Topic: Your earliest gaming memories?

[Phil]

I thought this would be a fun topic to share with each other in the community and any lurkers.

The earliest gaming memory I can think back on is a little fuzzy. I don't remember the year exactly, but I do know it was the late 80's. (I was born in '86.)

My dad came home from Toys 'R Us with my older brother, and they had a sealed copy of Super Mario Bros. 2 fresh in their collective mitts. I can picture the tight shrinkwrap around the box, the hard plastic stuck to the shrinkwrap on the back at the top, where a hole was for the game to be hung on a store's display, just like a TMNT figure would be, and a bright blue sky with an impressive looking Mario on the cover. Can't forget "Mario Madness" in bold lettering.

My brother and I could never get past level 4-2. I think that's the one with all of the Flurry enemies on the ice, and those flying bird-like bastards that swoop in. That part always gave us grief as kids. Even now, seeing the whale section that comes after this once difficult and impossible to pass part of the game makes me go, "Wow. This is totally new!" As if I've never been there before, and still can't believe I've somehow passed that blasted section of 4-2.

Anyway, I hope this was a fun read and gets you inspired to share your own first gaming memories that you can recall!

[ShyGuy]

Playing a Sears Pong Clone with my cousins at my Grandparent's house. My Grandma still has the system I believe. I was like two years old, so I'm not even sure I played it, I may have just watched.

If that's not it, then playing a table style centipede game at a pizza place. It was set to Free play which blew my mind because most of the time I would grab the controls of an arcade game and hope that somebody had left a quarter in the machine. I was about five.

[ejamer]

I was very little - probably just about to start kindergarten - and out shopping with my family. It was Dad's birthday, and while we were out he picked up a big box off the shelf. He was excited, I was kind of confused. But if Dad was excited then I probably should be too! But just what is this "Atari" thing?


Needless to say, the Atari was a hit. Dad was king when it came to Asteroids or Stampede, but it wasn't long before my Frostbite scores were untouchable. (Can't remember what other games we had early on - probably Sky Jinx?) I still remember sending away a photo showing a high score and the magic fish when I was 5 and getting the Activision badge back in the mail.


https://www.atariage.com/2600/archives/activision_patch_page.html?PatchName=Frostbite&ImageName=Frostbite

 


Looking back, I honestly don't know how our little family could afford it at that point in time. When you consider inflation, Atari 2600 was still pretty costly in the early 80s.

[Pixelated Pixies]

I've discussed this before, so I'll give ya the quick version.

Christmas...Age 5...NES...Super Mario Bros. 3...life changing.

[Ian Sane]

One of the earliest videogame memories I have is playing Commando in an arcade.  I know Pac-Man was there as well and I played both of them but Commando interested me more since it had guns and killing and such.  I distinctly remember the death animation of the enemies only to later discover in adulthood that my memory had changed it pretty significantly.  It's vaguely the same, enough to recognize that that "army game" I played was Commando but it looks quite different.

I remember Super Mario Bros. 2 being one of the first games I saw someone play at a friend's house.  I don't remember if I had seen Super Mario Bros. 1 first or not.  I found out about the NES at some point after I entered kindergarten which would have been in 1986 which is probably around when the NES was released in Canada.  But I don't remember when I found out about it.  It felt like it had always existed and I has always known about it, like how I had never met my parents or grandparents or aunts or uncles - they just always existed to me.  I'm the oldest sibling and the oldest cousin on both sides of my family and my parents never play videogames so no one formally introduced videogames to me.  It makes sense that I have no specific memory as I would have picked up on the concept from my classmates.

The first games I owned were PC games but aside from a few crappy licensed titles that didn't become a serious thing until my dad got a 486 when I was around 10.  First console was when I was 12 since I had to save up for it myself.  I would often be at friends' houses that had a Nintendo but I rarely played.  Due to my lack of experience with videogames I found them very intimidating so I often just watched other people play them.  The first game I remember owning is Alf on the PC.  It is the most worthless garbage but at the time I assumed I just sucked at the game and thus made no progress.  Other early games I had were Star Wars and Ninja Turles.  Notice a trend here?  Yeah I was a dumb kid picking out licensed titles and I was playing them on a monochrome IBM XT.  Later when we got a 486 we got into shareware games and the first one we got was Duke Nukem.  Street Fighter II also got me really into arcade games.  Don't know which came first but the real passion for videogames would have come from one of those two titles.

[lolmonade]

E.T. on my brother's Atari.  I never understood how to play that game.


Most of my other early memories are from playing games on my parent's Amiga computer, like Turrican, Defender of the Crown, and International Karate.


Other than that, a distinct memory was watching my cousin & brother play Mario 3 & Punch Out! on the NES and being jealous that they would only let me watch

[Spak-Spang]

My earliest Nintendo memories include going to my cousins house and seeing him with a Nintendo and wanting to play his games, but he basically saying No, and kicking us out of his room.  And my neighbors house, which I played Mega Man 3.  It was my first Mega Man game...and still my favorite.

As for before:  I remember playing Atari Adventure, and the 4 player castle game with the Atari game pad with the circle controller.

I also remember owning a Sega Master system and loving that system more than anything.  I really love Montezuma's Revenge on the system.  It was like an extremely pretty and very hard Pitfall.  But it was so much fun.

I have several moments in gaming that I remember...they are some of my fondest memories growing up.

[Phil]

I'm getting warm, fuzzy feelings already. Waxing nostalgic.
I am not being facetious either.

[Spak-Spang]

I played ET...at my cousins house.  It was so bad.  Wondering from screen to screen...trying to do SOMETHING.  Occasionally being attacked by a man in a suit. 

Falling into holes, and using my neck growing power to felt myself out of the pit.

[marvel_moviefan_2012]

My earliest memory was playing cocktail version of Pac-Man in a local bar and grill my parents used to take us to. Our first home console was an Atari VCS and I played the hell out of that thing. I sold it just last year in fact kept it and all the games all these years. We also had a pong clone that looked like one of those early cell phones Zach Morris used. I think it was a Sears model but I could be wrong I have never found even a picture of one online, but to be fair I didn't dig that deeply. What was great about back then as everyone had a different game console and different games and nobody knew nor cared who made what, we just all played games.

[Khushrenada]

The sounds of Ms. Pacman while in my mother's womb as she leaned her belly into the arcade machine. I could hear her voice as she spoke to me and told me that video games were going to be the future entertainment business and she wanted me to become the greatest gamer that would ever live. While other mothers made their fetuses and babies listen to Mozart to hopefully gain mad math skillz, it would be the arcade and sounds of Ms. Pac-man for me. And now that I've grown up, I go to gaming conventions dressed as Lara Croft to win cosplay awards because of it. Who knows how that whole fetus/infant development thing really plays out?