What/when was your introduction to video gaming as a hobby?

Hybris, Mattel Intellivision in...1979.  My dad worked at...GTE, and they worked with Mattel, on it.  I got it for Christmas, along with Football, and armor battle!

My love for games didn't start until Wolfenstein 3D came out. The family had a SNES and a Sega Genesis then, but the first game I absolutely loved was WOLF3D. 

Pong.  We had one of those yellow/orange plastic boxes that you could hook up to your TV, and I remember playing it with my brother.

 

In truth, the Atari 2600 was the real game changer as far as starting any sort of video game mania for myself and my friends.  We'd all beg our parents to buy us the latest game cartridges and spend hours and HOURS in front of our TVs.  Good God, the days that I spent trying to map out all of the screens for 'Pitfall!'...

If we are talking cabinet gaming it would be Joust, Donkey Kong and Spy Hunter at the local pizza parlor.

 

If home gaming it would be Demons to Diamonds, Asteroids and Pitfall on an Atari 2600.

Got an NES back in the day and played Mario and Ninja Turtles.

I actually stopped for a while because I thought my brother spilled water in the system. Me being like 5, didn't bother to check to see if the system would still work. So I was surprised it did like a year later.

I really didn't get into the games till SNES came out.

Funny that history repeated itself when I had an X-Box and the drive went out. I didn't care to fix it for a while. Then had a re-interest around the time the PS3 came out. I had an X-Box 360 for a little bit, but I never played it, so I gave it to my brother. Still, I guess I'm more into random casual games on my iPhone and rarely use the PS3 for games. I did play the shit out of Arkham City and have been known to play a round of Mortal Kombat every blue moon.

I've played Halo 3 once in my life. Oh my good am I getting old?

My parents had a colecovision when I was really young, and then my next door neighbor got an NES and I was hooked.  I remember playing SMB, RC Pro-AM, and Excitebike a lot at their house, and then my parents finally got me one of my own later that year, probably because I was never home.  I've never stopped playing.

I was a total NES kid.  Probably saw SMB at some other kid's house and really wanted it.  I was totally into Nintendo Power too.  Toooootally!

Never had a gaming system until my Grandpa won us an N64 in a contest, so all my early memories are PC-related

 

I have very indistinct memories of playing adventure games (Kings Quest and the like) on an old monochrome computer. Don't remember anything about it other than a game called "Hard Hat Mack", and that there was some kind of witch in Kings Quest who would eat you if you ran into her.

 

My more distinct memories are later, games like Sim City and Myst, but the first time I remember being REALLY hooked on a game was playing Descent (a game which is criminally underrated). I would play that with friends over a 56k modem, which was basically the coolest experience in the world at that time. Descent is also, coincidentally, the only PC game from that era that really holds up when I go back to revisit it.

First game I stayed up all night playing was Quake. Anything before that means NOTHING!

My first hit. It was fully immersive & absolutely glorious.

 

My mid-90s addiction. I've only bought one or two games a year since but GE N64 was the one that got me into consoles for good.

It was Christmas, and I think I was about 3 when we got an old Atari 2600 with a shitload of games, and an NES with Super Mario Bros/Duckhunt. 3 years old, I didn't have a chance in the world, pretty much hooked from the start.

I remember playing Yars' Revenge and Q*Bert on Atari way, way back when I was 4 or 5. Got a Nintendo in '87. Then a Gameboy. Then a Genesis. Then a Super Nintendo. N64. Playstation. PS2. My gaming has dropped off in recent years, though I've been buying old SNES games on eBay when I'm feeling nostalgic.

I remember being amazed by the flies that would gather around corpses in Quake II.

My first console was the NES, I would play it off an on when the days were shitty outside, but I was a more outdoors kid then. I hated sports (asthma killed that dream pretty early on), but loved doing random stuff in the backyard, mostly trying to build shit with stuff I could find. I have a pretty clear memory of trying to make a Daddy-Long-Legs I found the cornerstone of a litte sandcastle, it was not easy.

Now that I've gotten thoroughly off topic let me say I didn't want to kill the arachnid, I just was testing it's use as a building material.

Anyway when Super Mario Bros. 3 came out it was my first experience of a game getting it's hooks into me, haven't looked back since. Not that original or interesting, which was why I digressed with a meager attempt to inject some humor into my post.

I'm not sure which came first chronologically, so I'll just put these two down as one or the other.

 

 

A) 5 years old, christmas. I open my box and low and behold, therein lies my very own NES System, with 2 controllers, a light gun and Mario bros. One of my favorite memories

 

B) Vacation to summerland BC. Camping in a campground by a lake or something. I don't really know cause I was in a small overhang that had a Gradius box.... I remember stealing all of my dads change out of the RV to play it all weekend. He was pissed, I was in gaming heaven.

Owned a NES loved it, then got a SNES when it came out. After the SNES I didn't own a gaming system for a very long time. It was a buddy of mine that bought Golden Eye. It's been uphill from there.

