Your first gaming experience

[deha28]

I'm curious to hear about your first gaming experience. How did you get into this industry, and what were your first video games? Do you consider this initial experience to have significantly influenced your future tastes and preferences?

Personally, my first video game device was a Tetris portable console. I was probably four years old when I got it. I wouldn't say I have any particularly vivid memories of Tetris, but it kept me entertained for a while.


Then, when I was five, I got a Dendy console. It was a Taiwanese clone of the Nintendo Famicom, which was manufactured mainly for the post-Soviet space. Hoo Boy! That's when I got acquainted with games such as Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, Spiderman, and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I remember spending a lot of time playing this console over the next couple of years until it finally broke.


In 2012, when I turned 7, I got my first PC, which served me for a very long time, until 2020. At the time, it was a solid computer with 8 GB of RAM and an AMD Radeon HD 6700 Series graphics card. My first game on my own PC was Need For Speed: Most Wanted 2012. There were quite a few other racing games on the first disc, and then shooters like Conflict: Desert Storm appeared on the second disc.



Strange as it may sound, this first experience did not lay the foundation for my future preferences. After all, I don't like retro gaming, I'm not into consoles, racing is one of my least favourite genres, and my interest in shooters has faded over time. Now it's just a pleasant childhood memory for me, but nothing more.

What about you, guys? What were your first memories of video games?

[Maypews]

I got introduced to video games when I was about 8 years old, through my aunt letting me play on her Nintendo DS back in the 00s. Really enjoyed games from the jump, especially New Super Mario Bros and Mario Kart DS. Ended up eventually getting my own and that wound up being my first console, lots of great titles and fond memories for that little machine between the two I mentioned but also The Legendary Starfy (the first video game I ever truly beat!), MySims Racing, Big Bang Mini, Dementium, ahhh man so much goodness.

Eventually I got my first ever home console, a Wii for Christmas alongside a copy of Mario Kart Wii. This probably won't come as a surprise to anyone who's paid attention to my post history but I adore Mario Kart Wii, I still play it actively to this day over custom fan servers like Wiimmfi and it was the first video game I ever truly loved I would say. DBZ Budokai Tenkaichi 2 and Mario Sports Mix were two other particular standouts for me. I also pretty much immediately fell in love with all things retro, I remember when an older relative bought Super Mario Bros. 3 for me off the virtual console and I was just blown away that something so old could be so much fun! Which eventually led me to trying out the GCN backwards compatibility and playing games like Double Dash too.

Ironically me and you are kind of the opposite in our experience, my introduction heavily shaped my preferences it seems and I've always remained mostly on console & love retro systems. Even today, despite having a pretty good rig, I treat my PC exactly like a console and have a wireless controller adapter and a long HDMI cable that I use to connect it to a proper TV with. There are also some consoles that were before my time that I've retroactively fallen in love with, particularly the Sega Dreamcast and I love collecting the hardware and physical articles in general as well.

[nyan]

I hardly remember my very first experience with gaming. I remember I was at a birthday party for a neighbour kid - this must have been in 2005 - and at that party we played Smash Bros Melee and Mario Party on his GameCube. Not long after that I also remember playing Donkey Kong Country on my uncle's Nintendo 64 for an entire weekend while my parents helped him move.

After I really expressed interest in these games, my dad got his hands on a Playstation 1 somewhere along the line, along with some games. The games I remember playing most on that console were Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Mortal Kombat II. I remember also frequenting a friend's house at this time who also had a Playstation 1. At his house we played a lot of Spiderman and Spyro: Year of the Dragon. I think Spyro was the game that left the largest impression on me from this time, I really liked exploring and trying to 100% different parts of the game. Now, later in my life, I have 100+%'d nearly every Spyro game. I eventually fell out of love with the Playstation 1 - playing the same few games over and over again was getting stale. I think I took a couple years break from home console gaming after that.

Around this time I also remember getting a little bit into handheld gaming. A neighbour girl had a Game Boy and she liked playing Pokemon Blue with me. I can still vividly remember battling Lt. Surge, fishing for Goldeens, and exploring the SS Anne with her. Because of this I wanted a Game Boy of my own and was able to buy a Game Boy Color along with Pokemon Yellow, Pokemon Crystal, and some other games from another neighbour kid for just $4. I think I ripped him off, but he used to bully other kids, so he probably deserved it. I played a lot of Pokemon after that.

