Your first game(s)?

[DraconianOne]

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. 

[Wolf]

Perestroika. Ha, I bet no one can beat that :P

[Yegolev]

Pac-Man.

[Cryo]

Choplifter and Lode Runner on Commodore 64.

[voodoolily]

Oregon Trail, in 3rd grade.

[Thrawn]

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.

[Zar]

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.

[Simond]

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: "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"

[Azazel]

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

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.

[Joey]

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.

Bump n Jump, perhaps?

[Tale]

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

[Jain Zar]

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.

Bump n Jump, perhaps?

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.

[Xerapis]

Choplifter, Karateka, and Pitfall.

I played the hell out of those.

[Fordel]

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. 

[KallDrexx]

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.

[Azazel]

Bump n Jump, perhaps?

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.

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

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...

[Tebonas]

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".

[MaceVanHoffen]

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.

[Abagadro]

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.

[Sky]

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

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, played with a joystick!

[Roac]

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.

[Johny Cee]

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.

[Slayerik]

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

[Zetleft]

Warlords for the Atari 2600.  4 player excellence back in the day.  Combat was fun when it was just me and my brother though. 

[sidereal]

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.

[MaceVanHoffen]

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.

[Engels]

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

[Special J]

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.

[Jain Zar]

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.

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..

[DeathInABottle]

Q*bert!



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.

[Calantus]

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

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.

[Dtrain]

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.)

[Surlyboi]

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

[Nebu]

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.



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.

[Azazel]

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