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How did you get into videogames?
- Thread starter cordy
- Start date
killatopak
Member
uncle bought me a psx and the rest is history.
Golden_Pigeon
Banned
I was 4 or 5. I was at a ski station. There was an arcade. I saw Sonic running into golden circles with a cool music. I fell in love.
Around 4th grade for me. Had a neighbor that my family befriended around the time Hurricane Katrina hit the US. Our families got pretty friendly during this time (bonding during a week of no power helps,) and we started hanging out some them. During this time, he had a PC that he would let us play Diablo II off of. A few months later, he gifted our family the game and installed it on my family's computer. So everyone in my house took turns playing Diablo II. Eventually, the neighbor moved, and we haven't heard from him, but this was pretty much my entry into gaming. To this day, we still have that copy of Diablo II.
You Pay This Much
Member
I'm told that I was around 3 years old and saw my brother's playing Super Mario World and just had to try that shit. First thing I really remember is an embarrassing story that occurred because I wouldn't stop playing that very same game....
facetheslayer92
Member
Cousins gave me their jungle green N64 and a Gameboy Color. I went from not giving a shit to falling in love with games overnight.
Urban Scholar
Member
My older cousin had a NES.
He kicked my arse in some games but he couldn't tear me away from Paper boy.
I think was 6 or 7?
He kicked my arse in some games but he couldn't tear me away from Paper boy.
I think was 6 or 7?
My father was a financial controller at a big company and pushed for digital administration. So relatively early we had one of these luggables in our house.
(Two floppy disks, so high tech). And I remember it casting a spell on me from early on. Well we see the same with iPads now for my toddlers. He had games like Police Quest on it and I didn't get it but it fascinated me to no end.
My parents noticed my fascination and because they figured computers were going to be big (some unusual foresight from them) and we should learn how to program as early as possible, they got us a Commodore 64 when I was three. Two years later my brothers and I saved up and used Christmas to get an NES. I didn't learn how to program until I was in my late teens, but a gamer I became straight away. 31 years later still going strong. Well not strong. I'm old and weak and prefer the casool.
(Two floppy disks, so high tech). And I remember it casting a spell on me from early on. Well we see the same with iPads now for my toddlers. He had games like Police Quest on it and I didn't get it but it fascinated me to no end.
My parents noticed my fascination and because they figured computers were going to be big (some unusual foresight from them) and we should learn how to program as early as possible, they got us a Commodore 64 when I was three. Two years later my brothers and I saved up and used Christmas to get an NES. I didn't learn how to program until I was in my late teens, but a gamer I became straight away. 31 years later still going strong. Well not strong. I'm old and weak and prefer the casool.
My dad brought home an NES for me and my brother when I was very, very young. I have so many good memories tied to that system. While I love pretty much any console, there's a good reason why I'm always fond of my Nintendo systems, I've got a hell of a lot of memories tied all the way back to the NES.
MaddenNFL64
Member
I was 5 or 6, one of my aunt's gave me & my brother an NES with Duck Hunt/Mario Bros./Clayshooter, and i've been a gamer since.
Elven_Star
Member
My dad let me play Dangerous Dave on his office computer.
katsubento
Member
Space Invaders and Scramble in Pizza places...Atari 2600...then I stopped playing after the crash...skipped the NES years and came back when I bought a Sega Genesis. And pretty much it took off from there.
When I was around four years old my cousin's family gave me a hand-me-down NES, since I had so much fun playing theirs when I would visit my cousin. They gave me Super Mario Bros. and Big Bird's Hide & Speak. I didn't play much of the latter, but I liked that it had janky voice acting. My cousin tells me that the first game I played was the first TMNT game on the NES.
Auto-Reply
Member
The earliest I remember was having/playing some Game and Watch style portables. Some U-Boot shooting game was my favorite. Can't remember when and where or why we got them. Everything else build up on top of that, I believe the C64 was next in line because friends had it. My grandma had an old non functional pong variant in her house when I was little, was always intruiged by it but have never seen it running.
Heckler456
Banned
Older nephew had a snes with Zelda, and I thought it was amazing.
Parents bought my elder brother SNES and aLttP when I was an infant, so it's always been there pretty much. I haven't the foggiest when and what I first played though. Don't know if I just knew about aLttP first or also played it first.
But SNES/GB/PSX were my gaming childhood.
But SNES/GB/PSX were my gaming childhood.
VlaudTheImpaler
tl;dr
Parents divorced and I lived with my brother and mom and her terrible boyfriend in a trailer park. My dad would bring us a big bag of toys and whatever he could find once a month.
This was one of the things he brought among one of those handheld fishing games as well.
I spent so much time with that while all the other kids had their cool Gameboys and Gameboy pockets but I thought this was the coolest thing in the world. I played it for years.
My dad eventually came up with a plan to help me get a real Gameboy where I would do things for the neighbors and if I earned enough he would pay for the rest.
He also threw in a light attachment
a month later after asking how I was liking it and I told him it was hard to see sometimes.
This was one of the things he brought among one of those handheld fishing games as well.
I spent so much time with that while all the other kids had their cool Gameboys and Gameboy pockets but I thought this was the coolest thing in the world. I played it for years.
