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What is your earliest gaming memory?
We were all introduced to gaming in some way or another. What's your story? Video games, board games, anything is fair play. Let's take a look at our gaming roots!
We were all introduced to gaming in some way or another. What's your story? Video games, board games, anything is fair play. Let's take a look at our gaming roots!
Pong. My dad bought one of those old-school analog pong consoles that you hooked up to your crummy Zenith television by tuning into channel 3. We used to play the hell out of that. Then there was the Atari2600, and I think I had about 100 games for it. I remember playing Adventure, which was considered the very first RPG. In fact, we need to do a modern version of adventure here sometime as an april fool's prank, that'd be fun. Yar's Revenge, Dig Dug... and the twitchiest game I ever played in my life, some space version of pacman called Firefox or Foxfire or something like that... gave you less and less time every map to complete it. I never could get much past 30 on that thing, and it pissed me off so much I might have shattered a controller or two...
Then there was the almighty NES and the original SEGA. I remember being surprised when Bionic Commando was the first video game that dared to show BLOOD to children (by blowing up an evil hitler-esque villain). There was suddenly Sonic, and Megaman, and Final Fantasy V. I was always into Phantasy Star on the Sega more, though. I remember plotting out those fucking dungeons on graph paper. The game came with a strategy guide/walkthrough from day one, but I would be damned if I was going to use that. There was also Dragon Warrior, and Zelda, and METAL GEAR.
One of my friends had a Turbografx16, so I was introduced to Bonk and Lemmings, and so many half-remembered puzzle games.
Then those consoled leveled-up, and I even had a SegaCD (which was the first place I heard 'They Might Be Giants' which of course I bought. Flood was my soundtrack for quite a while (along with anything I could tape off of Dr. Demento). There were great sequels and franchises, and I was subscribing to EGM, I still have a stack of those fucking things sitting around here that can almost reach the ceiling. That was a gaming magazine.
Then I discovered PC Gaming. If you were a gamer, and you walked into Radio Shack, you'd see The 7th Guest playing on a Tandy and you'd lose your shit. I convinced my parents to pick up a 486DX2 IBM PS/1. I think it had a 30MB hard drive when I bought it. Then there was Wolf3D, and Doom, and HEXEN which is still one of the best LAN party games ever made. There was also Myst and Phantasmagoria and SIERRA's mind-bending Quest for Glory games... Police Quest, Leisure Suit Larry... the old TSR Role Playing Games, and what the hell was that old Nazi-killing game that had the 'Hand of God' as the top weapon?
Yeah, I played a LOT of games back then. I discovered my friend's basement and something called D&D. Didn't really play it that much until high school, then it was every weekend.
Pong is also my first solid memory, although I know I played something on a Spectrum that kept crashing. I also remember repeatedly loading cassettes on an Amstrad and getting very frustrated by the process.
earliest memory would be of Dad setting up the NES and sending me outside constantly because I was trying to "help" I honestly don't remember the game now but I think it was Mike Tyson's punch out.
After that I remember The legend of Zelda and of course Mario. We never had Duck hunt for some reason.
I think I might have played Duck Hunt as a kid. I'm not sure, however, because my memory is shit lol. Super Mario Bros. 3 is always going to be my top favorite NES game, though.
I never had the chance to play the original LoZ. I really should boot the fucker up in an emulator sometime!
for sure! I bought the DS version for nostalgia reasons and holy crap I now see why Dad had so much anger towards it and why he drew his own map.
I also grabbed Metroid, again no map.. how he finished that quick enough for Samus to remove her suit is amazing since he smoked a ton of weed back then
That depends on what you define as gaming. I got my start playing these very simple flash games on the computer when I was 3 or 4 years old; think of what you see on Miniclip, games like Real Space 2, Redline Rumble, Insaniquarium, etc. The first time I played a video game that I owned, that'd be a green Gameboy (original model), and the game was Formula 1 racer, a very simple racing game. I still have that Gameboy and game today actually, both are in excellent shape. It's amazing how durable they are.
Flash games absolutely do count! I never had an original Gameboy, but I did have a GBC (my younger brother, the lucky bastard, got a GBA).
Same here :( I got a purple GBC soon afterwards, and then he got a GBA (the silver SP one no less). I eventually got a silver SP myself, but by then he'd gotten a PSP. Such is life as the second oldest, always a step behind :P
My GBC was red. Got Pokemon Blue with it. That game was amazing at the time! My brother had Pokemon Sapphire, though, so I kind of got shafted there :)
I think my foster sister got her hands on a PSP. She tended to get her hands on a lot of newer stuff. I tended to be the most behind with tech in general. Ironic, given that I became the programmer lol.
