, then onto the Amiga and Turrican II, Frontier, Syndicate, Populous II, etc etc etc) Good times.  :-)

The first game to actually make me genuinely angry at the actions of the in-game enemy?
This (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJvYZXUT5Bk): "First I'm going to save all the cryo trays, then I'm going to find out who did this, then I'm going to eradicate them utterly from existence"

I remember my brother had that when I was a little kid.

I played a lot of arcade machines over the years when I was young. 20c a pop at the Fish and Chip shop across the road. They got new games every so often. The Milk Bar around the corner next to my primary school also had 2 games. They've all kind of blended together without a chronology, but stand-out ones are:

A western-themed game where you're a cowboy in the middle of the screen and indians, etc move around the edge. The joystick had a directional-turn thing (like Ikari Warriors did many years later).
10 Yard Fight
Green Beret (Rush'n Attack) - I was a local champion at this one.
Centipede
Scramble
Gunsmoke
Some top-down car game where you had to shunt other cars onto the edges of the course, and your car could also jump and if you landed on other cars you blew them up. You were a red car with some design on the bonnet.

Of course, when I was around 11 or 12 or 13, my friends and I would occasionally scrape up 5 or 6 dollars each and catch the bus into the local shopping district together and go to one of the arcades where they might have things lik Gauntlet, Ikari, Commando, Rygar, etc. The games listed above though were across the road or around the corner.

Later, I had a C64 and then later an Amiga 500. My first console was the SNES, and that was at my wife's (GF at the time) insistence because she wanted to play Mario.

Bump n Jump, perhaps?

(http://www.klov.com/images/11/1181242065113.png)

A pong machine with paddles on a black and white TV in mid-1970s Scotland.

I never liked Bump n Jump.  There was a similar game made by Sega called Up n Down which is way cooler.  Isometric viewpoint, infectious music, and some neat physics that will either make you love or despise the game.
Played a shitload of it on the C64 as a kid.

Choplifter, Karateka, and Pitfall.

I played the hell out of those.

The first game I played and thought "Man this is fun!" Was the first SMB for the NES.


But the FIRST game I really ever played was G.I. Joe: Cobra Strike for some version of an old Atari machine. I was like six years old when I dug this out of my parents closet. I was really into G.I. Joe at the time, so a G.I. Joe video game hidden away was GOLD!

It sucked so bad, so so bad. So many dreams crushed :(.




There was some other game they had as well, really simplistic, even for the Atari. You were a Dot, and had to avoid the walls in a room, but the room pulsed or shrunk or something. I was too young and uncoordinated to ever figure it out, but it sure did piss me the fuck off.


-edit-

Reactor! That was the stupid game. http://www.mobygames.com/game/atari-2600/reactor Fuck did I hate this game, yet I was determined to "win", except I had no fucking idea HOW.  :uhrr:

Hrm.  I can't remember the exact order but the first games I really remember playing were the original NES Mario, Hillsfar, ZZT, and Comander Keen.

Ah the memories.  I think I had an atari back when I was 1 or 2 (I have vague images of it) but I can't honestly remember any details about it.

I must have forgotten to press "post" the other day..  :uhrr:

Yep, it was Bump and Jump, never saw Up n Down, though clearly Jain Zar is a heretic. But really, my memories of games over many years spent playing in that Fish 'n Chip shop across the road all kind of smushed together.

I'd be interested in playing the old B&J again, but at the same time, who knows how short my attenton span would now be for 1970's-1980's arcade games. If my various Namco/Capcom/Taito collections which I barely touch are any indicator, these nostalgia games are much easier for me to buy than actually get around to playing...

Hillsfar was the first indication I might one day be MMOG-player material. I actually replayed it four times with four of my "Pool of Radiance" characters to get them the boni for "Curse of the Azure Bonds".

I saw Pong being played, but never played it myself.  I can't really remember why.  My earliest gaming memories were all in arcades:  Dig Dug, Pac Man, Defender, Joust, and Wizard of Wor.

