Your first game(s)?

[Dash]

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 ;)

[stray]

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.

[Sky]

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 :)

[Reg]

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.

[MisterNoisy]

I've mentioned fairly often that my first game was on a mainframe, probably the FORTRAN version of ADVENT/Colossal Cave/Adventure

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.

[Riggswolfe]

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.

[schild]

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.

[stray]

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

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

[HaemishM]

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

[Prospero]

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

[Ironwood]

Many, many, many.


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

It was Balls.

[Sky]

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

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.

[murdoc]

First games I really remember owning were Conan: Hall of Volta and Zaxxon on the old Apple IIc. Also had two text adventure games, Forbidden Castle and Voodoo Island.


edit: Added links.

[Evildrider]

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

Boo, I only had the original Pong.  lol.

[Phildo]

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.

[Joey]

Sears' little Pong console 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.

[Bunk]

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

[Mazakiel]

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. 

[eldaec]

That I can remember, Pakacuda.

[geldonyetich2]

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 was pretty good, though.

My very first on a personal computer that I owned would have to be Radar Rat Race for the ViC-20.  (C64 version footage.)

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.

[Samwise]

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.

[Ookii]

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?

[Strazos]

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.

[Rasix]

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.   

[Krakrok]

Castle.bas and Wizard.bas.

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.

[Moaner]

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  my mom.

[Trippy]

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

[ahoythematey]

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.

[lesion]

Vines! Can't get enough o' those vines.

[naum]

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.

[Jain Zar]

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.

[Margalis]

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.

[Tebonas]

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

[taolurker]

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.

[raydeen]

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.