One year, I started making friends with other kids who were into gaming. I often went to their houses and played games like Lego Star Wars, Guitar Hero, and Pokemon Stadium. As most of these games were on Playstation 2, I asked my parents for one myself. The next Christmas I was lucky enough to have gotten one; I remember it was basically my only gift from anyone that Christmas, so I think everyone pooled for it. This is where I really started getting into gaming. Spyro, Medal of Honor, Gran Turismo, Guitar Hero, Crash Bandicoot, Star Wars Battlefront, Lego Star Wars, and so many more. I played for hours and hours every day and new games were being given to me constantly. I put a lot of time into that console. Standout games for me were definitely Gran Turismo 4, Guitar Hero III, and Battlefront II.

In my Playstation 2 days, I also started getting into PC gaming. My dad had brought home an upgrade to our old PC from his office and I very quickly learned that it could run real games unlike the old one. I started playing online shooters like Counter-Strike, Combat Arms, Soldier Front, and GunZ. I also started playing MMOs and social games like Maplestory, Audition, and more. If the Playstation 2 is what turned me into a habitual gamer, the PC and it's MMOs are what turned me into an "addict". I did nothing except go to school and play online games at this point. I loved talking to random online strangers in these games - I wanted to do nothing else.

From there I would get many PC upgrades and also got other consoles such as the Wii, DS Lite, Xbox 360, 2DS, and PS4. None of these consoles ever captured my attention to the degree of the PC though. I built my first personal "gaming" PC in 2013. I got really into PC rhythm games, competitive shooters, grand strategy, and others and almost exclusively play those games to this day. The only major change that I've made in my platform habits has been switching to Linux around 8 years ago. Outside of PC, I really only game at arcades now - playing things like Pump it Up or DDR. I do sometimes emulate PS1 and PS2 games though; I started playing through Dragon Quest VIII recently.

[cidoku]

My earliest memories... I guess it was around 2000. I used the KGen98 emulator to play Sega Genesis games on the family computer. I distinctly remember the first time I reached Marble Zone in Sonic 1 and how the Lava Reef boss fight in Sonic 3 was very glitchy. Good times. I never had an actual Genesis until I could buy one myself, as an adult.

[Parzival]

My first gaming experiences EVER were with THESE bad boys at a local pizza parlor when I was like, 4.





Rampage in particular I think was the first cabinet to catch my attention because even back then I already loved Godzilla and kaiju in general so I thought it was just perfect (it is). So much fun, and I love arcade games still to this day.

As for my first console gaming experience, that would be the Playstation 1. We were too poor to afford the latest stuff so a PS1 my uncle found for pretty cheap at a flea market was my first console and some random games we picked out from a box there.

Specifically this gem:



Been a Megaman fan ever since!

I think a year or 2 later after that I got a Gameboy Advance SP deep into the DS era (DSi I think?), and got Pokemon Sapphire, my first Pokemon game, for it.

Around the same time I got into flash games whenever I would go to the library or use the computer lab at school. Coolmathgames, crazymonkeygames, miniclip... My beloved...

[Gotz]

The first video game I can remember playing was Lego Star Wars 1 on the PS2. I think my Dad bought it right when it came out and we played through all of it together. I also played A LOT of Star Wars Battlefront 2 as well. Played some of the big titles on the N64 like Super Mario, Star Fox, and Smash Bros. Star Wars Rouge Squadron and Shadows of the Empire were fun. Cool that it was mentioned in this thread: we had Rampage World Tour for the N64. But I could never beat them.

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The first game system that was actually mine was a Gameboy Advance SP. My parents bought it for $50 at Walmart when production for it was stopping. They only got me one game for it too, Nicktoons Battle for Volcano Island. Then one day my cousin let me play his copy of Pokemon Sapphire. I couldn't stop playing it! He saw that I liked it so much that he just gave it to me and some point. Then I played Metroid Fusion and all kinds of other games with the years that followed on it. (It was kind of funny. All the kids at school had NDS Lites and I was still rocking the Gameboy.) My first DS was a DSi, I used that things camera like crazy! I played a lot of the DS versions of Call of Duty. And A LOT of this RTS that I still love called Lego Battles.

