Your first gaming experience.

[Atari Master]

What was your fist time playing a game consoul like?

---------------------------------------------

For me, I was probably three or four at the time.I can only slightly remember.I was in my brothers room and my mom and my brother was puting up this brown thing with a joystick.I remember him letting me play a game for a few minutes.It was some kind of space game.All I know is I only played two times in my entire life.But the other thing is that I think it's still in my house somwere.First thing is I found an atari game Pac-Man and I also remember about five years ago having that joystick and playing with it without the Atari.My brother says it's in the attic but I never had the chance to look.

 

When I was about six I got a SNES and played the tar out of it and still play it today.

 

Of course i've layed off of it since i got my Nintendo Gamecube.

 

I'm thirteen now.

 

[ 01-24-2002: Message edited by: Atari Master ]

[eric_ruck]

I'm not sure if this really counts, since I was playing on a computer, but it would have to be either:

 

1) Some pyramid game on a TRS-80 at Radio Shack, or

 

2) Playing Star Raiders on the giant projection TV at a store called "Video Concepts" at Security Mall. That would have been early 80's sometime.

 

Eric

[jahfish]

my first one was an original atari pong console, that a friend of my father brought me from california.

 

someone bought it off from me for more than 100$ recently .... i couldn't believe it. well, sometimes i don't hate ebay

 

and i remember playing on an oddissey console around 78 at a friends place ... then came my own atari in 1980

 

1998 i bought a playstation, sold it again after 2 months and bought myself an atari 2600 again ....

[TheSmirk]

Hmmm, my Dad had a pong TV game, can't remember the company, it was white and had switches on top for the very different game variations

Tennis, Squash, Handball and stuff like that... I was hooked at that point! Atari 2600 came into the scene about a month after...

[liveinabin]

My first gaming experience was playing coin-op Space Invaders (the original B+W one) on holiday back when it was new (thats how old I am!!). Awesome, a year later I got a little CGL Invaders handheld and the novelty of being able to blast the aliens with that big red fire button has never really worn off.

 

The first console I ever remember playing was Sega Master System (out run or alex kidd, can't recall) and thinking my computer was way better. Consoles weren't a really big deal in the UK until perhaps SNES and Megadrive (genesis).

We all had Spectrums and C-64's. It seemed stupid to pay loads for a game cart when you could tape a game for nothing from your mate. I know better now

 

[ 12-27-2001: Message edited by: liveinabin ]

[fmctm1sw]

It was back home in Pa. My sister was dating the son of a well-off guy in the coal biz (not so well off now ) and I used to go swimming there all the time. In the basement they had an Atari 2600. I remember playing Combat and my sister was always playing Dragonfire. ah, memories

[AtariDude]

I would have to say it would have to be a Pong game. I believe we had purchased it from Sears and we played it a lot. I don't remember the specific model so I don't know if it was Atari Pong or not.

 

I can remember that it was very popular and our school formed a team and we played 2 other schools. We beat the first one and almost beat the second one but after my friend and I won our match to tie things up, the second doubles team lost 15-14. OUCH! So close.

[ubersaurus]

I can't even remember. According to my parents, when I was 2 or 3 I was playing games lke Space Invaders and Pac-Man on our atari. My earliest memories involve breaking my atari from playing cookie monster munch so often, and my sister making up bizarre names for various game objects, like the car in journey escape being a couch. Anyhow, once the 2600 broke, we went out and got a 7800, which I played alot of for the next 2 years, until we got an NES. I was a natural at Super Mario Bros. and with the 7800 still hooked up in the basement, no matter where I went I had games at my fingertips. Then a few years passed, and in december 1993, we got a Super NES, which meant the 7800 went into storage. At some point I got a top loader NES, and I know the year before we got the SNES I got a game boy. Sometime after that I got a game gear, and there was soem otehr stuff but its not important. What is is that I guess all the game playing paid off, because I can nowadays pick up any game and within a few hours get the hang of it and hold my own in it decently enough. Oh, and I'm 18

[liquid_sky]

I vividly remember my first videogame experiance. I was 4 or 5.. somewhere aroud there. My uncle was in town and broght over this strange box that he put on the tv.. then he put a smaller box inside the box, and handed me a weird rectangular thingie with a strange metallic disk. He said,"this is the controller" controoler, i thought... what an odd name for a block of plastic. I was too busy contemplating why he handed me this hunk of plastic to notice th e television was emmiting rather odd sounds. I looked at the tv and saw a man with a chef hat on, running around stepping on meat and bread. I remember asking how to play, and being totally confused as to how the disk worked. He told me this was the intellivision and i was playing burger time.

