So guys, what is it that introduced you to the world of gaming?

[DeadlyTitan]

This is just a curious question but i'd like to hear out what pulled you people into playing games and made you a gamer you are today. What was that first system you have ever experienced that you have played games on?

For me it was Nintendo Entertainment System (NES).

When I was a little kid one of my cousins visited me for summer vacation, hes a lot older than me and he bought with him his shiny new gaming system. he have a glee on his face when he was setting it up and i had no idea back then why was he so happy and gleeful, but then he turned it on and then i saw it. It was amazing, it totally blew my mind, i was flabbergasted, i have never seen anything like that before and it was my first time. He was nice enough to let me play most of the time, he was very mature and understanding for his age. We played Mario Bros, Contra, Donkey kong, Duck hunt, Ice Climber, Excitebike, Bomberman. Those were my very first games.

After he left i asked my father if we can have one, but back then we weren't really financially stable and those things were really expensive and i also didnt liked to bother him much when i already know we were struggling. But he did gave me small pocket change every now and then which i used to save up and go rent the machine for a day or 2 from the nearby rental stores.

5 Years later when we were finally financially stable enough, my father presented me with something i have never asked or dreamed of owning. My very own NES system. It was the best birthday ever and also the best present ever cause of how it made me feel.

Things went by really fast after that, I introduced my other cousins who were younger than me to the world of gaming when they visited for summer. We used to play all night during summer. Those were the starting of my days as a gamer. We still play together, well not as often but once a year we host a big lan party and have a blast for old times sake.

Well that is how i became a gamer i am today. All thanks to that one NES system my elder cousin introduced me to back when i am small. Thinking about it all again brings back those memories, the times we just spent playing together, just a bunch of kids, me and my cousins taking turns playing the game. Whoever looses have to handover the controller so everyone tried their best not to loose. Although my female cousins were not really interested in games but since majority of us were male they just decided to tag along and support us. Good old days eh?

Yep good old days

Sorry for the wall of text but i just got carried away by my memories.

 

[Greenman]

Pong was where I started.

 

[shortylickens]

NES

 

[Thebobo]

Video arcades. Use to love Defender.
Timex Sinclair - spiders
C 64 D&D stuff
C128
Amiga
PC

Never owned a gaming console.

 

[mdram]

arcades, atari 2600
then muds for online

man im gettin old

 

[Nashemon]

A bit of my early video game history. I'm an avid collector of everything now. I have almost every system other than pre my own birth in 1983.

First game system for me was the VIC-20 when I was very young. My dad got it on clearance at Target for like $80 (originally $300); He was so proud of that fact. I have no idea where that system is now. He probably sold it in a yard sale a very long time ago. I don't remember too many games on it other than Q-bert, The Sky is Falling, and Radar Rat Race.

I guess he figured I like video games by how much I played it, so a few years later he bought us an NES. It was the Power Set one than came with two controllers, the Power Pad, the orange Light Gun, and Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt/World Class Track Meet. Over the years for our birthdays, Christmas, etc, he bought us a ton of games. Like 20+. And we played the hell out of each of them. I remember going to Toys R Us and just spending the entire time in the video game aisle.

I wasn't a collector back then, though, being less than 10 years old, so I never kept any of the boxes or even the manuals (one of the three biggest regrets of my life). I ended up selling a number of the games in a yard sale when I was 10. We had just gotten a Sega Genesis, and I didn't play some of the games anymore and wanted some spending money for the beach that year. If I could kick my 10 year old self in the face I would. I used to rent games at Blockbuster every weekend, so I didn't own many games for the Sega or SNES until much later in life. I started actually having some decent spending money when the N64 came out and I started buying a game or two a week, which is when I started keeping the complete boxes for games, and a few years later, I decided they were taking up too much space and I threw a ton of them away instead of simply folding them up like a box is made to do. Shoot me, please.

 

[sandorski]

Video Gaming?

Pong

 

[IronWing]

Odyssey was the first for me then Intellivision. Nothing really captivated me until Wolfenstein 3D. Since then, if the game isn't in first person, I don't play it. Bums me out the Tomb Raider is third person. Even non shoot'em up games are better in first person, like The Room puzzle games.

I think a Pong-Doom mashup might be fun. First person view of a plain white cube flying at you, destroying everything in its path.

 

[Sonikku]

My mother worked three jobs so I spent most of my days being baby sat by a sitter with two kids. They had an NES and I would frequently watch, but only rarely got to play Super Mario Bros. I was in awe of it. One night when I was in the bath tub at home I heard the familiar beeps and boops and ran out of the bathroom buck-naked into the living room where my mother had just set up one that was to be mine and I shouted "THAT'S MARIO!!!".

