What was your first video game and what was your favorite memory associated with it?

[apragon]

My oldest memory of playing a game is I think playing Yoshi Story on the N64. My fondest memory is taking turns to play the game with my dad and discovering the secret eggs.

[mrsleep]

The first game I ever played was Pac-Man at the 7/11 when I was about 7. My friends and I were all just blown away, we had never seen anything like it. We stuffed as many quarters as we could get our hands on into that machine even though we sucked at the game.

[ares88]

I don't remember its name, or what I played it with... I think it was Amiga and it had these people hacking enemies with weapons in fantasy esque setting.

[qwuzzy]

Probably Halo Co-op with my dad. Every time you spawned in you spawned directly behind the other player, so every time we spawned in we'd kill each other. By the end there was just a pile of maybe 50 dead bodies.

[sidequester]

Mike Tyson's Punch Out, and my first thought was "Dad how do I beat the second guy?"

[WastelandMan]

Enduro. Racing game on the 2600. First game I can remember playing. Years later River City Ransom was the game me and my best friend would constantly rent from the local video store. Played the shit out of it. Great times.

[Ratsquid]

I don't think it was my first game but I look back fondly on playing sitting cross legged on the floor 6" away from the TV playing micro machines before school with a bowl of cereal in my lap I can still picture it in my mind, I think Mario was what got me to obtain a console in the first place

[Caranekka]

The 1st game I ever played was the 1st Diablo when I was about 4. Had no idea how to play but I had a good time!

[Ydoc]

It's hard to say for me. Either War of the Gems or Frankenstein on the Super Nintendo. Frankenstein was a shit show and I sucked major dong at it as I was 4 or 5. War of the Gems on the other hand was me and my cousins favorite game for quite a long time. For some reason there was an Alien in that game.

[Trustworthycanadian]

My first ever video game was Tonka adventure created in 1996. One of the memories i really recall is in the link i posted with this. I believe i was about 5-6 years of age at the time ( 24 years old now) but I always found it curious how people start there slow journey through games. Best memory of the game was completing a skyscraper by spam clicking everywhere cause the click box for the next steps where so bad back in the day . What a time to be alive.

[Lars]

Super Mario Bros for the NES. I recently found an old school book from 1st grade. It's one of those books where you write what you did over your weekend. Looks like it made it into my book. After I had purchased the NES (for my own saved money mind you) I and my cousin played it to bits over the weekend. Apparently to the extent we "couldn't even force our eyes open by fatigue".

[Sorain]

The first game? I can't remember for sure. But there is one that I clearly remember.

U.N. Squadron for SNES. I rented it when I was six or so, enjoyed it to death but simply could not manage to make it to the end. Not even with back to back rentals. I ended up renting it so often in my pursuit of victory that when the Hollywood Video closed down, they held on to it to sell to my mom. God speed to those employees. I never managed it after more than a year (after buying it!) of trying several times a month. I held on to it, not even angry but for some reason convinced "I can't do this, YET."

Years later, when I was fifteen I was home from school sick with a sinus infection, it was raining like crazy and I decided to pull out my SNES and when I looked into the games, there it was. Waiting for me, my old struggle that I had accepted I could not beat and I said aloud to an empty house. "It's time." I expected that this would be a real ordeal, that I would need to get back into the groove and work my way up, I shelved my gaming plans for the next month in anticipation of a monumental struggle to overcome.

Hours later, after finally managing to afford the most powerful plane in the game, the F200 Efreet, and having enough cash to fill out it's obscene arsenal of special weapons fully, I settled down for the first mission I'd never managed to beat before. The cave boss, flamer abusing, ceiling hugging monster that it was, fell under a rain of specialized weapons the like of which I'd never used before. Leaving me to face my first true unknown, The Project 4 Base. I have the OST to this day because I sometimes wake up with it in my head, especially the music to this area. I finally shot down the flying battleship of the Project 4 base, throwing my entire arsinel at the blasted thing while I focused on not dying, having to circle it three times as the slow scroll subjected me to fire I couldn't retaliate against because the weak-points left were off screen.

It went down and I was left stunned. Because I was watching the ending. That was it. All this time I'd had this image in my head of the cave boss as this insurmountable barrier as a child, that I had assumed it was just a wake up call to the real challenging battles ahead. That I simply wasn't ready to face what lay beyond. My mom found me sitting there, crying tears of joy as an ancient 16 bit game's credits rolled, because I hadn't just overcome this ancient foe, but had utterly subjugated it. I had looked back with older, wiser eyes upon what my memory held, summoned up ancient muscle memory and without consciously realizing it, torn my own failures apart so completely that I went in with a strategy far more effective than I'd needed.

To this day and despite many great games since, even despite the satisfaction I had gotten from Colony Wars: Vengeance's (PS1 game) best ending... That remains the story I'll tell my children about why video games are a worthy medium. The sheer sense of progress I felt at fifteen as it played the distinctive intro riff on the title screen, (this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXfTCHtbF8Y) the credits over on that rainy day... I had to try and spend the next hour explaining it to my mother, to find the words to express what it meant to me that I was so much more capable then I had thought back then and even now, sick, I was so much more capable than I had been then.

I still have my SNES and the copy, MY copy, because it still means something to me. Only to me, yes, but it has meaning.

[Newenida]

Wow, great story. I adore this aspect of games - this satisfaction when you overcome your struggles. This is why my husband always plays on highest difficulty possible - cause it will take him longer to succeed, but satisfaction is enormous.

[Yiggdrasill]

Super Mario world back on the snes. It was a family thing. I was taught how to play by my babysitter and my older brother fritted out secrets. I still remember when he found special road.

[GermanCrayon664]

My first game was Pokemon Fire Red, and my favorite memory was mowing down the elite 4 with a level 100 Mewtwo my brother got. I remember doing it over and over again because I didn't know how to save at the time

[Jetstream]

Lemings on the old Commodore Amiga (yes, Im that old!)
Played with my dad on weekends, good time ^^