I started out on Silver and my brother had Emerald, so maybe not quite as much of a difference as Blue to Sapphire, but I painfully remember how old and primitive Silver looked in comparison. And that you didn't have access to any of the newer Pokemon, although ironically Silver was a much larger game map and pokedex wise then Emerald was. I later got Emerald with my SP and it became my favorite of the main series so it all worked out in the end :D
For me the mind blowing part of Silver was trying to surf east of the town you start in and realizing you had an entirely new region to explore, I thought the game was completely over before. No other Pokemon game has done something like that since which is really a shame, especially as the replay value of them isn't that great to start with :(
Before I got into gaming myself, I watched my brother (four years older) play games. I'd say the earliest memory is Super Mario 64, with him playing. The entirety of the time we had the N64, I was too young too really play. After the N64 we got a gamecube. Throughout my childhood our favorite games were the James Bond 007 games. Agent under fire, Night Fire, From Russia with Love etc. I distinctly remeber being in a gamestop and having the choice between buying some sort of ET game and a James Bond game for the gamecube. My parents would buy whatever we wanted buy it had to be a consensus. My brother convinced me and my twin sister (who originally wanted the ET game) to vote for he james bond game, and that's what we got. I think it was the right decision haha.
After that we got the PS2. The game that's most iconic with my experience with the ps2 would have to be the socom series. Again, my parents didn't really let me play the game, but I enjoyed the shit out of my brother playing it. After that came oblivion, then halo, runescape etc. but with all these game I was playing independently so they don't hold quite the same nostalgia :P
Man, I remember all of those. I remember when my dad grabbed our first PS2 from a second-hand game shop. That console is still my favorite to this day. So many great memories with that thing.
Atari 2600 Pac-man, although I believe we technically had the "Sears Gaming System" which was a re-branded Atari.
When the NES came out it was unbelievable how good it looked.
Same here. I played a bunch of Atari 2600 as a kid. I remember liking Pac-man, Pitfall, and Pole Position the most. NES is the first system I remember getting.
A couple fo years ago I visited reddit HQ, I was literally the oldest person in the building. Playing the Atari 2600 when it was the game system is kind of a way of dating yourself. I'm old.
That's lovely. :)
Jump Joe on PC. Dad was playing and I tried it too. Don't think I really understood it at the time, just remember hitting space bar to make the stickman jump.
I remember playing Duck Hunt on NES at one of my relative's houses, and later playing South Park for N64 throwing piss snowballs. To be fair I didn't understand that's what they were until years later.
Oh god, South Park on N64. I tried that on an emulator recently. That game did not age well lol.
Spending a couple hours at my grannie's house typing out the code for The Dancing Bear for the Commodore VIC-20
My earliest memory is me, sneaking out of the room to go watch my parents from behind of the couch. I was supposed to be asleep, but managed to get irrationally angry within myself (in silence) at my parents for being that incredible not understanding on what to do next in the game called Legacy of Kain Soul Reaver 1. I was like 3-4 or so and didn't supposed to see that game. ;D
It was such a shame, so when I was old enoughy I played it by myself, and it was damned great.
I was about three years old and I remember fondly playing Spider-Man and ET for Atari 2600.. granted they're both terrible games but I didn't care back then. Now I'm 34 and I will occasionally revisit them from time to time.
The first game I remember playing was Adventure, for the Atari 2600. Despite modern games being much more in depth, I still appreciate the simplicity of Adventure. I wish there were more games that had the same amount of simplicity nowadays.
My earliest memory is playing Kid Icarus at a friends house just a bit before I got my own NES. I just remember thinking it was pure magic. I’d never seen anything like it.
One of my earliest is playing Legend of Legaia. The demo disc. I was probably around 7 around that time and had absolutely no idea what I was doing. Getting past tutorial sections was pretty much impossible for me, so I had to have my dad take care of it. But the graphics blew me away back then (a hilarious thought now) and the story seemed so amazing to me. Years later I still remembered that game, but not the title, and thankfully someone was able to help me figure out what it was.
I also remember playing Spyro and failing terribly at trying to chase sheep around. I even jumped down a cliff to a cave at sea level and couldn't figure out how to get back up. I can't even remember which Spyro that was anymore. I never did get anywhere in that game at the time, but it was still a blast for me just trying to catch those sheep.
