Your first Atari games?

[Tangentg]

Do you remember the first Atari games you played?

 

It's kinda nostalgic when I think back but I hadn't found my favourite Atari games back then (Millipede and Juno First).

 

Some of them were Frogger, Pacman, Space Invaders, Haunted House, Kaboom (which I decided, for a long time, was the best Activision game until I found Beamrider and Robot Tank), Human Cannonball and Steeplechase.

[Keatah]

Arcade or home? Or just "atari"?

[Tangentg]

I was going to edit it to Atari 2600 but the site failed to connect it when I was done editing. I was referring to 2600 pretty much, but if you feel like sharing arcade too it's cool.

 

My first Atari arcade game was Missile Command but I didn't like it when I played it when I was that small. I just thought it was average. It grew on me recently though and I like playing it quite a bit now.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

Check the 2600 forum, IIRC there already exists a thread which you can bump.

[Tangentg]

I couldn't find any forum thread relating to this when I searched and this was mistakenly moved by a mod to programming because they think I'm talking about the ones you made instead of the ones you played, from the title.

Edited August 25, 2016 by Tangentg

[Thomas Jentzsch]

https://atariage.com/forums/topic/241298-what-was-the-first-atari-2600-game-you-bough

[Tangentg]

The link isn't working for me but it's not exactly about games you bought, but games you played first, though I guess people would have posted about 'playing first' as well.

 

 

Oh added the missing letter fixed it. Guess I'll check it out, thanks.

[adamchevy]

The first actual Atari game was Combat. The first game I played on my very own Atari was Princess Rescue. I played combat on my Great Uncles Atari when I was 6 back in 1987. I remember thinking the joysticks were really awkward and huge. They were a struggle to wield . Not long after I received an Nes for Christmas. The controller was such an improvement. I think the nes controller is what really did it for me.

[Tangentg]

That reminds me of the first time I used an Atari joystick, but that was probably the Flashback joystick (don't know which Flashback) instead of an authentic one, which is supposedly less stiff.

 

I remember thinking the joystick was too stiff and it was really hard to move it without moving the base as well (thus not making any movement) and that it really affected my gameplay.

[gauauu]

I remember playing Adventure when we first got our Atari, I was maybe 3 years old. I couldn't figure out why the horse (actually the yellow key) was following me around. (I had picked it up). I just remember shouting at the screen "go away horse!"

[Papa]

Ahhhh, back when imagination had something to do with playing games (any games, really).

[Ethaniel]

my first memory of vcs was playing fishing derby at my cousin's house on an old spare b/w tv his dad gave him to his room... I still remember that one of the buttons on the tv was missing and he had a tiny screwdriver stuck in the hole

[roryjr]

We got the Sears version in my house. The first I can rememeber was Target Fun. Great family game. I remember playing my mom quite a bit.

[Shawn]

Smurfs & Popeye. Got them both for xmas, don't recall which one I played first.

[CaptainBreakout]

I think the first games I recall SEEING on the Atari were Astrosmash, Air Raiders, and Strategy X.

 

They were played by my 8-year older step-brother, and I must have been pretty young, since I remember I was still grasping with the concept of how he was controlling the action on the screen. Astrosmash, in particular, was very exciting. My brother was one of those Space Age Whiz Kids who could put in a single quarter in an arcade machine and play until the store shut the lights off. He had at least one Twin Galaxies record (in Gyruss), and apparently could play Asteroids almost indefinitely. Anyway, intently watching a game of Astrosmash played by somebody that good is kinda riveting, to say the least, and maybe could be considered a life-changing event considering how well I remember it and how young I must have been.

 

The Atari was still semi-contraband at my house too. So this must have been happening in the dark after my parents were asleep.

 

Anyway, those games mean a lot to me, since I think each happened in a subsequent night around the same time-frame, and remember the lights and sounds of each.

 

For me tho, I think the first games I actually played firsthand were Combat and then Spiderman, both at my Dad's stoner buddy's house (since my brother wouldn't let me play, probably at the command of my mom).

[Keatah]

I remember playing Adventure when we first got our Atari, I was maybe 3 years old. I couldn't figure out why the horse (actually the yellow key) was following me around. (I had picked it up). I just remember shouting at the screen "go away horse!"

What part of town you from?

[Skippy B. Coyote]

For me it was Ms. Pac-Man and Centipede. I must have been 5 or 6 years old at the time, which would have been around 1990 or 1991, and I remember playing them on the Atari expansion module that my older brother had for his ColecoVision. He was the one who really introduced me to playing video games on consoles, since before that the only games I had played were a version of Artillery Duel and Paganitzu on my mom's IBM PC XT, and Ms. Pac-Man on cocktail cab at a nearby pool hall.

 

Being able to just pop a cartridge for whatever game I wanted to play into a console, flick the power switch to the "On" position, and start playing was an amazing thing to me back then and I remember becoming really enamoured with the label artwork on all my brother's Atari and ColecoVision games too. Defender was a personal favorite of mine as a young child, though strangely I don't remember ever playing the game much; just staring at the artwork and trying to take in everything that was going on in it. I guess it made a lasting impression on me because I still only buy carts with excellent condition labels, so I can admire the artwork when I'm not busy playing the games.

Edited December 8, 2016 by Jin

[PlayDoh003]

Aside from Combat of course, Breakout wasn't just the first game that I played, but the very first game that I purchased with my own allowance money. As simple as the game was, I used to play it for hours!

[bradhig1]

adventure on the atari 2600.

[Dreamcast Gamer]

I can't remember. My first experience with Atari was on the first Flashback (the one that uses a NES-on-a-chip.) Probably the first I played was Adventure, and after that, Asteroids, Desert Falcon, Crystal Castles, Yar's Revenge, and my favorite, Food Fight.

[Shawn]

EDIT: Just realized I already posted.

Edited December 17, 2016 by Shawn

[0078265317]

space invaders 1980 something