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

[twidget]

The early 80s are a blur to me now.
I have no idea which was first.

I remember going to an arcade just to play Q*bert.
A buddy and I player a lot of Radarscope at our favorite bar.
PGA Golf on the Intellivision at a friends home.

The first game I owned was Donkey Kong.
It was the ColecoVision's pack-in.

[The10thRavager]

My first ever video game was Ratchet & Clank (2002) for the PS2 back in the day, and my fondest moments were probably when I would reach planet Quartu and the sick tunes would kick in as used giant Clank to fight heavily armed mechs.

[NamelessGhoul]

Super Mario 3 on the SNES, i'm not sure how old i was, i just remember that me, my sister, and my dad had a ton of fun playing it

[TK42Kahn]

The very first game I can recall playing was Contra for the NES. My greatest memory had to be the first time I beat it without the Konami code and without dying.
In the 8th level there is a series 4 of spiked plungers that stab down on the player killing them instantly like everything else in the game.
The first plunger drops once before pausing allowing the player to advance underneath.
The second drops twice, the third three times then the fourth and final drops NINE TIMES before pausing.
NINE!
So much for predictable progression. Passing what felt like the silliest challenge in an already silly difficult game was quite validating.

[SaltyPaladin]

My first video game was Santa Claus in Trouble. You might not have heard of it but it was very popular here on the Balkan Peninsula. A parkour game where you play as Santa trying collect all the presents you can, reaching the end of a lvl by not falling into the abyss, avoiding monsters, jumping over fires and getting thrusted upwards by a donut of spraying smoke. Me and my three best friends would often stay after school in a room where kids could draw, write, interact with each other and talk to the teachers. There was also a computer. We were often fighting about who gets to play next. Some other games we played the most were "Rosso rabbit" and Far Cry. I can't remember which Far Cry though. We went to that after-school stay room every day during the 2nd and 3rd grade after which I unfortunately had to change schools. A lot of us would watch the gameplay while we weren't playing. Some of us would often sit next to the computer, so children were often pressing the restart button with their legs not knowing what they were doing. This would often piss off the teachers responsible for taking care of us.

I recently downloaded it again after 7 years and played it. I could beat it in the past but I just couldn't this time around. The controls are garbage which is understandable since the game was made before 2005. The graphics are still pretty, somehow, either that or I was being nostalgic. However they didn't catch my eye for very long. The farthest I got was lvl 8 after which I lost my patience and stopped. It is one of the games closest to my hears, and I definitely won't forget all the memories it brought to me.

[Teratus]

My first game was Super Mario Bros 3.. I was about 4 years old when my father came home with a NES system and a copy of SMB3 and the Legend of Zelda.
I don't recall much of this time as I was very young.. only that from the second my parents put that controller in my hand I was hooked.

Pushing the buttons and moving the images on the TV.. being able to control them was facinating to me, I'd only ever seen cartoons and people on there before and now I was making the cartoons move and jump.
The only real memory I have of the NES era is my mom being mad at me that I beat Zelda before she did XD
We didn't have internet back then so no looking shit up when we got stuck ^^ she couldn't find the last dungeon giving me time to catch up and beat the game first ^^

Aside from that one I don't recall much else since before the SNES which is when my love for playing games became more of an obsession thanks to games like Super Mario All Stars, Super Mario World, Donkey Kong Country and Mystic Quest.
Games I still own and love to this day ^^

[NamelessGhoul]

You really couldn't have said it better, actually being able to control a character on the TV, was mind boggling to me at the time, and i think that's a big reason that Link to the past, is still one of my all time favorite games, well that and the fact its an amazing game in general, its one of the few games i've kept track of due to those reasons

[Teratus]

Link to the past is one of the only SNES games I havent recovered on cartridge, I have to remedy that at some point.
I do have it on GBA though and can play it on the Tv with my Gamecube GBA attachment but it's not the same as having that proper SNES feeling ^^

It's good to see someone else had a similar experience as I did with controlling TV images.
It was kinda like playing cartoons to my young brain

I wonder how many hours I invested into A Link to the Past.. I know I beat the game before my mother though again XD and we never found the cape item either.
I didn't find that until many years later.
Even today we're both huge Zelda fans ^^

[Jaime_Dover]

My first game was ghostbusters with my cousin but my first really big game memory was saving and working to be able to buy Angel of Darkness. I saved up for weeks of chores to get that and finally did and played it and sure the game wasn't great but the first game I bought.