I still get nostalgic at the original PlayStation startup screen. I know I've played games on the NES and SNES around that time, but I'm almost positive that I played on the PlayStation before either of those.
I had to look that one up, when the PS came out in had two brothers by then so getting time alone on any console was rare. We had to play the N64 more because it had the 4 control's so it would cut down on the fights, I remember we only fought over who threw the shell in Mario kart or shot the other in Bond 007
Those secret passages in Goldeneye multiplayer were fun to mess with. So much rage from family!
First console I used was an N64 that we bought around its release, 1 year after I was born. Didn't take long for me to take to games like Smash 64, Super Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, and Diddy Kong Racing.
I remember being too scared at the time to go in Dodongo's Cavern, though it seems pretty silly looking back. Any progress past that point was done for me by an older sibling until much later. Now I've finished the game countless times myself, and it has never lost its charm for me.
I had a similar problem with DKR. I had no idea, for the longest time, that there was a space section to the game. I never made it that far back then and I know exactly why that is. I was enthralled with the Icicle Pyramid arena type map. Deathmatch with AI or local coop was the whole game for me, I loved it.
Here's a pretty unique one: the first videogame I played was called Treasure Planet: Battle of Procyon. Damn good game, completely wasted on its intended audience. I played that game for hours, although I don't remember being any good. Recently replayed it, still good.
I remember my parents playing "Dynamite Dan" on ZX Spectrum. I loved watching them play, which I think it was my first let's play experience too :) .
My first gaming memory was me playing Dizzy. I think there was this bridge or something that you needed to jump over or you would fall in. I remember it was one of my first time when I almost had finished collecting all of the items and I was getting to the end and I fell in by accident. I remember crying after that :) . I don't remember my age but I was young.
I'm not as old-school as some of the people here but my family on my father's side was pretty into PC games when I was young. I'd always see my grandpa playing Heroes of Might and Magic, Diablo and such. But my earliest and probably fondest gaming memory would have to be Dungeon Keeper. I loved the game to bits. The narration, the premise, that opening cinematic, the freedom to do whatever you want with your dungeon. It's a great game, I wish it was remastered to at least work with 16:9.
Atari 2600, baby! Our system came with Combat and I remember Superman, Bowling and Adventure being among the first wave of games we got. Favorites included Breakout, Defender, Space Invaders, Missile Command, Pitfall and Pitfall II.
After that I had a Commodore 64 which I used mostly for games, and then the NES. Would also sometimes get to play Sega Master System at a friend's house, and then Sega Genesis in college. That was pretty much it for me with console games. I had a Playstation 2 briefly and spent a couple of weeks playing all the way through Gauntlet Legends, but other than that it didn't really do it for me.
Should also mention '80s arcade games, into which I pumped many a quarter. Pac Man and Ms. Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Galaga, Rampage, Gauntlet, Spy Hunter, Elevator Action, Moon Patrol, Double Dragon, etc.
I can't even remember what memory comes first, but i remember streets of rage being one of the first games i can concretely remember, but there were some of those "100 GAMES IN ONE" discs that we'd cram the family pc with so it could have been either.
I never once got more than 10% through a game as a kid apparently... I went back to play some for nostalgia and most of my memories were only of the starting 2-3 levels! It's so easy to be entertained as a kid lmao
I won my first handheld in a coloring contest at the grocery store. I was around 9 yo. It was a purple GBA (game boy advance) c:
My mom bought me my first game for it, Super Mario Bros. Played to world 8-2, and never got past that.
I still have the dang thing and it still works.
Pac-man... atari 2600. I was sooooo young. They handed me the controller sideways, and I just assumed that left was down, right was up, etc... it never occurred to me to turn the controller.
It was some DOS game about Donald Duck. I was probably 4 or 5. I really don't remember much about the game itself other than I could do the whole game myself and loved playing it.
Burger Time and Pitfall on the Intellivision! I barely remember it, but Burger Time has been one of my favorite games since then. Pac Man had nothing on it!
I used to have a Macintosh SE II in my room when I was around 5yo. It had games like Lode Runner, SimCity, Vette!, Glider PRO and Spectre VR.
I especially liked Glider PRO as it had a level editor to build all kinds of zany maps with.
A bit later I got access to an Amstrad 1512 (I think..), a NES and a SNES. That's when my parents got the idea of placing limits on how long I should be able to play per day.. :D
Micky Mouse on SEGA Genesis, some haunted castle level with this weird JELLO PART. I always had to get my mom to help me through the jello part. I couldn't jump fast enough. Damn that shit was hard.