• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

How did you get into videogames?

ToonLink

Member
Even though the SNES had already launched by the time I was old enough to play games, we never had one for some reason. So my first gaming memories were playing Duck Hunt and SMB on my family's NES. We got a N64 at launch, though, with Super Mario 64.

Some of my fondest gaming memories were on the N64. :')
 

watership

Member
Space Invaders. In a mall around 1978, walking with my dad past pinball machines then this crazy sound catches our attention. All downhill from there.
 
First game I ever played was Pokemon Yellow as a 5 year old. Couldn't read so I just killed Pidgey's in the grass outside of pallet town with pikachu for hours. Once I learned to read I got really into it.

Wouldn't say I really became a gamer though until I played Ocarina of Time on the N64. First time a game truly felt like another world to me. I was probably in 1st or second grade then I guess?
 

Breakage

Member
My mum bought me a PlayStation for £99. Played the pack-in demo for about a month before I got my first game: Grand Theft Auto.
 
I don't remember to be honest, but apparently I did play a bunch of PC (DOS) games in the early 90s when I was very young. FFVII on PS1 was the definitely the defining gaming moment for me though. After that I was completely obsessed with FF, RPGs and gaming in general.
 
An uncle had a SNES with Donkey Kong Country, and I liked it so much I begged for a GBA with the game. That same uncle also had Elder Scrolls Daggerfall on DOS and I was in love with that type of stuff. Another uncle had MGS on PS1 and from the day I played that I knew I was set for life.

Loneliness
Also this. Alot of this.
 
I think I played my first video game at my nephew's house when I was 3 or 4 years old. I knew right then and there that I would be way deep into that shit for the rest of my life. We got their old pong machine and a Commodore 64 shortly after.

Once my parents bought a 286 with a VGA monitor (the first in the entire neighborhood) it was fucking on. Goddamn those are some good memories.

Loneliness

I'm here for you, buddy.
 
My Dad chiefly - I grew up with Atari 2600, Spectrum and Commodore 64 which he'd picked up himself. I was born in 1981 and can't remember a time without games in the house.

We added a NES and SNES later and remember staying up until daylight playing Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country with my Dad, Uncle and brother. My Dad fell away in the transition to 3D but he *loved* the new Donkey Kong Country games and we pulled an nighter like we used to.

I was always fascinated and my mind was set on a career early on - I'm about to enter my 15th year in industry (and love it, it's not all horror stories). My brother is hitting his 14th year and we've worked together now for 8 years. Even with my industry background, I still love playing and following games and I have two boys of my own now and I'm enjoying taking then through their early steps with Mario and Donkey Kong.
 
I was 5 and my parents bought both a PS1 and N64 out of the blue. They gave me the Spyro games for PS1 and Mario 64 for N64. I knew about Mario from kids at school but I played Spyro first because I liked the dragon more. Fell in love instantly. Ended up loving Mario also but Spyro will always hold a special place in my heart
 

GamerJM

Banned
I'm 23 and I grew up around video games from before I can remember. I had several older cousins who were about as into the industry as any teenagers in the 90s could be, playing everything from old-school PC CRPGs to obscure stuff on the Sega Saturn to classics like aLttP, FF6, and Sonic CD. My dad played games some (had an NES and an SNES in the house), but wanted to be the "cool," uncle to them so he invited them over to the house a lot, wherein they'd bring their consoles and he'd set up several CRTs and let them stay up all night playing video games.
 

SilverArrow20XX

Walks in the Light of the Crystal
I was born in them. Molded by them.

My family got an NES on Christmas sometime before my memories start. Not sure if it was before I was born or not. By the time my oldest memories occur, I had already been playing those games. Mostly Power Blade, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II, and Super Mario Bros, since all the other games were too hard and I could never get very far. The first new game I remember getting was Super Mario Bros. 3.
 

Kaji AF16

Member
Late eighties, suburban Buenos Aires. I saw an Atari 2600 clone at the house of some friends of my father and I became instantly fascinated. I was about six years old (I was born in ´82).
Soon after, some of my own close friends were beginning to play Golden Axe, Prince of Persia and Street Rod on their by then relatively powerful 286s, and I couldn´t believe what my eyes were seeing. I needed to enter that world.

My family couldn´t afford a PC by then, but once I got a NES
-also a clone-
, videogames became a lifelong hobby.
 
My parents always bought me consoles as gifts. They got me the NES, Gameboy, Genesis, Gameboy Color, PS1, PS2, and GBA all without asking.
 

Kthulhu

Member
Uncle got us a SNES when I was 3 with Donkey Kong Country and Super Mario World. Church I went to as a kid had Gamecubes and N64s.
 
My dad got me a PS1 with Crash Bandicoot: Warped and Tomb Raider, and I got hooked ever since. After that, the console couldn't read the discs anymore, so they got me a Game Boy and some cheap NES knockoff with Pokémon Gold and Super Mario Bros. 3 respectively, and I played those all day, and then Gold's battery problem happened...
 

shounenka

Member
Great thread.

