Earliest Gaming Memory?

[JBC]

This is spun off from shmuppyLove's 1000th post thread, where it was called to attention that most of us are going to be old farts soon. Regardless of whether you are or not, feel free to post.

I was born into a household that had 3 Atari 2600's. The first game I remember playing (and falling in love with) was Video Pinball. I also had Phoenix, Riddle of Sphinx, Berzerk, Defender, Asteroids, Joust, Ms. Pac Man, and Space Invaders. I remember at some point I got to play Pitfall, Yar's Revenge, and Centipede at other kid's houses.



I think Phoenix was my favorite back then. The way you had to blast away parts of the giant spaceship to get to the alien, and the intimidating waves of flaming cosmic devil birds



It looks so shitty now but these battles were EPIC in my imagination.

[Vyxx]

My earliest gaming memory is definitely playing Missile Command on my parents Atari 2600. I would play that game for hours on end.



Other than that, I remember one day my dad picking up a used Centipede arcade cab from a local arcade that was closing its doors. We had that in the basement for a few years before my father had it trashed once the monitor went .

[Obiwanshinobi]

I know Phoenix is fondly remembered by a number of people on here.

[Ruldra]

Like I posted in the other thread, my first game ever was Magical Kid Wiz for the MSX. Also had a bunch of other games but my favorites were Goonies, Yie Ar Kung Fu 2 and Penguin Adventure. My brother was heavily into King's Valley, Rambo and Magical Tree.

I know Phoenix is fondly remembered by a number of people on here.

Phoenix was the first shmup I ever played in the arcades, I really love the sounds of that game. I was really disappointed when I got Taito Legends for the PS2 and found that the sounds were different from the original.

[nZero]

Radar Rat Race on the Commodore 64

[Ruldra]

Radar Rat Race on the Commodore 64

Shameless New Rally X rip-off?

[Skykid]

Most vivid early console memory was playing Donkey Kong on the NES -- first time I ever held a control pad -- must have been about seven years old. But I was exposed to arcades much earlier. This is the one that sticks in mind as the absolute earliest, since I would have been 5 years old on its release. I never played at that age of course, but the attract sequence soundbyte is burned into my brain.

"Get Ready - Ahhhhh."

[Jonathan Ingram]

This thing

[Moniker]

Earliest gaming memory is that dog laughing at me when I fucked up in Duck Hunt. Fuck that dog.

[BIL]

Absolute earliest:



Most vivid early memory for me is playing NES Contra for the first time. Not the first game I played but it was my first exposure to a non-cutesy one and kicked off my lifelong obsession with tough, colourful action gaming.

[CIT]

There's a picture of me as a baby playing on my dad's pong console.

However, the earliest one I consciously remember is Commando on a friend's C64.

[CMoon]

[Gozer]

[JBC]

Some good stuff goin' on in this thread



On a side note, my first ever arcade experience was being hoisted up by my cousin to play Sega's Quartet. I must have been 6, because I remember my cousin saying that it reminded him of 'Megaman', which was released in the US in '87. When I asked what Megaman was, he said he just got it for the NES and would let me play it when we got home.

[Randorama]

I can't remember exactly, my memories of this fact are very, very blurry (like anything else before 9).

I do remember the first time Black Tiger in an extremely vivid way. I can still summon the smell of pizza and the scent of the night sky, just before snowing.

[trap15]

One of my earliest memories (I think somewhere around 5 or so?) and one of my few memories from the place where my family was living at the time (some apartment complex in Poway). One of the girls who also lived in the complex was over and we were playing Super Mario All-Stars on my SNES, and she said she didn't like games with timers. That's basically all I remember, but I believe that's the earliest gaming memory I have.

[TrevHead (TVR)]

Its a toss up between. A tabletop like this but Donkey Kong by Tomy


And Space Invaders 7800 which was built into the console, which was played to death because I never had any other games for it.

[mesh control]

ha, you can really gauge the forum's age groups with a thread like this.


(I always picked Guile and tried to do sonic booms and flash kicks with the three button pad)


I wish I was still into Tetris. Too many versions and I got lost in time.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

the earliest one I consciously remember is Commando on a friend's C64.

That one had fantastic music. My earliest memories were of playing Outrun, Paradroid, Ghettoblaster, classic stuff on the C64. Never got into any shmups on the C64 back then, only one I'd played way like Zaxxon and it didn't impress me much.

[Elixir]

Spider's Web for the Atari Fountain Force II.