It probably started when my uncle ran a pool hall when I was a tyke and I used to play Space Invaders for what seemed like hours at a time (for free!)  In fact, I was surprised when I first encountered a video game machine  that actually cost money to play.

 

As far as home gaming, the good ol' Atari 2600 and its post industry collapse $1 games at Big Lots.  I probably used to have 30-40 games for that thing.

N64. Ocarina of Time 4lyfe!

 

...Wait, am I the first one posting here who started playing in that "generation?" Goddamn, I'm a baby.

I received my Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988. A Christmas gift from my parents, I was 7. Super Mario/Duckhunt.  I played it, but what hooked me into gaming was the Sega Genesis, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Altered Beast. Damnnation, I loved that system. My friends all had SNES, and years later I would get one, but man... that hooked me in.

Was anyone else in love with these Nintendo Power comics as I used to be!?

 

http://yoshiart.com/comics.php

 

 

The Princess wearing Luigi's clothes?  HOT.

You were never a member of the Super Power Club!?

NES. Got it the Christmas before my 7th birthday, along with Jordan vs Bird. Couldn't get past the last major pit (the one between two flights of stairs) in World 1-1. I cried.

 

I then spent the next months and a half stone faced and determined to make that game my bitch. And did.

 

I then thought I'd follow that up with something cooler, maybe easier.

 

So, I bought the first Ninja Turtles game.

 

Which took a year and a half to beat.

I must've rented that game a whole bunch of times and never gotten close to beating it.  I doubt I ever passed the water stage.

 

 

And so I moved onto TMNT: The Arcade Game.  But I wasn't good at that either.

For me it must have been some game on the Vic 20, but it wasn't really until the C64 that I really started to fall for gaming - with your Falcon Patrols, your Flak's, your Gumshoes and your Summer and World Gameses. I was the greatest slalom skier and cliff diver the world had ever known.

 

 

 

Those were both my grandmother's computers though. The first time I got heavy into a game on a computer that was actually in my house was F-19 Stealth Fighter in 1990, back when I still felt the need, the need, for speed. Good old DOS. Good times.

 

 

 

I still remember where I was and what I was doing the first time I ever saw that game. It seemed like magic. It blew our tiny little minds.

 

Shit, if you wanna talk "surgical precision"...

Damn you Battletoads!  I still weep with the post traumatic stress syndrom that level gave me.

It occurs to me that I had a Spartan's training when it comes to this dear hobby of mine. The first six games I ever got:

 

SMB1

TMNT 1

Mega Man 2

Ninja Gaiden II

Blaster Master

Zelda II (oddly enough, played this before the original)

 

 

Except for Blaster Master (I wouldn't get around to beating that till 8th grade), I beat all of those within months. I was weaned on games that did not fuck around with the player in any way. And, again, I was 7.

 

And this is why nothing fucking scares me.

Whoops. Double post.

This Godless button masher made me give up NES games altogether until Goldeneye came out:

 

Just seeing that screenshot almost activated some kind of throw-something-against-the-wall muscle memory.

 

I was born in '84, so NES and Mario Bros were my introduction. Mega Man 2 is what sealed the deal. I've fallen away from gaming the past few years, so I end up picking up the big games a year or so after they come out. But once I start playing, I'm 10 years old again and can't put the controller down.

SUNUVABEEEITCH!!!

 

 

Switch out Blaster Master for motherfucking Karnov and that was pretty much my crash course as well. Trial by fire, baby.

I remember seeing some kid play this on his home computer as a tyke in '85(?). Blew me away.

I must have been three or four years old, and my Dad and I would get up early on Saturday mornings and get donuts for the family at the shop down the street. There was a Donkey Kong cabinet, and before we left he would pump quarters into it and hold me up so I could play.

 

God, I love my dad.

 

Whiner.

I just remember my asshole friend would never let me play it.

 

I'm not sure exactly how young I was, but when I was a wee tyke my great uncle owned the local arcade parlour, and since we used to stop by and visit him and the Great Aunt often (the front of the arcade was a newsagents), I became a big videogame fan at a very young age . . . not having to pay for them was a tremendous help.  Even back in the day when they were only 20c a game!

 

Thing I remember most, though, was that he actually had a PUCKMAN cabinet.  I always grew up knowing it as Puckman for years until giving it up finally because no one else in the world seemed to have heard of it.  Imagine my surprise when Scott Pilgrim tried cracking onto Ramona all those years later . . .

I'm out of LIKES!

 

Also, I completely forgot about that surfing stage!  Damn, that was an amazing game.  I think it may have been the rotor-bike stage (that climbed on walls?) that I couldn't get past?  I don't even remember.  Maybe I did beat the game.  But on an emulator much later on, which isn't the same thing at all.  But I'm not sure about that either.

 

I have no idea what it was called. It was probably some Chinese knock-off with two paddle controllers and four Pong variations my parents got me when I was four or five. It still did a great job at roping me in. Shit, I've been gaming for thirty fucking three years now. Shit.