Local pizza parlor on a Friday night in 1981. Some machine with a big glowing screen that had never been there before let you move a yellow ball around a maze to chomp ghosts, pellets and fruit if you put a quarter in it.


That set the addiction into motion. Not time, nor college, nor work, nor marriage, nor kids has been able to cure it.
 

Jigorath

Banned
I used to watch my dad play games on the computer. When I got old enough he installed games for me to play, and eventually bought me a Playstation. Been a gamer ever since.
 

gstaff

Member
Started playing our 2600 when I was probably 2 years old. We had so many games, and the thing that stands out to me is that I held the joystick upside down.
 

Zeneric

Member
I think it was Pitfall for Atari when I was I guess 5 years old (1985-1986). It was a toy to me. It was my first experience of video gaming world. I could control the Pitfall character that ran/jumped around inside a tube TV. I was awed by it. The tech amazed me.
 

OBias

Member
My dad owned a ZX Spectrum clone. He also let me play on a Famicom clone and a Mega Drive he was repairing for someone else.
 

Nessus

Member
Neighbor had an NES with Super Mario Bros. I remember going into the kid's house on a sunny day, my eyes adjusting to the relative darkness, and being blown away by one of the castle levels.

A while later my grandfather bought me an NES for my birthday.
 

Gurnlei

Member
Honestly can't remember. There's a home video of me getting Zelda for SNES on my 5th birthday and I was excited then but can't even remember playing that long ago.

A lot of my older family members were gamers though.
 
I always want to play games since I was a kid, but don't have a console to play on. My Asian parents would never waste any money on something that's only going to distract me from school and studying.
So instead I just save up to buy PC games and play it on my parent's computer.
My childhood games are mostly masterpieces like Half-Life 2, F.E.A.R. and the first Onimusha. (All PC version of course)

After I graduate from elementary school my family got a Wii, because...you know, it's a Wii and every family had one.
That's when I got to play Resident Evil 4, and holy shit what a game it is.
I replayed the game like 30 to 40 times in that year alone, it was all that I cared about at the time. I'll draw guns, ammo and monsters during class, I'll design new levels & enemies & villians, coming up with fictions and new story, sometimes I even dreamt about the game. It was absolutely insane. For years it was everything to me.

Ever since then I become a heavy console gamer and harcore Japanese game lover.
 

Kagero

Member
My dad somehow got a hold of an intelevision. With it was a copy of Tron. I never actually played it but I would watch my brother play for hours.
Lived through the whole Nintendo vs Sega thing before there was the internet and even then, it divided people. It was a very exciting time.
 

Quasar

Member
Guess it started with arcade games and then sampling home games on friends computers. Then convinced parent to get me a computer too.
 

wbEMX

Member
My older brother brought his SNES over one day in '02 with Super Mario Kart and F-Zero. I'll never forget how mindblowing that was for me.

My parents were absolutely against the idea of me playing video games, so I got a console much later than anyone else after years of convincing. The first console I got was the GameCube on Halloween '05, with Luigi's Mansion. How fitting. After that, the game that truly cemented what games can be for me was when I played Super Mario Galaxy for the first time in '07. I realized that games were art. It all went from there.
 

postaboy

Member
Grew up in the ghetto (the border of compton/long beach) and my parent didn't want me playing outside after school or hanging out with the neighbor kids so they got me a PS1/DC to stay home. The mid 90s was rough man. Drive by shooting and gangs.
 

JayCB

Member
I saw my Uncle playing Sonic on the Master System when I was around 5 and fell in love, basically. It was tricky at first as I was born with double jointed thumbs, but I made do. My Dad was born with the same thing and had surgery to fix it, but mine became less severe and basically disappeared after a few years - something my mother has always attributed to playing games and strengthening my thumbs. Might not of been the case, but I like to believe as much.
 

Neff

Member
I had family in Blackpool (a once thriving UK seaside resort, now sadly a shithole) who we visited every summer and Christmas as a kid, so inevitably we'd get taken to the arcades a lot, and one day in 1985 I came face to face with Space Harrier and fell in love with videogames for life.
 

Floody

Member
Grandad had a N64 and we'd play Goldeneye 64 together. As well as others (mostly Super Mario 64 and Banjo), but that's probably my earliest and one of my fondest gaming memories. When I was a bit older eventually got a PS1 with MGS and the Crash games and it was sealed and quickly became my favourite hobby.

Pokemon Red/Blue on the GameBoy played a pretty big role too.
 

Gero

Member
My uncle bought a SNES or a 64,can't remember which one was first, and we played together and that's how I got into games.
 

wtd2009

Member
I had a friend who had a nes system when I was 4 and we played Mario for hours. Later, I got the motivation to ask for my own system after trying a ff4 demo at this electronics store called incredible universe (later bought by fry's) and knew I wanted whatever would allow me to play that game. The rest is history.
 
Top Bottom