Here's a video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvTpA3hafdA

[Blackbird]

Mine was probably getting a Sega Genesis for Christmas as a kid and playing Sonic 2. Or maybe it was playing Mike Tyson's Punchout/Duck Hunt/Super Mario Bros. on the NES at a friend's house a little before that? One of those.

[JBC]

Mine was probably getting a Sega Genesis for Christmas as a kid and playing Sonic 2. Or maybe it was playing Mike Tyson's Punchout/Duck Hunt/Super Mario Bros. on the NES at a friend's house a little before that? One of those.

I got one for Christmas when I was little too, but the game they gave me was Spider-Man. It was actually pretty good for a licensed game back then and of course the system itself was packed with good ole' Altered Beasts.

I did eventually get Sonic 2 as well, from a promotional coupon you could pick up at US JC Penny stores which gave you a copy of the game for FREE. Me and my brother filled out one apiece and both received it in the mail at the same address even though it said to limit it to one per household

[Damocles]

Now, my first console was an NES, so I'm not that old, but my friend a few houses down had one of these. My first experience with a lightgun game.

[ShmupSamurai]

Though my very first game ever was Sonic the Hedgehog during the very year it was released(1991)my first vivid memories would be getting lost in the first overhead stage of Thunder Force II and running though Flameman's stage in Megaman VI, falling into the burning oil many times...also I would remember that everytime I played TFII-I would sit through the title screen and attract-sequence just to suck in all the cool looking sprite work and artistic design while listening to what my 2-5 year old brain thought was the greatest music ever made by mankind....

Ah...Sweet memories....

[BIL]

Mine was probably getting a Sega Genesis for Christmas as a kid and playing Sonic 2.

I got one for Christmas when I was little too, but the game they gave me was Spider-Man. It was actually pretty good for a licensed game back then and of course the system itself was packed with good ole' Altered Beasts.

Haha, now this is really getting nostalgic... I got a Genesis for Christmas too, a secondhand one my Dad bought from one of his pupils with two games, one of which was Strider. That conversion has always been respected but to own and play it at the time as a young kid felt damn near mythical. That and The Revenge of Shinobi were my first "next gen" experiences having started on the NES.

[Obiwanshinobi]

I'm not going to seriously dive for that one memory, but speaking of light guns, my first experience with them was playing with one of the Pong/multigame kits sporting multiple controllers. It was Pong and then some if you know what I mean, already antiquated at the time. It had a pair of lightguns too, but I don't recall what that particular game was about.

[JBC]

Haha, now this is really getting nostalgic... I got a Genesis for Christmas too, a secondhand one my Dad bought from one of his pupils with two games, one of which was Strider. That conversion has always been respected but to own and play it at the time as a young kid felt damn near mythical. That and The Revenge of Shinobi were my first "next gen" experiences having started on the NES.

Shiiit I would have killed to have Strider for the Genesis when I was a kid BIL. Instead I had to settle for the NES one
I wish I would have had Revenge of Shinobi back then too, or part III OR Shadow Dancer, but only got the crazy looking Tengen NES cart of the original which really wasn't half bad.

NES games were in abundance around my hometown, but if I wanted the good stuff I had to travel to Baton Rouge. That meant convincing my parents to drive me there so it wasn't always the easiest thing to score Genesis games

[BIL]

I actually thought the NES Strider was the original game (played the hell out of it), and the Genesis one was some kind of supercharged sequel developed just for the system - so that made it seem extra awesome. That and receiving it totally at random.

One really strong memory I have of the NES Shinobi was how damn hard those black Tengen carts could be to remove from the system. That and Gauntlet.

[maxlords]

My earliest gaming memories....I'm not sure which is earlier.

One was going to a friend's house and playing Combat on the Atari 2600, then playing the old Volcano Island board game.

The other was a grade school field trip to the roller skating rink (remember those?) when I got to play my first Missile Command machine. I also remember playing arcade games in California when I visited my grandparents when I was 5...Asteroids comes to mind but I know there were others too....

[JBC]

The other was a grade school field trip to the roller skating rink (remember those?) when I got to play my first Missile Command machine.

Yep! We had 'Skate City' in my hometown, where I first got to play Sega's 1985 arcade remake of Choplifter.



I really miss skating rinks, so much that I recently found and visited one that's still in operation in Baton Rouge called Skate Galaxy. It did have a junky section of old arcade games and smelled just like a locker room as expected. Unfortunately the machines didn't seem to be in the best condition and I didn't find anything worth mentioning but it was still a fun trip.