My dad eventually came up with a plan to help me get a real Gameboy where I would do things for the neighbors and if I earned enough he would pay for the rest.
He also threw in a light attachment
a month later after asking how I was liking it and I told him it was hard to see sometimes.
I grew up watching Television, and found the interactivity of video games incredibly compelling.
Add in serious life changing events that made me want to escape the world, with being a latchkey kid, and bingo bango hooked for life.
Begged parents for a gameboy for years, got a gameboy pocket and it cascaded from there.
Add in serious life changing events that made me want to escape the world, with being a latchkey kid, and bingo bango hooked for life.
Begged parents for a gameboy for years, got a gameboy pocket and it cascaded from there.
When I was 3, my brother's got a game boy advance, and I could play FIFA and pokémon on it from time to time. Later, when I turned 5, I got my own game boy advance SP and Final Fantasy Tactics, and that's when I started getting into gaming. I was 8 when I got a Gamecube with Twilight Princess, FE PoR and Spongebob Squarepants battle for bikini bottom (as time progressed), and since then I've been heavily into console gaming as well.
Baron Von Beans
Member
My parents got my older brother and I a NES back in 1988 or 89, I can't remember the exact year, since I was about 4 or 5...but I remember playing lots of games over the years, from mega man to Mario to castlevania to good ol fashioned Zelda to ducktales to chip and dale to darkening duck to marble madness, cobra triangle, rc pro am, klax, TMNT, double dragonArchRivalsBattletoadsTecmoBowlBionicCommando, and so many more. I never beat any of the games, I just enjoyed watching and playing the games tremendously. I was hooked, badly I might add, ever since
CrackPebbles
Member
When I was like 3 years old my uncle gave us a snes with super mario world, super mario all stars, turtles in time, mortal kombat, and Xmen Mutant Apocalypse. So i've just kinda always been playing games since then.
Permanently A
Junior Member
Everyone else had games and my parents refused to let me have them because they thought it would hurt my studies. Jokes on them, I got completely addicted to them when I got older and am now a disappointment.
Chrizzy_81
Member
Commodore 64.
Supposedly to help me with school work, I don't think I ever did anything educational related with it. The same goes for its successor the Amiga.
Supposedly to help me with school work, I don't think I ever did anything educational related with it. The same goes for its successor the Amiga.
WhoaIsThatMars
Member
My older brother got a NES on Christmas when I was like one or two years old (we have it on tape). I remember watching him play, but I honestly can't remember the first time I played so I must've have been crazy young. The earliest memory I can recall is playing Duck Hunt in my brother's room when no one was there and then I turned around and my entire family was at the door watching a toddler with a toy gun shoot birds on a screen. I'm surprised they ever let me play again to be honest.
I should ask my brother if he remembers the first time I played.
As for my interest, my older brother usually hogged the NES and I watched. Usually just laying on the bed listening to the music and controller sounds. Oddly enough, I'm positive it's a trigger for me because I always pass out while watching/listening to other people play games now.
I eventually got my own GB and that was my main source of gaming for years since my brother was always on the NES. Most of my nostalgia during the NES days comes from the music of the games my brother played the most.
I should ask my brother if he remembers the first time I played.
As for my interest, my older brother usually hogged the NES and I watched. Usually just laying on the bed listening to the music and controller sounds. Oddly enough, I'm positive it's a trigger for me because I always pass out while watching/listening to other people play games now.
I eventually got my own GB and that was my main source of gaming for years since my brother was always on the NES. Most of my nostalgia during the NES days comes from the music of the games my brother played the most.
Muffdraul
Member
Sorry, I have a pathetic weakness for waxing nostalgic about this stuff. I feel like my gaming life is broken into three separate chapters.
When I was 3 years old, dad bought the family a Magnavox Odyssey. I have vague yet vivid memories of my two older sisters telling me "You're too little for this, just watch us play" and watching them swap out all the translucent TV screen overlays as they played all the games. Playing Simon Says on it with my mom at least a couple times, realizing that it controlled just like an etch-a-sketch. I was transfixed by the thing and became obsessed, but according to my family we only had it for about a month because the novelty wore off so fast and he sold it to a coworker. So the first phase of my video gaming career ended very prematurely.
Years later I saw my first Pong machine in a pizza parlor or something. I thought it was the game I remembered we used to have on our TV. Soon after that I found my first arcade in the local Anaheim Plaza mall, a Sega Time Out that was probably 75% pinball and other "analog" games and 25% video games like Tank, Breakout, Boot Hill, Desert Patrol, Blasto, etc. From then on I made sure I went to the mall every chance I got. Every time I went back it seemed there was less pinball and more video. I remember the first time I went in there and saw a huge crowd standing around some new game, a weird phenomenon I'd never seen happen before. I squeezed my way through the crowd and that was the first time I laid eyes on Space Invaders. The arcade was always way more crowded from that day on. IMO that was when the video game industry as we know it really kicked off. Most people credit Pong with being the one that started it all, but it had really come and gone by that point as far as being part of the mainstream public consciousness. I remained totally obsessed with video games up until about puberty. I lost interest around the same time I stopped getting up early on Saturdays to watch cartoons. Suddenly all I cared about was getting up at noon to listen to records and play guitar, the go out and party.
