How did you become a gamer? [Archive]

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Morvak

11-28-08, 02:16 PM

I was just thinking about how I got into gaming, if it was the Atari 2600 or arcade games, and then I remembered this:

http://www.pong-picture-page.de/catalog/images/Coleco%20Telstar%206065%20Combat_www.JPG

My Dad bought this back in the mid-70's. I'm pretty sure it was a precursor to the Atari 2600 and its Tank game. You plugged this console right up to a TV and played 1 game: tank. Just 2 players controlling Atari type tanks on a screen with some barracades. That was it.

(ha, I never thought I'd ever find a photo of it)

freakdiablo

11-28-08, 02:26 PM

http://www.pwned.com/gamecovers/pc/TotalAnnihilation.jpg

My first real game. I remember my dad being mad because it didn't work at first and after an hour on the phone with tech support he realised he needed a new video card for the family computer. I still remember that card, it was a Diamond Monster Video, and they used the same box for different models. Still have the box and laugh whenever I see the check boxes for 256kb, 128kb, and "0kb" of ram.

hajalie24

11-28-08, 02:53 PM

i think it was super mario 64, or maybe super smash bros that got me interested.

Stratus_ss

11-28-08, 03:12 PM

I can't remember really, are we talking consoles or computers?
My Uncle bought us an NES in '87 played Mario, and RBI baseball to death.
If you are talking computers, I dont remember the year, but I know where we were living at the time. I was young and my dad had gotten a computer for work. It was a 286, he played kings quest. I used to watch, never got into KQ myself. I more enjoyed Roger Wilco. First game I bought myself? Bo Jackson's Baseball. Ran in dos, I believe Windows 3.1 was on the computer at the time

metloaf

11-28-08, 03:16 PM

Commodore 64 back in the day. Lots of games for it. Then moved to Atari 2600, and then PC 386 SX. Now that was a super gaming system with 16 mb of RAM. :beer:

BossBorot

11-28-08, 03:30 PM

chips challenge

http://www.hyperbole-software.com/ChipsChallenge/images/game.gif

shadin

11-28-08, 03:37 PM

I started out when I was about three or four years old on an Atari 2600 that belonged to my brother, I'd play Defender, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Pitfall, and a few other games while he was gone to school. Then Christmas of '86 my parents bought me an Atari 7800, which was awesome in that it played 2600 games as well. So Atari started it all for me.

After that I had an NES, and SNES, then I got my first PC in 1993 and PC gaming has been in the forefront with me since. In fact, I missed all but the most blockbuster games on N64/PSX, and I'm still catching up on PS2/GameCube exclusive titles to this day.

terran2k

11-28-08, 03:50 PM

my atari 2600 and CelecoVision got me into games.

sandyduff

11-28-08, 03:52 PM

Doom!! My dad bought me it when i was about 7... he bought it when it was first released which was '93 if im not mistaken... he never let me play it much for two reason.... 1. it was graphically violent... that makes me laugh now when you look at current violent games.... and the second reason was he thot i might get addicted to video games... well... 15 years later and i havnt stopped playing video games!!

for me it was PC(didnt even have a mouse)->Nes->SNES->Playstation->PS2->Gamecube->Current PC ->wii and soon possibly a PS3... :D

Godfather1138

11-28-08, 04:05 PM

Commodore 64 and a pile of floppys

jaymz9350

11-28-08, 04:30 PM

I started with a ColecoVision and later got my cousins old C64.

About 94 we got our first PC and I played the crap out of doom, xwing, and some rally game i had. pretty much hooked me on games for life.

I took quite a few years away from PC as i didn't have one but as soon as I got a PC again I was addicted.

Mr.DLucey

11-28-08, 04:36 PM

john240sx

11-28-08, 04:42 PM

Apple IIc and a slew of games. I can only remember a few off the top of my head, like Oregon Trail and Rocket Factory. I was only like 5 and got an NES soon after. Classic NES RPG's like Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy and Legend of Zelda are the true beginning of my gaming addiction.

SteveLord

11-28-08, 05:41 PM

Started with these for the PC side.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/46/Treasure_Mountain!_Coverart.png

http://www.sportsftw.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/oregon-trail.jpg

Consoles. Atari 2600.

YOO

11-28-08, 06:10 PM

i started with this one, man i miss playing this one i remember playing it for hours
i beat the game like more than 5 times and enjoyed every second of it.

http://i34.tinypic.com/2e1b1fn.jpg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0yzczO8_Ec

lordkosc

11-28-08, 06:47 PM

Also my first game EVER

http://www.sportsftw.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/oregon-trail.jpg

And I played this on an APPLE PC o.O

Shiggity

11-28-08, 06:56 PM

The first game I can remember playing was lemonade stand on the PC with one of those square disks that came before floppies.