 

That was my first experiance.. then i moved on to an atari 7800.. then an snes.. genisis..saturn.. and now dreamcast.

 

Im glad that now i have analog pads and controllers that dont feel odd in my hands. The first time i saw the magic of controlling the screen i was hooked. From Burgertime to Jet Grind Radio, I think ive done pretty good.

 

This holiday season, the same uncle was down. I sat hi down in my room, handed him the controller and let him have a turn at experiancing the magic of the videogame.

 

I asked him if he remembered the intellivision or the atari and he lit up and played a few rounds of burgertime and Starmaster for old times sake.

 

Games never fail to make someones day, I beleive they are some of the most healing things out there.... as long as your not getting the crap beat out of you by the game

[Lemmi]

Mine was at my uncles house i was around the age of 7, he had a pong system (roberts Sportrama , me and my cousin would play that all the time when i visited

[liveinabin]

Playing Doctors and Nurses with Jennifer Myers, does that count

[Atari-Jess]

Back in 1991, the NES was now cheap and still was the thing to buy, I had just started school and had very horrible asthma. This had caused me to be home on very many days, on those days I would become rather bored watching re-runs of "happy days" and "the flintstones" and had basicly nothing to do. so, my Mother had an idea, solve this problem with video games! so we went to canadian tire, and purchased a NES system. for about 100 bucks it was a cheap buy and something very fun, so it took us about an hour to figure out how to plug this thing into the large TV that we still have (and still works wonderfully) and after that quite bothersome hour of wait, I was finally able to hold on to the small controllers and play the first video game I had ever seen, Super Mario Bros. Me and my Dad played that game a lot and this finally solved my boredom of the sick kid missing school problem. At one point the POST cereals gave away free Nintendo stickers and instead of the normal 2 that should be in a box of alphabits, a whopping 16!! stickers were in the box by accident, needless to say I was very happy and right then and there found my NES and placed a couple on it. I still have a lemmi (hehe) a wart and a doctor mario sticker on my dying and fragile NES.

 

If not for the NES and asthma, I would have never found my way onto Atari...

[ubersaurus]

Yeah, I still remember my dad wasting Starmaster. He still does on occaision.

[Nateo]

Let's see... I was 3 yrs. old, and my brother was one. Our family had taken a trip down to Tennesee to see my Aunt Cherie and Uncle Buddy. They had bought an NES with SMB/Duck Hunt. My brother and I were so excited about the colorful graphics and the neat little sounds. Needless to say, I asked my parents if we could by a video game. My parents gave me the excuse they would give me for six more years: "It's too expensive." And two years later they would tell me that and "It will distract you from your school-work." I wanted a video game system so badly, I would take shoe boxes and a joystick from our Tandy 1000, make a hole in the shoe box (the controller port), and call it something like "the Mega Video System." But then, when I was nine, on Christmas, I was overjoyed to see a Super Nintendo near the fire place. We got Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario All-Stars, and another game that I forgot the name of. Man, we played the heck out of that thing. And this was 1996, about two years before the SNES was discontinued.

[Nateo]

By the way, our Tandy 1000 had games on it, but it wasn't the same as a real video game console.

[charin]

My first gaming experience was playing Enduro and Asteroids on Atari 2600.

When my father bought an Atari (Polyvox) for me, it came with the game Adventure. He also bought Enduro.

 

Sergio

[NE146]

My first gaming experience was in a dark family restaurant that also had a bar in it. They always had one pinball machine and a long machine where you bowled with a hockey puck into plastic pins. One night while eating there, my brothers and sisters spied a new addition to the area, a strange table with a video game in it. Turns out it was Pong. I'm not sure if it was an original Atari Pong or some knock off, but Pong it was. I played it and my older sister beat me every time. A few years later Space Invaders machines hit town and were soon everywhere you looked. I'd spy into them curiously and watch others play them but it was hard tiptoeing and seeing pass the bezel artwork. Later on however, I worked up the nerve and played it and thus began my videogame obsession.

