I turned 41 in April; the debut of PONG and I share 1972 in common. I've been playing video games since 1977, when my dad first brought home a PONG TV clone and we played a few times. From then on, my gaming would split into two paths: home (Atari VCS, Apple II, VIC-20, Commodore 64, Colecovision) and arcade.
My home gaming was mostly through my maternal grandmother early on, who we lived with while my mom (as a single parent) struggled a lot. She had the VCS and the Apple II, so games like Asteroids and Missile Command were countered by Zork and David's Midnight Magic. We eventually got back on our own, and my paternal grandmother had given me both Commodore computers than I had-- I got my VIC-20 as a birthday gift in April of 1984 (along with a controller and an Omega Race cart), and then I got my C-64 as an 8th-grade graduation gift in June of 1986 (along with a 1541 floppy disc drive, a controller, and a GORF cart). Commodore computers made up about 85% of my home gaming experience from 1984-1990.
When not playing at home, I spent hundreds of hours around coin-ops, starting with a few hours a month at ages 8-9 in Norwich, CT at a local bowling alley to hanging in arcades at least once a week, usually on a Saturday for 5-6 hours. As we weren't a well-off family, most of the time I spent in arcades or around coin-ops was spent watching other players and learning strategies. Every so often, a player would give me a quarter or two, or perhaps let me "take over" if they had somewhere to go. My "allowance" of $2-$3 per week didn't last long, though my paternal grandmother would give me a bit more ($5) when I visited. My best arcade games were Dragon's Lair (which I learned to beat with one credit, and usually attracted crowds when I played), Track & Field (which I could milk at least an hour out of on one credit), Atari's The Empire Strikes Back (which I actually preferred to Star Wars), and several pinball machines such as High Speed, F-14 Tomcat, Comet, and others.
I got my first NES as a Christmas gift in 1990, and became a console player from then on. Since then, I've owned just about every platform at some point, save for a SEGA Master System, NEO GEO, and SEGA Saturn. I've been collecting these systems and games for them once again over the last 15 months and currently own eight different platforms. I won't be buying new-generation systems for the first time in more than 20 years and will instead be looking to build an even bigger retro library and go back to the way console gaming used to be.
I miss the heck out of arcades, though. I understand why they've become all but extinct, but there was a lot more to that scene than many who didn't live through the era can really understand.