I played NES a bit, but not much, never owned one.

Then I went to SNES / SimCity 2000 (all the sims really) / Doom / Command and Conquer. I really got into RTS's after C&C Red Alert. Total Annhilation, empire earth, age of empires, warcraft, starcraft.

Then N64 came out, awesome system. After N64 I never really got back into consoles, I had PS2 and like 6 games, but never really played that much. Mainly PC.

Then the past 5 years has been pretty much 0% console and 100% PC. Mainly due to Blizzard owning my life. Diablo II -> World of Warcraft.

All in all I have to say it was a combination of Super Nintendo and the early FPS/RTS PC games.

Chixofnix

11-28-08, 09:12 PM

i first got interested in the arcades, then followed consoles, DOS, windows etc...

ratbuddy

11-28-08, 09:18 PM

3rd-4th grade or so. I discovered Zork on the Apple in the school's library and would skip lunch to play it. The teacher always had to send someone to get me. After that was Lemonade Stand, Oregon Trail, etc. We got a Tandy 1000 at home in 1988ish and it was all downhill from there. Sierra FTW..

Kasm

11-28-08, 09:54 PM

I first became a gamer when NES came out. I went over my cousins house and was like what is that!? I have been hooked ever since

mage_x

11-28-08, 11:49 PM

This pretty much sums it up..

http://www.ffclassic.net/images/nes/box.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/0e/Super_Mario_Bros_box.jpg

UnrealAlex

11-29-08, 01:00 AM

http://www.classic-pc-games.com/thumbs/pc/arcade_action/antartic_adventure_01.jpg
http://www.classic-pc-games.com/thumbs/pc/arcade_action/antartic_adventure_03.jpg

then Doom, Duke Nukem 3D. Also played a lot of Sega.

Ben333

11-29-08, 01:03 AM

My first favorite game I remember

http://www.videogamesblogger.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/07/super-mario-bros.-3-screenshot-title.jpg

Mpegger

11-29-08, 06:48 AM

For me it started with the Atari 2600 and all those old Nintendo Game&Watch series.

Dak9767

11-29-08, 07:53 AM

Started playing games on a Sinclair Z81 then moved to an Atari 2600.

sulretal

11-29-08, 08:25 AM

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41QXV3QEJ0L._SL500_AA280_.jpg

Twigglish

11-29-08, 08:48 AM

Madden and Mario/Duck Hunt on the SNES
Sonic and some ninja game on Sega
IQube on the PS(Man I wish I could play this again)
StarCraft and Diablo were the first PC I remember. Heroes of Might and Magic III was there as well, still play this actually.

Mr.Guvernment

11-29-08, 10:35 AM

Console games were my first exposure, atari, then NES then my uncle got an SNES after n64 he bought his first computer and that was when i really got into gaming, first game "i" bought was Delta Force, loved it!

Omsion

11-29-08, 10:50 AM

chips challenge

http://www.hyperbole-software.com/ChipsChallenge/images/game.gifThat game was awesome! Never did beat the last level, though. Maybe given some age now, I probably can - if a copy can be found.

Anyway, I had a NES that was good fun. But I transitioned to PCs when a parent's friend's son introduced me to Age of Empires :beer:

Probably why I'm a strategy person :p

RichardGrayJr

11-29-08, 11:53 AM

Oregon Trail. Oh. My. God. That's where it all began. If I found a copy that would run on XP, I'd lose my job and become divorced.

MaVoK

11-29-08, 11:55 AM

Atari 2600. I still have it. River Raid and Kaboom!

custom90gt

11-29-08, 12:17 PM

Some awesome stories here. For me it all started when my parents bought me a NES for Christmas. I played mario and duck hunt like no ones business. My cousin bought me Operation Wolf and try as i might, I could never make it past the 3rd or 4th level.
Then my dad brought home a 486DX2 packard bell some years later along with Doom2, I was hooked on that. My friend introduced me to Myst and I played that for a while. Some of my fondest games on the PC were C&C, Red alert, Rise of the Triad, Hexen.
I also used to play Super Mario World (SNES) with my old man, and was always amazed at his skill in Gradius III.

Oni

11-29-08, 01:34 PM

My parents bought my sister and I an NES in 1986. I've been hooked ever since. I love gaming, I love the way it can bring my friends and I together, I love the challenge and using my brain.

SteveLord

11-29-08, 02:53 PM

benbaked

11-29-08, 03:38 PM

The NES is what got me into gaming. Many of my friends also had one and we would trade games back and forth. I had a lot of fun with that console.

