I’m 6-7. I’m at my grandparents house. He’s got one of those old-timey Pong consoles that you plug into the TV; it had like 5-6 different ‘sport’ modes (Tennis, Squash etc etc), but ultimately it was still a few pixels moving up and down or maybe left and right.
And it was amazing.
What’s your earliest gaming memory?
first, some pong-like game on someone’s zx spectrum in early 80ties. it was brief and short but very first experience. later, karateka, tetris, games like that on my and others C64.
the first game i was hooked to was Elite on same C64. it was just wow. 3d, freedom, trading, pirating, leveling up. i played only Elite for long time, played it on Amiga and my first 386 later on. still stands as my first serious gaming memory.
I remember playing the Neverhood on our first family computer back when I was 4. The art direction and story were really oddly appealing as a kid. I still think it’s a very underrated art style.
I love claymation! Neverhood was fully hand-posed, and it’s an amazing style
I remember being in a friend’s house. He asks me if i knew what golden eye is. I said no, and so he takes me to his room. He turns on the tv, so I ask “oh we are going to watch a james bond movie?” He laughs and says no, and presses a button on a wierd plastic box that suddenly comes to life! The tv suddenly changes, and some wierd scene plays until we get to something that looks like a dvd menu. He then gives me a wierd ass controller.
I then spent the day figuring how to stop looking up while running away from my friend headshotting me repeatadly while giggling like a schoolgirl. I enjoyed every second of it. My brain was firing up and never have I felt so excited to even being aware of such an experience existing.
It was some educational game about a british kid in a hot air balloon. Not the slightest idea what it was called, but there was one frog song that little me loved.
Not necessarily my first, but my first clear memory of a gaming obsession is playing Defender on my cousin’s 2600
My dad coming home with a ZX81. I played various games on it but the one I remember most fondly and load up occasionally today, was Forty Niner. We needed to get a 16K RAM Pack for it so it definitely wasn’t the first I played on that system.
Seeing an Atari 2600, the original woodgrain model, at my cousin’s house and playing Space Invaders, Adventure and the one with cowboys.
I was convinced the cartridges contained reels of film, but I couldn’t figure out how to make that work with all the different possibilities. I was only 4 or 5 at the time.
My cousin opened up a cartridge and I was amazing to see the circuit board with a couple of chips on inside. Blew my mind.
The first game I can remember playing was Desert Demolition: Starring Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote on Sega Genesis. I don’t really remember the gameplay well. I still have the game (with the box and manual), but it’s stored away somewhere (probably a bin in my closet).
Playing Super Mario Bros. on my Dad’s NES. Probably in 89.
Six years old. My parents had got a Spectrum +2 bundle from Curry’s for Christmas, with a bunch of games in nondescript grey boxes. First one we played was a top-down snooker games called Snooker.
Many years later I ended up working with the guy that made one of the games in that bundle and, I think, ported another from the C64. Small world and all that.
For me it was playing Mortal Kombat 1 on SNES since I could button mash and still have fun. This was probably in 1996 or 97
Duke Nukem 3D
I don’t remember what the game was called, but I played it from a diskette on DOS, if I remember correctly. You were controlling a sort of space ship and jumping on different platforms while continuously moving forward. I loved it. But I don’t remember what it was called so I can’t look it up any more.
We also had some sort of maze game and Commander Keen. But I sucked at Commander Keen, so I never got past the first level.
Holy shit, that’s it! Thanks so much!
Pong.
Jill of the Jungle is the first one I can remember playing when I was about six.