I remember it was a Friday because I was able to justify staying up late on account of there being no kindergarten the next day. My mother gave up at about midnight but I kept playing Mario. At around the 3am mark my mother came out of her bedroom and informed me I was going to bed, she didn't care if it was Saturday or not. I would remain a Nintendo fanatic the rest of my life. I remember playing Zelda at some point while tuning out my mother while she was telling me to do some chores once. She finally got my attention and told me that someday I'll be older and lose interest in those video games, at which point I'll start to be a responsible adult.

I Showed her!

 

[nakedfrog]

Overall, it was the Apple IIc. My dad brought one home, the first game I remember seeing on it was Space Quarks. Not long after I became an arcade rat, riding my bike down to there and pumping in whatever quarters I had. But then after we moved to Japan, I went over to a friend's house and they had a Famicom, and it was great. I begged my parents to get one, but I was under the impression it would only work on a Japanese TV, and they weren't going to get another TV just for that.
But then we moved back to the US in '87, and that Christmas my sister and I got a joint present of a shiny new NES, and were each allowed to pick two games. I didn't really have any idea of how to pick a game, so I just went based on the single screenshot of games on the poster that came with it, and ended up with Zelda and Metroid.
My sister picked 1942 which she liked in the arcade, and Star Soldier.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

When I was a kid one ice house down the street had Double Dragon, another had Golden Axe and Vs Super Mario Bros and then later Shinobi, a miniature golf/pool hall a couple of blocks from me had Galaga, Phoenix, and Kung Fu Master, and then any time I could convince my parents to take me to the movies I'd make a beeline for their Zaxxon machine. Those are what really got me into gaming.

 

[Jaskalas]

It was Intellivision before it was the NES. Plus my father's PC had a few games on it. One involved escaping a very crude looking 3D maze. Other two notable early PC games were Scorched Earth and King's Quest 5.

 

[PeterScott]

Arcade->ColecoVision->C-64->Amiga->PC...

The first Arcade Game I played was space invaders, then Asteroids was a big favorite, asteroids deluxe, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Joust, etc...

First Coleco games: Donkey Kong, Venture, Ladybug, and Cosmic Adventure

 

[ankit3302]

In my childhood days, i used to play video games.The first game i played was Mario that made my interest to video games. Then i started playing more games like contra, duckhunt, road fighter etc. After that i loved gaming. After i grew up, i started playing Call of duty, GTA vice city which further enhanced me towards the world of gaming. In my college days, i become addicted to Counter strike and NFS.

 

[shortylickens]

Friend had an Atari.
It was crap.

Dad got me a NES for Christmas of 86. It was great. and only got better.
Final Fantasy solidified gaming for me. I would never be the same again. or free.

 

[umbrella39]

Does Teletype Oregon Trail count? Can't remember the first time I played Pong. I'm thinking I would have been playing Colossal Cave Adventure right around the same time... All around 1975 with Oregon Trail maybe being the very first game I ever played to obsession...

 

[digiram]

Arcade, Atari, Sega master system, hrs.

My oldest bro was amazed by them to my benefit

Used to go to the arcade or corner store with a buck and spent hrs

 

[mpegher]

Started with tabletop d&d and gurps, teenage mutant ninja turtles rpg then c 64, pong and the fist handhelds- baseball and football. Early consoles couldn’t do anything remotely like rpgs but did have some arcade fun, frogger, night racing, etc.

 

[shortylickens]

Started with tabletop d&d and gurps, teenage mutant ninja turtles rpg then c 64, pong and the fist handhelds- baseball and football. Early consoles couldn’t do anything remotely like rpgs but did have some arcade fun, frogger, night racing, etc.

From the Palladium system?

 

[YuliApp]

Cannot really remember the first ever game, but probably it was a snake clone on a old PC of my dad.

 

[inachu]

Skipping school and going house to house. Apartment to apartment,townhouse to townhouse knocking on doors asking to take trash out for a quarter and a dollar for 4 bags. At the end of the day(8pm) at the age of 13 I would have $80 in my pocket and use that at the local arcade or 7-11 to play Gyrus or Asteroids or Asteroids Deluxe or DIG DUG. I got so good at pacman that I could flip pacman over 27 times. I could flip Centipede with ease as well.

Could I do it today? Hell no! #LOL

 

[OCNewbie]

First gaming system was Atari 5200 for me. Some time after that, I was at a family friend's house shortly after the NES came out when I saw someone playing Super Mario Bros. They also had Kung Fu, which I had played in an arcade at some point. I was in awe that they were able to play an actual arcade game at home. I ended up getting the Nintendo Deluxe Set which came with the littler robot thing, R.O.B., and the game Gyromite. I've since had the Sega Genesis, the Panasonic 3D0, an Xbox 360, and have gamed almost exclusively on PCs for the past 20 or so years. I remember lusting after the Neo Geo when it was cutting edge, whenever that was, but I never got it or got to use one.