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Everything changed when we got the Xbox 360. I played that thing like crazy! So many discs ran through that thing for hours and hours. It settled my love of first person shooters and I got to play of lot with friends. Lots of COD Zombies and Minecraft. We had jumped on the Guitar Hero and Kinect fads too.

As some time passed. I grew away from the 360 due to losing my friends. They moved away and most of them now had Xbox Ones and PS4s. I couldn't buy anything in terms of games or consoles. So I looked for free games online. And that's when I came across Team Fortress 2. I made a Steam account and downloaded TF2 on the family laptop, that wasn't made for games at all. And never looked back to a console being my main gaming machine. I probably logged 200 hours alone on that thing.

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In between owning a actual gaming PC and the 360, my Dad got a PS4. Not only was I disappointed by the console itself. But the generation of games on it too! Fallout 4 will forever be the most disappointing game for me ever! I was so hyped for it being a massive fan of F3 and FNV, I even went to the midnight release. (Who here remembers those? *insert old man giga chad*)
Playing on PC opened the door to a whole other world. I've dabbled in every genre and generation of games there is because of the sheer amount of possibilities. I've picked up a retro console here or there like the Game Cube and Wii. Bought a Switch just for Metroid Dread (Still haven't played it) and will probably get a Switch 2 just for Ravenous. But PC will always be my home for as long as I play video games. (Unless I cant afford it due to parts skyrocketing in price. ;_;)

Anyway, I probably rambled on this too much. Thank you for reading if you did. <3

[Amlux]

I had a strange upbringing with this. I was an only child and homeschooled until 7th grade (not for religious reasons btw) and so spent a lot of my childhood isolated from other trends. Games were one of these. I never owned a console. I wasn't interested in any gaming. I never played anything with any kind of seriousness until I was in college, and then only a little.

So my early experiences were minimal. But these are some I remember:

The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1991): My grandma owned this for her grandkids to play. She had multiple save files named after her male grandkids. I was absolutely transfixed by this game when I had the chance to see it. I never played it, but I was just astonished by how much there was in the game and how alive the world was, brimming with mystery. I need to go through and play this game at some point, because I think it will unlock tons of repressed memories. I also played some random puzzle games at my grandma's house on her PC but I don't remember many of them.

RollerCoaster Tycoon (1999): Also the sequel. One of the few games I owned and played on occasion. I never got very far. I didn't care about the strategy element and actually found it annoying. I just wanted to sandbox. So I never unlocked many maps. Played this with a friend sometimes. Also I played several of the Humongous games, mostly Pajama Sam and Freddi Fish. I beat the first Pajama Sam several times and loved it. I remember going back through the mine cart maze several times just to see all the screens. I played the second a bit, but didn't get very far. I never played the third. I beat I think the first three Freddi Fish games. I remember playing with my dad and him coming home from work with an idea about how to get some sea urchin that we were stuck on. It was a sweet memory, showing how the game was still on his mind when he was working!

Kid Chameleon (1992): The first game with any real level of difficulty that I beat. I spent most of 2015 playing a ton of ROMs on emulators, mostly NES, SNES, and Genesis games. I wanted to try all the classics and see what I was missing (since it was easy to try a bunch without much effort). This is the one I liked most and so decided I wanted to beat. It's a hard motherfucker of a game! But the pride I had when I first beat it was like nothing else. So yeah, I didn't beat any games but old point-and-clicks until 2016. A weird trajectory for a millennial like me, no? Now I make up for lost time!

[rileymross]

I think it was Pokemon Pinball Ruby and Sapphire for me. My first actual game was Leaf Green, sharing my brother's GBA SP. I was given a Kiwi Gameboy color around that time so that was my first actual console.

[Steve]

for me it was ocarina of time on the cousin's N64. was too young to actually know how to play the game so me, my sister, and my little cousin would go to lon lon ranch and hit the chickens until they turned aggressive then ride around on epona running from the chickens. my older cousin also had a save file that had the game beaten so sometimes i would try to fight ganon or run around the game with all the endgame items doing nothing