What was the first video game you ever played?

[Joe C.]

PONG... ...immediately followed by Space Race at a Shakey's Pizza Parlor in San Luis Obispo, California

Thumbs up for knowing about Shakey's!!

[enoofu]

believe it was Super Breakout, Atari 5200

[NE146]

lol wow I'm an idiot for replying to this topic twice.. and only 2 years apart.

[bpatte02]

Sneek 'n' Peek for the 2600

[bigfriendly]

We had a pong clone that also came with a light gun. Arcade....The 7-Eleven around the corner from my Dad's work had a Breakout and Combat game in the back corner. I watched the older kids play them and found it very interesting. I was 6-7 years old at the time. Eastdale Mall opened in 1977 and it had an Aladdin's Castle just inside the main entrance. That is where my love for video games really started. I can vividly remember many of the games that were in that arcade when it first opened. Many of the games didn't even use computer graphics of any kind. My first favorite game was a WWI flying ace game. I don't remember what it was called but the cabinet was red with a red blinking light on top. It had a large joystick on the left and a silver bar that you pressed down to activate your machine guns.

 

Two bright yellow/brown lines converged together to represent your tracer fire. A film showing simple hand drawn pictures of WWI planes would roll continuously and you used the joystick to maneuver the pictures of the planes into your machine gun fire. If you downed a plane the screen changed into a flaming picture of a plane going down. You also had all the sounds to go along with it. Their was also a painted glass window along the bottom with numbers and each number would light up when you shot down a plane. After the game was over if you had shot down enough planes a token popped out of the coin return slot and it had Bally arcade flying ace on one side and a cross on the other side. Amazingly, somewhere I still have a few of those tokens.

[Eltigro]

Pong clone of some kind. All I can remember is that it was brown and the controllers were hardwired, the wire was that coiled telephone handset cord kind of wire, and you would push them into a hole on the console to store the controllers... and I'm even kinda fuzzy on these details. I was born in '74 and we got a VCS somewhere around '78 or '79, probably, so I was pretty young when we had it. Wish I remembered more so I could figure out which one it was and I'd get another one, but every time I've tried looking, I can't figure out which one it is.

[djour]

I remember it clear as yesterday. A display model of Telstar by Coleco in a Sears, 1974. Mom was shopping and her boyfriend told me if I could beat him 2 out of 3 he would buy it. I'm pretty sure he let me win, but that bad boy came home with us.

[toptenmaterial]

We had an IBM PC in the house when I was a child (I was born in 1980). The first game that I have a memory of playing was a math game. I'm going to guess that I was four, maybe five. I played all those early games with my father, who was a doctor and computer enthusiast (he is still a doctor ). The game I remember us playing was a math game. I remember it took place in a castle and the graphics of course were all grey. There was a treasure chest, and if you got the math problem wrong a spider would drop down and take your treasure. I used to cry when it happened.

 

In 1988 I got an NES and got hooked on Nintendo like everybody else and still am.

[SiberianSpForces]

Either a cassette game(Math Blaster, Labyrinth) on the Commodore Plus/4 or an Intellivision game(Frog Bog, MOTU, Frogger).

[Inky]

"Tennis" on the Coleco Telstar.

[Agamon]

I have a bad memory for the exact first game, but early 1980, I played my uncles' Atari 2600. They had Combat, Space Invaders, and Asteroids, so it was one of those.

 

As for arcade, in 82, one opened at a laundromat near me home, with Ms. Pac-Man, Defender, Robotron 2080, Pole Position, so for arcade it was one of those.

[The Mr. Video]

If I remember correctly, the first video game I ever played was Super Mario World for the SNES. I even still have the same copy I played that day.

[accousticguitar]

Pong (or clone) at my brother in law's house was the first video game for me. The first Atari 2600 game was Combat at a friend's house. The first arcade game was Sea Wolf at the local Sears store. A guy was working on it and when he finished he left the game playing and I got to finish it. I was so excited I don't think I even thanked him.

[dj_convoy]

I suspect it would have been Pac-Man on the 5200; I don't recall if the parents bought any other games when they came home with it... but I'm 99.9% sure they had the 5200 with that included Pac-Man as opposed to Super Breakout. I would have been like three. Can't remember what my first arcade was. I distinctly recall playing Dig Dug at a pizza place when I was very, very small, so I hope it was that, but I also specifically remember seeing Dragon's Lair at a Chucky Cheese when I was maybe four or five and wasting tokens on it, not understanding how to play... it may be that.

 

The REAL answer, of sorts would probably be Mattel's electronic basketball handheld thingie, if you wanted to count that as a video game. It was beige and awful, with minisculr red LED dots that didn't really resemble anything about basketball. I think it took a mountain of batteries.

[+davidcalgary29]

Pong: my parents had a Super Pong unit at home. If we're talking about computer games, it would've been something on my school's PET. "Lemonade" or that mining game, I think.

[Kaiju]

Pong by default from a photo. First game memory Laser Blast

[JBerel]

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c3/Coleco-Telstar-Arcade-Pongside-L.jpg/358px-Coleco-Telstar-Arcade-Pongside-L.jpg

It's been so long now, but I remember this being one of the first I played. I think the BW space invaders was out the same time too, so it could've been that.

[Rhomaios]

Pole Position 2600.

[tep392]

First video game was pong. First catridge based game was combat on the VCS.

[TheTIGuy]

Super Mario Bros., it was my dads NES.

[jce3000gt]

Arcade: TRON

Home console: Pole Position

[Gabriel]

The first video game I ever played was some Kee Games Tank variant which was at a carnival passing through town.

[PhoenixMoonPatrol]

Pong, on one of those consoles that had like 10 variations of Pong built within it.

My cousins all had access to the coolest stuff when I was a kid,I sure bugged them enough to pull that console out of their closet every time we visited them.

Mattel handhelds too. Football and Baseball

[Games Of Reference]

I believe my first ever game was either Starwing or Mega Man X, both for the SNES. I think this is why I love gameplay that's easy to learn but hard to master, because both those games fit that description. Give me creative level design and solid movement and I'll be happy for days!