I had a Commodore 64 and an Intellivision, so the games that made the biggest impressions on me were on those systems.  I played my friend's Atari, but I preferred my big gold and silver Intellivision.  I can still hear that repetitive heartbeat from Night Stalker sometimes ...

Oh and:  Raid over Bungling Bay (C64) was THE shiznitz.  The Ultima games were awesome, but ROBB was special.

Certainly not the first game I ever played (that would be Pong, followed by the first 2600 games, Combat, etc.) but the first game I became totally obsessed with was Wizardry I on my IIe.

My top 20 list agrees with you. My main games on the C64 were Ultima 4, ROBB, and Seven Cities of Gold. I'll actually admit a dirty secret, another favorite was the platformer Montezuma's Revenge (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Montezuma's_Revenge_(video_game)), played with a joystick!

I'm not certain.  I know Combat was one of the first, and it also made a big impression on me which is why it's also in my top 20.  It was multiplayer awesomeness.  Any of the early arcade games could've been it - Centipede, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, etc.  It also could have been a TI that we had.  Come to think of it, I believe we had the TI before we got our 2600.

Edit: Parsec.  I think that was the game we had on our TI.

This is more a list of the first games I really fell in love with.

Computer:  Oregon Trail, Wizardry I, SimCity, Champions of Krynn (Goldbox!)
Console (Atari): River Raid, Space Invaders, Combat
Arcade: First game I really loved was Cyberball,  a 2 on 2 football thing with robots.
Handheld:  Never owned one.

I had an Intellivsion when I was real young, Utopia, Shark! Shark! Snafu, Horse Racing, and others I dont remember were cool

Console: Mario, Contra, Killer Instinct, Zeldas etc

Tandy 1000 and later PCs : Rogue, Star Control II, Kings Quest, Police Quest, Syndicate, Ultimas, just way too many

Arcade: Street Fighter II, Star Wars Pinball, Centipede

Warlords (http://www.mobygames.com/game/warlords_) for the Atari 2600.  4 player excellence back in the day.  Combat was fun when it was just me and my brother though. 

First console game was that cowboy shooting bouncing bullets game on the 2600.  And space invaders like 10 minutes later.
First PC game was either Oregon Trail or Shufflepuck Cafe.
First game I spent a lot of time on was Warlords, King's Bounty, or Crescent Hawk's Inception/Revenge.  Those games all came out with a year of each other.  What an awesome year for PC gaming.

Oh man, I loved Montezuma's Revenge.  That takes me back.

It's too bad there's not a good C64 emulator out there.  The ones I've found still keep the absolutely horrible (by modern standards) interface, and I just can't use it.  LOAD "*", 8, 1 my god why.  I'd love to play some Montezuma's, or Mission Impossible, or ROBB, or even Ultima II if there was just a better way to play it than launching a byte-for-byte emulator.

Most memorable for me was The Hobbit on ZX Spectrum circa 1982

First game? Pinball. I still play the odd pinball game when there's a decent machine around.

First actual 'video game' that had me hooked? Galaga.  Oh sure, I played 2600 and coin-op Centipede and Pac-Man and all those classics. But Galaga was the one that kept me pouring quarters in. You could use TWO SHIPS AT ONCE, DUDE!

First computer game was a text adventure loaded from cassette. Don't know the name, or even the type of computer.  Wish I could figure out what computer it was.

I remember seeing Pong. Pinball was way cooler to me so I never played it.

Almost every C64 emu is GUI these days.

And the best way to play Montezuma's Revenge and Choplifter is on the Sega Master System.  (Or in my trying to keep wires and clutter down case, a Power Base Convertor on top of my model 1 Genny.)
A couple years back I got em cheap off of ebay. 
Might as well play them at their prettiest!
Hell, its got the best version of Ghostbusters on it too.
(Im a fiend for getting legit copies of games whenever I can.  Even ancient ones.  Also have Gods, Wolfchild, Populous, Dune 2, and Lemmings 2 on the Genny.  Sadly I could only find Pinball Dreams on the SNES.)