Aside from a TI-99 my family didn't have a real PC until 1991. It was a ghetto XT-clone with a burned-in green monochrome screen. :p I pretty much used that computer for playing Sim City and Starflight, good times.

jmsanders2

11-29-08, 07:11 PM

I was born...and nes with mario/ contra got me done.

EmAn

11-29-08, 07:22 PM

I would say it was when my dad bought a SNES for us... I still play mario to this day on our old mitsubishi big-screen.

Shiggity

11-29-08, 07:29 PM

I would say it was when my dad bought a SNES for us... I still play mario to this day on our old mitsubishi big-screen.

lol alright, I have a big screen mitsubishi too :D

Tsnowflake

11-29-08, 07:34 PM

sega genesis when i was 5 years old... never looked back :)

Satsumomo

11-29-08, 07:47 PM

Man... I have no idea what my first videogame was, I sure wish I knew. It was most probably at an arcade.

I do remember my first time playing on a PC, it was an 8088 IBM and my dad had this golf game, I remember it had an animated gopher on the main screen. Then I got to play Alley Cat.

My first "console" was an Atari XE65, my Dad bought it because it included a keyboard and BASIC, so he wanted to teach us to program. He didn't accomplish much... but my first games for that were F1 Pole Position and Donkey Kong Jr. He didn't want us to have an NES because he deemed it "Just pushing 2 different buttons".

http://www.atarimania.com/8bit/screens/pole_position_3.gif

http://www.mr-atari.com/afbeeldingen/XLXE%20boxes%20carts/donkey%20kong%20jr%20silver%20small%20boxed.jpg

Amazing!

mbigna

11-30-08, 07:28 PM

I programmed my first game on a unit similar to this while in high school circa 1978:
http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=58

It was a basic lunar lander program that I ported from my Texas Instruments SR-56 programmable calculator.

I owned several computers before my first PC Clone:
TI-99A: http://www.vintage-computer.com/ti_99_4a.shtml
http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?c=236
I had several game cartridges for this. There was a dungeon crawl game on cartridge I was fond of playing for this computer.

By far, my favorite pre-PC platform was the Radio Shack Color Computer (with the 'chicklet' keyboard):
http://www.old-computers.com/MUSEUM/computer.asp?c=91
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Shack_Color_Computer
(not the nicer keyboard: http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=109)

It had 64K of memory and CASSETTE tape storage. I found a Motorola 6809 assembly compiler for it. I programmed a 20 level dungeon crawl using 32K of 6809 assembler and the 32K of BASIC. I also had several games for this system as well.

I owned a few 'portable' computers as well:
I had one of these Sharp pocket computers. I can't remember which one:
http://www.vintage-computer.com/sharppc1251.shtml (probably this one)
http://www.vintage-computer.com/sharppc1500.shtml

My favorite portable was the Radio Shack TRS-80 Model 100. I used this often to access bulletin boards at friends' homes with its built-in 300 baud modem. And it really DID run for 16 hours on 4 'AA' batteries! After many years of useful service, it was stolen from my car. Even though it really was at the end of its useful life, I almost cried when I lost it.
http://oldcomputers.net/trs100.html

Bill Gates helped write the software for this portable machine. I agree with him in that it had a WONDERFUL (and quiet) keyboard that was a joy to type on.
http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/comphist/gates.htm#tc35

Finally, I owned the venerable Commodore 64 with a shoebox full of cartridges. My favorite game was M.U.L.E.
http://www.c64.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_64

I played with a friend's Radio Shack Model 1:
http://www.vintage-computer.com/trs80mod1.shtml
This was my first green screen experience. It had some rudimentary games and productivity software.

I also played with the Commodore Amiga--a fine computer system that never took off like it should have.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiga

While in college my Many Particle Physics class used this to collect data for measuring particle size in colloids (Brownian motion) utilizing laser scintillation.
Timex Sinclair 1000:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timex_Sinclair_1000
It had a few simple games available for it--but it wasn't much more than an interesting toy.

bryan_d

11-30-08, 08:52 PM

Family Nintendo (The White and Red Unit, with the Floppy drive expansion)

Grandfather had the gun for Duck Hunt, and "talkin' trash" over the mic-enabled controller never got old... but the constant pausing from the Start/Pause-enabled controller did. :)

Pre-90's gaming to the max!

bryan d

TheGreySpectre

11-30-08, 09:03 PM

Combination of oregon trail, simcity, mechwarrior 2 and Doom

Red_LightRanger

11-30-08, 09:17 PM

i can def remember playing on those first mac's oregon trail lol. But what got me started was ikari warriors for NES:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyDi_7swlKo

Oh and also top gun for nes, i could play the first level, but I could NEVER get past the refueling part lmao.

