Earliest Gaming Memory?

[ED-057]

I remember playing this and Alphabet Zoo, but I don`t have the latter cartridge anymore.

[Herr Schatten]

My earliest memory related to gaming is watching the attract mode of Amidar over and over at some restaurant when on vacation with my parents. They wouldn't actually let me play, though.


My first memory of actually playing something resembling a game is tied to this Lupin tabletop. I used to play it over at a friends house until I got much better at it than him and he got a bit angry.




Shortly after that, I got my own "videogame". I had to save up my pocket money quite a while to get this.




My first "real" videogame was the Master System version of Sega's Hang-On.

[RGC]

Great OP!

I cannot decide which of these two happened to me first. Both were released around the same time, but I wouldn't have played them til at least 4 or 5 years later:


Stunt Cycle / Motocross (Released: 1976) <-- it was a home version of this, owned by my elderly next door neighbours! Of the two dedicated home variants, it was not the one with throttle-bar, so I guess it must have been the Sears Tele-Games version (if wikipedia is accurate).

And then there was this:

Binatone Colour TV Game MK 10 Model 01/4842 (Released: 1977)



..which was frankly awful, but kept me and my sister amused for short periods.

----

A few years on...

The music from this game is perma-etched into my brain, so I must have played it alot:

Commodore Plus/4 - Icicle Works (Released: 1985)

----

But (ZX Spectrum days aside), I'll aways regard this as my most treasured, early videogaming memory:

(Released: 1987)

[NAVVARR]

Earliest arcade memories for me would be playing Space Invaders, Galaxians and Scramble in smokey arcades. Asking my mum for 10p so I could have a game.


Earliest Home computer system for me was the Vic20 - still very fond on that old computer- still occasionally set it up and play some old Jeff Minter games- anyone remember HellGate - brilliant game.

First ever home computer game I bought was Vic Panic- I spent hours playing that game.

[shmuppyLove]

I'm trying to remember if we had the Vic20 before I had an Intellivison ...

If it was the Vic 20, there was some badass game (on tape!) where you were a lizard of some kind and you had to catch bugs with your tongue.

If it was the Intellivison, then there were tons of awesome games like Lock n Chase, Night Stalker, some game with sharks and fish where you ate other fish to get bigger, Pitfall, a wicked 2 player game with tanks, another 2 player game with biplanes dogfighting, and a Dungeons & Dragons game.

Goddamn Night Stalker was the hotness though. I wonder if it's still playable by today's standards?

[DEL]

I guess the first time I saw a video game in real life was one Christmas maybe 75 or 76 when my older second cousins got a tennis home game.
My first console was Grandstand Cartridge Model. SD-050 (1978). I still have it.
Its pictured in this page: http://freespace.virgin.net/tony.brown7/computer/

[Marc]

Playing on my Uncle's Intellivision aged 3. Triple Action, Tron Deadly Discs, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, Astrosmash, Super Cobra, Auto Racing, Lock n Chase, Night Stalker. Can't remember the name of my first coin-op, it was like Mr Do but played on a grid of yellow squares that vanished as you ran over them.

[Vexorg]

The earliest gaming memory I can reliably place would be KC Munchkin on the Magnavox Odyssey2 that my parents had for a while when I was really young.

[CStarFlare]

When I was young, I went with my parents to a local furniture store. Weirdly, they had an NES there hooked up to one of the TVs they had in a staged room (these days they use boxes with picture of a TV on them so the store is boring now). I don't remember what I played and it might not have been my first gaming experience, but I know it predates owning one of my own and the other things I can remember involve playing on my own system.

[manatworks]

this game

ok, i didn't really play it, i'm sitting on my dad's lap when he plays it but i still remember it vividly ,the visuals ,the motion, the sound even the smell of arcade section in that department store.

the very first one that i get to play is this

[louisg]

This is the first arcade game I remember playing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTSAbjA1ay0

It probably explains my soft spot for dodge-the-blob racers

[ST Dragon]

Scramble Arcade



Rygar Arcade


Pac-Man Arcade

[brentsg]

My first upright video game memory (non-pin) was either Space Invaders or Atari Football. The local skating rink had both and I'm not sure which they had first. Online sources show Space Invaders as 1978 and Football as 1979, but I'm not sure where the USA release of SI was in relation to Japan.

And yeah.. at home Pong.

[Bloodreign]

Atari 2600 when it first came out with Laser Blast, Video Pinball, Bowling, and Combat spiced with a little Target Fun aka Air Sea Battle back around 1979 or 1980. Space Invaders and Galaga are some early arcade memories for me.

[saucykobold]

A quick Galaga credit at a donut shop was my first real exposure to gaming. My first system was either a Vectrex given by a family friend (MineStorm jingle woo yeah) or a Game Boy with Tetris and Batman. The latter's shmup levels were rip-roaring stuff when I was six.

[BPzeBanshee]

I don't really remember it but my family has a photo of me while still in my nappies playing Crue Ball on the Sega Megadrive.

The last one I remember was watching the attract mode for Raiden Fighters 2 and not realising just how much time passed by. This was around 2000.

[Skykid]

The last one I remember was watching the attract mode for Raiden Fighters 2 and not realising just how much time passed by. This was around 2000.

Minutes or hours?