About seven years later, after I finished college I was working out how to become a "responsible adult" and one of the bullet points was establishing credit, which seemed impossible, a catch-22. Eventually the best advice I got was "Go to every electronics/appliance shop in town and apply for their store-only credit card. At least one of them will be desperate or stupid enough to give you one, since no credit is better than bad credit. Use it to buy something cheap but not too cheap, something you can pay off in less than a month. A cordless phone, an answering machine, a Nintendo, a nice ghetto blaster..." The only thing I didn't already have was a Nintendo. I had just recently been seeing commercials for the brand new Super Nintendo and a game called F-Zero. I wasn't really that interested, but it did look impressive. So I bought a SNES and F-Zero thinking I'd play with it for a couple hours and sell it. Sure enough, after I won 1st place in all of the races, I'd had a lot of fun but I was ready to disconnect the console and get rid of it. I opened the box and pulled out the styrofoam tray so I could put everything back, and I noticed the Super Mario World cartridge that came with it. "Ah, shit. I bought the damn thing, I might as well play it at least once." Two or three levels was all it took. "Holy shit, this is fucking awesome! Why did nobody tell me these Super Mario games were so rad???" I've never even considered stopping gaming since then. Sucks that I missed out on the whole 8-bit era, though. Around 1993 I started trying to go back and play the NES classics, but they were just too clunky for me to stomach.
When I was 3 years old, dad bought the family a Magnavox Odyssey. I have vague yet vivid memories of my two older sisters telling me "You're too little for this, just watch us play" and watching them swap out all the translucent TV screen overlays as they played all the games. Playing Simon Says on it with my mom at least a couple times, realizing that it controlled just like an etch-a-sketch. I was transfixed by the thing and became obsessed, but according to my family we only had it for about a month because the novelty wore off so fast and he sold it to a coworker. So the first phase of my video gaming career ended very prematurely.
Years later I saw my first Pong machine in a pizza parlor or something. I thought it was the game I remembered we used to have on our TV. Soon after that I found my first arcade in the local Anaheim Plaza mall, a Sega Time Out that was probably 75% pinball and other "analog" games and 25% video games like Tank, Breakout, Boot Hill, Desert Patrol, Blasto, etc. From then on I made sure I went to the mall every chance I got. Every time I went back it seemed there was less pinball and more video. I remember the first time I went in there and saw a huge crowd standing around some new game, a weird phenomenon I'd never seen happen before. I squeezed my way through the crowd and that was the first time I laid eyes on Space Invaders. The arcade was always way more crowded from that day on. IMO that was when the video game industry as we know it really kicked off. Most people credit Pong with being the one that started it all, but it had really come and gone by that point as far as being part of the mainstream public consciousness. I remained totally obsessed with video games up until about puberty. I lost interest around the same time I stopped getting up early on Saturdays to watch cartoons. Suddenly all I cared about was getting up at noon to listen to records and play guitar, the go out and party.
About seven years later, after I finished college I was working out how to become a "responsible adult" and one of the bullet points was establishing credit, which seemed impossible, a catch-22. Eventually the best advice I got was "Go to every electronics/appliance shop in town and apply for their store-only credit card. At least one of them will be desperate or stupid enough to give you one, since no credit is better than bad credit. Use it to buy something cheap but not too cheap, something you can pay off in less than a month. A cordless phone, an answering machine, a Nintendo, a nice ghetto blaster..." The only thing I didn't already have was a Nintendo. I had just recently been seeing commercials for the brand new Super Nintendo and a game called F-Zero. I wasn't really that interested, but it did look impressive. So I bought a SNES and F-Zero thinking I'd play with it for a couple hours and sell it. Sure enough, after I won 1st place in all of the races, I'd had a lot of fun but I was ready to disconnect the console and get rid of it. I opened the box and pulled out the styrofoam tray so I could put everything back, and I noticed the Super Mario World cartridge that came with it. "Ah, shit. I bought the damn thing, I might as well play it at least once." Two or three levels was all it took. "Holy shit, this is fucking awesome! Why did nobody tell me these Super Mario games were so rad???" I've never even considered stopping gaming since then. Sucks that I missed out on the whole 8-bit era, though. Around 1993 I started trying to go back and play the NES classics, but they were just too clunky for me to stomach.
StonedRider
Member
My first experience with video games started in 1986 when my friend and classmate brought his programmable calculator Elektronika MK-61 (I was born is USSR, baby!). After several hours of hard work we had entered Land the Spaceship game from popular science journal and started to play.
There was no graphics, just numbers - height, speed, and how many fuel to burn in next turn, but it was experience I will remember whole my life.
Also, this experience encouraged me to start a programmer career eventually.
There was no graphics, just numbers - height, speed, and how many fuel to burn in next turn, but it was experience I will remember whole my life.
Also, this experience encouraged me to start a programmer career eventually.
CaviarMeths
Member
When I was a kid, my babysitter had a NES and SMB3. Love at first jump.