Kazappin

11-30-08, 11:25 PM

Became a gamer when I first built this new rig, just decided to pop in a getter graphics card and now I'm hooked :)

Firey_chasm

12-01-08, 04:09 AM

atari was the 1st time i started playing but id have to say it was a combination of DOOM and Sonic series that actually got me hooked, funnily enough I didnt own either for many many many years, played though sonic3+knuckles and the doom games soooooooo many times now.

What turned my love of gaming into a huuuge time waster though was Diablo 2. that game just ate hours of my life

kyussinchains

12-01-08, 07:21 AM

I think my first game was Granny's Garden on the BBC micro, it was a slightly educational puzzle type game. We played it at school on the school computer, which each class would get the use of for a month at a time, we got split into groups of 3 or 4 and would all play it at the same time. it became a big rivalry between groups of people over who could beat it fastest.

I had an atari 1800 (the one with the wood panel finish) and space invaders, and I would play that for hours.

But it was my trusty old amiga 500 which got me into gaming in a big way, ghouls and ghosts, outrun, north and south, dune 2, settlers, populous, mega lo mania (did anyone else make the same mistake as me and not put any guys in cryo stasis for the final level?) syndicate and cannon fodder were probably my most played games, but there were hundreds more, I always found it very difficult to get bored when I had my computer!

on the PC it was Doom 2, plain and simple, it was the perfect game, and I'll still stand up and argue that it is THE greatest FPS ever made....

Springbok

12-01-08, 09:03 PM

Frogger is the first game I have clear memories of on my parents' monochrome computer, I played the floppy to death! I also had a bunch of text-based adventure games, and I remember when my neighbor's dad got a color screen! We played strip poker and Leisure Suit Larry 1 on it...I think I was around 10 or 11 at the time :D

SeanBest

12-01-08, 09:11 PM

Doom for pc, dad taught me to play it real young, then I got my NES.

dylskee

12-01-08, 09:26 PM

This is where it began for me! Still have this packed away somewhere at my mother's house.

toddd240

12-02-08, 11:28 AM

Odyssey2 by magnivox

KC Munchkin
and
Quest for the Rings

see it here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnavox_Odyssey%C2%B2)

madhatter256

12-02-08, 11:49 AM

What made me a gamer was the Sega Genesis. Also, due to the fact that my parents didn't want me to play in any sports league while I was in school attributed to that immensely.

nightelph

12-02-08, 11:53 AM

The first games I played were at my Dad's work machines. I recall some sort of pitfall/ prince of persia game being the first. I never really had a console growing up, although I was given an original gameboy. Eventually my sister and I got a couple games on a home win3.1 box; Where in the world is Carmen SanDiego, Kings Quest V, a couple learning games. It wasn't until 8th/9th grade that I started buying my own. Test Drive: Off Road, the Army Men games, GTA2, Warcraft2, Commandos, and Postal. <-- Yeah great way to start off, right?

bda1967

12-02-08, 11:58 AM

For me it was PONG. My grandparents had a console version of it back in the 70's.

OldSkool

12-02-08, 12:01 PM

http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd47/BekahNRay/MSPacmanPPC.jpg

With my Dad for hours, tryin to beat him, lol.

Essenar

12-02-08, 12:15 PM

I was gaming on an NES before I even went to school. It was Zelda and Super Mario. My mom said I used to jump with the controller when I would jump in the game. I was always a very sympathetic person.

When I started grade school, they had computers with Oregon Trail and "Where in the World is Carmen San Diego?" Those games are probably what catapulted me into the category of "smart gamer". I remember thinking, "Why can't I drive the wagon?" in Oregon Trail. I had to learn sometimes games are more about decisions than action.

I fell out of the Nintendo scene because I could never get those cursed NES cartridges to load so I was into toys for a little while. Then when I was 8 years old, my mom surprised me by taking me to Wal-Mart to buy a Super Nintendo. The guy at the counter was like, "Yeah you don't have to blow into these games because they're 16-bit digital!" I was stoked!

The system came with two controllers and Super Mario Brothers. And then my mom was like, "You can pick another game to go with it". I was SUCH a noob back then though, I picked Home Alone because I liked the movie instead of Street Fighter II. The guy at the counter tried to get me to get Street Fighter II but I was a kid.

Then my mom bought me Final Fantasy III used from a Video 2000 (Rental store), pristine condition with the manual and box and everything. I stupidly traded it for a binder of rookie NFL cards. And I lost the cards when I moved. Brett Favre rookie card, Emmit Smith rookie card. I also lost my Magneto Issue #1. And I've heard, from quite a few comic heads how valuable that issue was.