Course, the 64 emus seem to be the best way to play Gremlins and H.E.R.O. still.
Why Activision constantly pumps out the inferior 2600 version of it is beyond me..

Q*bert!

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/5e/Qbert.png)

That was followed by King's Quest, Space Quest, and Quest for Glory.  I grew up a Sierra slut.  Then I got a paper route, saved up, and bought myself an NES.  SMB and Duck Hunt.

This. I broke so many Atari gamepads, let alone joysticks, not through throwing them or otherwise harming them in fits of rage, but just through constant enthusiastic play wearing those poor things down. My first PC game was Syndicate... omg, how I love thee. I still play it sometimes. The second game I played was Ultima 7 and I likewise play it sometimes and still think it's awesome.

Zaxxon. I could barely reach the joystick, but I was entranced. And promptly flew into the wall on each of my 3(?) lives.

Later I got some lame version of the NES with no SMB bundle (just some crap book telling you about all the games you could buy.) I bought Trojan with it, and my best friend at the time was so excited for me that he stole spyhunter. I still remember when we figured out that you can just accelerate without steering when the truck drops you off and you drive right through all the trees and crap (works on the arcade too - until you hit a bomb crater and the machine resets.)

Tomy electronic football. (Handheld)
Space Invaders (Cabinet in the arcades)
Karateka (Apple IIe)
Zork (Apple IIc)
Skyfox (Commodore 64)

First games: Star Trek (teletype) and Oregon Trail.

First passion: Star Raider, Atari 800

First arcade love: Football, Atari Inc., 1978. The first true video sports game, Atari's Football was created by Dave Stubben from a game project called X's and O's that was begun by Steve Bristow before he started Tank. Football amazed players with its fast action and complex simulation of a team sport, and it also marked the introductions of both the Trak-Ball and scrolling displays.

(http://www.videotopia.com/football.jpg)

I remember we used to spend our allowance to make gloves for playing this.  Ah, memories. 

A close second is Gunfight, Taito/Midway, 1975. A two-player game set in the old-west and the first game to utilize a microprocessor.  My brother and I used to come to blows over this and Tank.

 :headscratch:

I forgot about Warlords, that games was awesome. Really really fun. I love the box art, it has nothing to do with the game at all. (It's a 4 player Arkanoid/brickle.)

I was at the museum of Television and Radio History in NY over the summer and they had some old games set up there. Including Combat. I played with a friend as the tanks. I lost. Badly. To a girl. Who had never played before in her life.

I've always played video games. When I was young I thought my dad was awesome because he beat Venture for the Colecovision while I couldn't get past the second level. (Venture, not Adventure) Our family never did much together and I didn't have much in common with either parent but that was one thing we could do together.

The game was played by moving a trackball as fast as you can.  After hours of doing this, your hand became raw (and often pinched in the gap between the ball and the machine).  This developed a juvenile need to wear a glove... since it pre-dates Michael Jackson, it wasn't a fashion statement.

I spent 3 minutes trying to figure out wtf that smiley is.  Eventually I decided that the white bit on top looks like a phallus and the smiley is jerking it and you're calling somebody a wanker. 


Atari 2600 box art was the best for this.  Have some lushly painted sci fi scene on the cover and the game would be one pixel jumping over another pixel.

Compare and contrast:
(http://www.ehnertia.net/~sidereal/capture.png) (http://farm1.static.flickr.com/230/452645123_4f5539a97b_m.jpg)

Don't be silly. It's a head-scratching smiley. If I wanted to call someone here a wanker, I'd just call them a wanker.



Your picture! She is broken!

First games I remember player were on my good ol' C64

Jumpman
B.C.: Quest for Wheels

good times

Haha, that's awesome, and so true.