[hzt]

Playing the Jurassic Park arcade game with my uncle, I thought at SegaWorld London but it must have been somewhere else before SegaWorld opened. Or it's just the first thing I remember although I'd probably played games at friend's houses before. I'd definitely been to arcades before, I just don't remember what the first game I played was although thinking about it it was probably Virtua Cop. The first console I owned was a Playstation I got for my birthday in '97.

The main bit I remember from Jurassic Park is when you go through a forest of giant dinosaur legs shooting them out of the way then drive up a dinosaur's back and do a sick jump off its head.

[JBC]

The main bit I remember from Jurassic Park is when you go through a forest of giant dinosaur legs shooting them out of the way then drive up a dinosaur's back and do a sick jump off its head.

I recently played through it in MAME and thought that part was f*kin rad myself. Sega's System 32 games were awesome, and Sega's sprite scaling games were awesome in general. I still remember hanging out at the local Dairy Queen every afternoon after school playing After Burner II and Outrun. They're just so good lookin'.

[Jason X]

Hmm. Hard to say what my specific first game was, but I do remember the system. My sisters and I have different fathers, and sometimes we would go to visit their dad at his house. He had this dark, dank basement filled with old tools, rusty metal and nightmare-inducing blackness as far as the eye can see.

Within that dark zone sat a huge table and a big, color tv. In front of the tv was an Atari VCS and essentially any game ever made for the system. I knew from the moment I first held one of those rubbery black joysticks in my hand that the course of my life had been set. Space Invaders, Dig Dug, Defender, Keystone Kapers, Frogger, Freeway, Circus Atari...I honestly couldn't say how many hours or days I spent down in that tomb playing Atari games.

It helped that the stairs leading down to the basement always had an ice cold 6 pack of glass-bottled Orange Crush, as well. Ah, those were the days.

[Dale]

Kid Chameleon at a close friend of the families house. They said I was very good at it.

[PC Engine Fan X!]

this game

ok, i didn't really play it, i'm sitting on my dad's lap when he plays it but i still remember it vividly ,the visuals ,the motion, the sound even the smell of arcade section in that department store.

the very first one that i get to play is this

Yep, the ol' Galaxy Force motion arcade coin-op...the all-black version is quite rare & it's more common to see the silver colored GF motion cabs nowdays. I recall playing on a black GF motion cab at Disneyland's Starcade arcade hangout in May of 1990.

It also made a special appearance for a limited time at the Modesto, CA, based Regency Game Palace arcade joint back in the early-1990s as well.

A silver colored GF motion cab did finally make an appearance at a California Extreme show in 2006. Hasn't been seen since then.

PC Engine Fan X! ^_~

[moozooh]

Playing some Soviet Game & Watch clones in 1990 or so. Played the living shit out of them. And then...

This thing

http://www.abload.de/img/sarc2ztr05.jpg

^

Until this point I never realized how hardcore I was, lol: first a clone of the earliest handheld, then an 8-bit arcade game. :D

[CIT]

Playing some Soviet Game & Watch clones in 1990 or so. Played the living shit out of them. And then...

This thing

http://www.abload.de/img/sarc2ztr05.jpg

^

Until this point I never realized how hardcore I was, lol: first a clone of the earliest handheld, then an 8-bit arcade game.

You're lucky to have grown up in the Soviet Union, there were some good games. Poor Jockel only had this to play on in East Germany:

[BPzeBanshee]

The last one I remember was watching the attract mode for Raiden Fighters 2 and not realising just how much time passed by. This was around 2000.

Minutes or hours?

I believe this first time was minutes, but on other occasions afterwards it could very well have been hours. The flamethrowers and the Plasma Lock-On Beam is quite something to behold and I wish I had the artistic/programming skills to make a weapon of that kind of visual quality in my projects.

[Raytrace]

probably E.T. on my cousin's Atari 2600

[drboom]

Playing Centipede when it came out I think. I played the hell out of a number of arcade titles back then as we lived on an island and the grocery store right off the island had a small arcade (as well as a record store in it) and I always played two or three credits when we went to the store.

[TransatlanticFoe]

At home it would've been either Blue Max (isometric biplane thing) or Flak (turret shooting vert scroller) on the Spectrum. They were basically what regularly loaded properly and were playable by a small child with a crappy joystick.

Arcade-wise, my earliest memory is 1942. Although later my obsession with Operation Wolf would lead my parents to buy me a Master System for xmas. I was properly in love with Flying Shark but I'm glad neither I nor they found out about its home ports.

[emphatic]

My first video game was a b/w Pong clone TV console with dial controls that my dad probably imported (he had an import "business" or at least that was what he told my mom to justify getting cool stuff from Hong Kong ). You could play 2 player matches in a mode called Tennis. I might have been 10 or so. A couple of years later (1987 or so) after playing Arkanoid in a video rental store I put an old b/w TV in TATE and pretended that this old console was my very own arcade machine.

[JBC]

Playing Centipede when it came out I think. I played the hell out of a number of arcade titles back then as we lived on an island and the grocery store right off the island had a small arcade (as well as a record store in it) and I always played two or three credits when we went to the store.

Shopping was similar for me as well. My dad would give me a few quarters when we would go to Kroger and I'd use them in the Snow Bros and Two Crude Dudes machines they had in the lobby while he got the groceries. I still play Snow Bros fairly often to this day.