[pitfallaimee]

Earliest? Playing River Raid and Space Invaders in our den when I was about 2...shortly after that we got a Tandy 1000, which got me into games in earnest (Space Quest, Kings Quest, and a myriad of similar games. Unfortunately, we hit hard times, and my next system was an SNES seven or eight years later that I purchased myself. If I hadn't had that early start with video games, I'd probably never have started collecting. In fact, I might have turned out like a "normal" 17 year old girl ! I thank my Ataris for every single day for preventing such a horrific event.

[VidGameKing]

I played combat on a 2600Jr. that my dad bought for himself because he always wanted a home computer, it was when they first came out. He never could aford any other home computers, Even though he's been a programmer his ENTIRE life. I was like five or six. I wasent good at it at all. and thats as much as I can remember.

 

[ 01-23-2002: Message edited by: marialover ]

[Adrian M]

Christmas 1982. I was in first grade. Parents got me and my sister a 2600 (finally!) with the elusive Pacman game that I so desperately wanted!

 

After hooking up the system, I played a very quick game of Combat and then immediately loaded up Pac-Man. The next 8 hours were spent playing that game. Even though it was a poor port, I wasn't too disappointed...I finally had my very own version of Pac-Man to play at home!

 

I think I also got E.T. and Star Voyager, but I don't think I even opened those games until 2 days later! Great memories!

[Curt Vendel]

Well, I remember playing arcade games at the local roller rinks when I was like 8-9, they used to have a long row of games on the side near the concession stands....

 

I got the chance to play an Atari 2600 with Adventure at a friend of a friends house acrss from Jr High School freshman year and Adventure just blew my mind, it was like the game was thinking and stuff, the bat and the dragons actually chasing after the square was just mindboggling, I was hooked!!! Well, I asked for an Atari for bday but got one of those crappy Radio Shack all-in-one game systems and needless to say was NOT happy, but Christmas came along and with it came not only an Atari 2600 but Activision skiing as well.... man I can remember having all my friends over ever night until like 8pm when my mother would chase everyone out for the night and we would be playing skiing and having a ball on my little b&w 13" TV.... then other kids got Atari's too and we started to bring carts into school and was swap them for the night or a weekend and try out each others games... I remember my friend Greg and I were curious about what was inside of a cartridge and we poked a screwdriver in and the lid pushed back, we were 1/2 expecting to see a tape reel inside (naive little kids we were) and then only seeing the green "wood" with gold pins and then seeing the same thing on the very Activision skiing cart too, we were baffled.... so now it was time to open up the mysterious 2600 and look inside.... not much to look at, but wow how cool!!! :-) Well, that was a fun trip down memory lane, thanks for starting this thread!

 

 

Curt

The Atari History Site

[iguana]

I remember my brother and I playing football on the 2600 on Christmas eve at my aunts house. They did not have kids but got the 2600 that day (they were the cool Aunt and Uncle) so we were over for dinner and got to play. The next day I woke up and opened one for us! it was great! we played breakout and combat all day long.

[geogray]

My first gaming experience was an Odyssey. Yep, the original. We also got, a little later, a Unisonic 4 game console. I remember how exciting it was to play ALL THOSE games on the Odyssey...Tennis, Hockey, 'football', Sub hunt...Oh what realism! What color! I'm being a little sarcastic about the machines capabilities, but still, I COULD play games on TV. When I got the Odyssey 2, I was in hog heaven...

[t.skid]

My first experience with videogames ever was with Space Invaders, the arcade. It was in 1978, I think.

Then, my first home console was a "4-games" politoys (or polistil, who knows..), with the "classic" pong, squash, soccer and... tennis, maybe. Probably 1981.

Before get my first Atari 2600, in 1984, I've also used a lot of things, like my cousin's ZX Spectrum, a RE-EL console (it was made by a factory of my own city; RE-EL means Reggio Emilia Electronics. Maybe it's rare now ), an Atari 800XL.

Following, in 1985 I trade my VCS for a Vic-20; then C64 etc etc.

[Jun Kazama]

i dont really remember my first experiance playing video games

 

i know it had to have been on the NES b/c my dad sold the atari b4 i was born (not his smartist move in my openion) anyways i remember playing duck hunt then zelda i dont remember wich one the only thing i remember was that i couldnt read so i got my dad to read everything for me in the villages

( thats the only thing i did was talk to the people in the villages i was like 5 maybe younger i didnt know what to do) then eventually i worked my way up to mario and after that i was in love