[MikeWrenches]

It's far too long ago to remember which was first, but I guess the oldest game a remember playing much of was Hang-On on my cousin's Master System. That old fake-wood TV with a terrible picture in a dark cavern of a room, because the screen was so dim. It was awesome. My older cousin was ace at the Master System's built-in snail labyrinth game!

I remember trying to play Police Quest on a friend's dad's 386 in elementary school and being mad for Excite Bike on my neighbour's NES.

My first actual game that we owned was KEITH COURAGE IN ALPHA ZONES on the TG16 :lol Looking at retro reviews I guess it sucked, but to a 9 year old kid back then it was fun!

[EZ SLOTH]

I have a few games on that list that I have seen other post such as; the original Mario on Nintendo, Duck Hunt, Atari Pong and I think it was Atari Battlefields or War ( I remember tanks or something), but there was one game that has always stuck with me and that is Nintendo Ice Hockey. My brother and I sunk endless hours into that game and created a great rivalry that holds vividly fun memories. It was just entertainment to the max and never seemed to get old. Check it out, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kXVFCfBWoQ
I would love it if anyone would reply to let me know if they remember this game! Although, there was so much body shaming in it...jk.

[Spawn]

the first video game I've played was Halo Combat Evolved and my favorite memory was when you were fighting hunters on Truth and Reconciliation inside the covenant ship. and me and my brother were so tense trying to kill the two hunters where he died and all I had left was a plasma pistol, we were screaming "shoot it, shoot it" and I ran out of ammo and I died, and we laughed so hard when mastercheif's body launched across the room.

[EZ SLOTH]

Also! Battletoads!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Hosenfeld]

Sonic the Hedgehog for Genesis. Was a bit hard for me, as I was so young. The first game I really got into was the second installment, Sonic the Hedgehog 2. I've played it so, so many times.

I have fond memories of the first time I beat the last boss in Sonic 3 on my own. Normally I needed someone to help me, & never could beat the game on my own. Always had my dad help, haha. When I finally did it on my own, it was a huge rush, as silly as that likely sounds. I was really young then, of course(like 5 or something), so the difficulty seemed much higher lmao.

Good times. Those games, especially 2, are still some of my faves. Very nostalgic.

...I still haven't played Sonic Mania, somehow, & still really want to. I keep forgetting, oop.

[EZ SLOTH]

being young and playing sonic was freaking hard! Even with ADD I could barely keep up.

[Teratus]

Yeah ^^ Sonic was damn hard.. still is in parts tbh.

These young uns with their health regen and respawns will never know the pain and the sheer dread we all experienced when we lost our last life and had to restart the whole damn game XD

Those old Sonic games were brutal haha and the countdown music that played when you were about to drown.. even now it makes me panic XD

[CuppaJoe]

Tank, on Commodore 64 is my earliest memory of gaming. My old man used to put my in front of the Commodore to shut me up. It was a sound plan and I've been quiet for the past 30 years.

[N7Mith]

Not the absolute first, but the first game that really made an impact on me, was SimCity2000. Lots of great memories. My dad got it when I was 9 or 10. The first night he completely forgot to send me and my brother to bed and the three of us played until 4 or 5 am. Then my mom came downstairs, totally mad at my dad for letting us stay up so late
Me and my brother only got a 1 hour playtime on the computer per week, so we drew out our cities on raster-paper. Every session ended with a screenshot of how far we got, which was never far enough of course. One time I screwed with my brother by switching or turning his sheets, and it took him 10 minutes to realize he was following the wrong thing. Absolutely hilarious at that time, then he got me back by turning down all my taxes to 0 when I had to go to the bathroom, and it took me around the same time to figure out why my city was losing money
One time I spent 45 minutes rebuilding after an earthquake and I completely lost it when my time was up. Learned 2 important lessons that day; taking it out on my dad is the worst thing I could do, and save every 5 minutes .

[Soullless Twilight]

I remember when i was about 3 or 4, my family had WAY more money than nowadays (we were like middle class, now we started being low class like 2 years later), so my dad bought a windows xp computer or something like that, and a friend of his gave him a cd with a emulator of this irl machines that you put coins in and play games, so i started playing and i remember playing Metal slug 3 with my sister and killing the final boss for the first time, we were both so happy that i still feel warmth inside me when i recall it.