Did your parents play video games?

[MAC-42]

Yeah, my parents played with my video game stuff. Mom and Dad used to squabble over my Coleco tabletop Pac-Mac; they'd play Pac-Man and stuff on my 2600; they'd play Night Stalker on my Aquarius.

 

Interestingly, they did all this after I went to bed. Rare was the day they'd play with me. Guess it was bad for their image as strict parents or something.

[troff]

My Dad had a home Pong machine that I think he played before I got into it. Once I discovered Pong, I desperately wanted an Atari VCS, or was we called it then "an Atari". Of course, one wonderful Christmas I got one, and I was definitely the primary player. But my parents would occasionally sit down and play with me. My Dad in particular loved Kaboom, I think he was better at it than I was.

[BigO]

I don't recall my parents ever playing.

They definitely weren't avid players. I'd be surprised, though, if they never played Bowling. I remember having the game and they both were avid bowlers.

[mbd30]

My dad loved Atari 2600 "Popeye". It's the only game he was ever into.

[WildBillTX]

My parents never wanted to play video games, even when we begged them a million times to try. They'd rather watch us play, especially when it was 2-player sport games like Basketball, Boxing and M Network's Super Challenge Baseball (the 2600 version without the shortstop).

 

Later when we got into PC Computers my father thought they were for business work only and my mother still seems scared of them.

[Ransom]

My dad played video games with me, and genuinely seemed to enjoy them. The only one he ever played on his own, though, was Asteroids. He still talks about that game to this day.

 

[Amstari]

My parents only played occasionally, I remember my mum liked Stampede.

I got them a Wii a few years ago and they loved it.

 

My friends Dad who was never a gamer has become a huge Guitar Hero/Rock band player. Both his parents now play it regularly.

[Nebulon]

This thread is aimed at those of us who are in their late thirties or forties and owned a 2600 as kids when it was new. I always had the impression that playing Atari or any video game in the early 80's was strictly a kid's/boy's thing. Most of my friends had an Atari and we'd spend a lot of time playing video games. However, I never once saw anybody over the age of about 18 play video games. My father had absolutely zero interest; the thought of him sitting down to play Atari was as absurd as him sitting down to play with my sister's dolls. It wasn't that he didn't enjoy games; he would definitely toss a baseball around in the yard with me, and on weekends my entire family would often play board games together. But trying to get him (or my mother) to play Combat was impossible. Those Atari commercials and catalogs that showed happy families of four excitedly playing Space Invaders together seemed totally unreal to me. Looking back, I can't think of any of my friends' parents ever playing video games either. They were all serious adults who did strictly adult things like reading newspapers, watching boring and complicated stuff on TV, and working in the yard.

 

Nowadays I keep reading that most (modern) video games are bought and played by adults in their thirties and forties, the same age that my parents were back then, which kind of got me thinking. Are we the first generation to enjoy video games as adults? It seems to me that somehow video games evolved from a kid's toy to an adult pastime. Were our parent more mature than we are? Or is my perception skewed, and a lot more adults played video games back in the 80s than I think? What are your thoughts and experiences?

 

I can totally relate.

 

My parents had no interest at all in video games. Only recently did I introduce my dad to two games he actually likes and plays consistently (Missile Command on the Atari 800 and Vector Pilot for the Vectrex). As for my mom, she actually enjoyed playing Ms. Pac-Man for the first time about six months ago (although she gets mad at the ghosts).

 

When I was a kid (and right up until about a year ago) it was like I was a space alien whenever my brother or I raised the topic of video games.

 

It was a big surprise to me to hear about cases where parents actually did play video games. I recall a long-distance phone call from a friend I met back in around 1998. He's 44 and says his dad used to play Intellivision Baseball with him so much that his mom would tell them to turn the damn thing off because she was sick of hearing it say "Yerrr Out" over and over again.

[SiLic0ne t0aD]

My dad used to play video games.. I think he had an Atari VCS but we started off on ColecoVision together and then moved on to the NES. Next came a Genesis and that lasted for a while.. He finally fizzled out after the N64 though. He never did much gaming after that but we used to have a lot of fun when I was young. My mom never did play games, although I vaguely remember her playing a little NES with my my dad and I when I was a kid but that's about it.

I never really stopped and continue to collect and play vintage consoles from my youth to this day..

[bigfriendly]

Just stumbled accross this thread and had to chime in. My parents never got into the video game thing and looking back I think it bothered them when I would spend my allowance or birthday money at the arcade in the late 70's and early 80's. Even though they didn't 'get' the whole video gaming revolution they blessed me with an Atari 2600 at Christmas 1981 and a Colecovision a year later in 1982. The Colecovision reigns as probably my most memorable Christmas of all time. They had flat out said that I wasn't going to get one and besides you couldn't find them anywhere. It was very special:) My dad who was a very successful insurance salesman that came from a poor backwoods background called gaming "button mash-in". In the south people don't press buttons they mash them. I remember one time my friends coming over to play Baseball Stars on the NES and after being invited in by my Mom they would make small talk with my parents and then would ask where's Scott at? My Pop would reply, go on into the game room boys he's in there mash-in buttons.

[Nutsy Doodleheimer]

During the days when I was younger. My dad was into shooter games like Duck Hunt and Hogan's Alley. My mom loved platformer games like Mario. My dad overall hardly played and my mom played sometimes.

[helmsm]

My whole family used to play on the 2600. My mom's best game was Bowling, and my dad used to kill it on Video Pinball. He could play that for hours without losing a ball!