Current Events > What got you into gaming and what was your earliest experiences

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Feeling reminiscent and wanted to share the feeling. I was born in 91 and had a pair of cousins a bit older than me. One of them gave me their gray brick Gameboy with Mario Land and Tetris. Those are the first games I remember playing.

That next Christmas my parents bought me a snes with Donkey Kong Country and Mario World. I would often rent Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow and other Disney games. I also remember finding Link to the Past at a yard sale and got as far as the dark world and after a few dungeons couldn't figure how to get into the dark world desert. After awhile my cousins would let me borrow their games and I got into Street Fighter 2 and Earthbound which was my first jrpg not long after playing that Pokmon came out and my love for jrpgs went into overdrive and I played every jrpg I could get my hands on even if I didn't fully understand some of the more complex ones I was learning quick.

Then the day came when I saw the older of the two cousins play Final Fantasy VII and I was enamored. It wouldn't be until around 2000 that I got a ps1 of my own and by that point there were more jrpgs than I could ever imagine and ps1 games were fairly cheap at the local pawn shop I ended up with all the ps1 FF titles including the collections of older games along with Chrono Trigger. Grandia, Legend of Dragoon and Final Fantasy IX became my favorite out of them.

Thank you if anyone read this and sorry for the poor grammar and punctuation. Wouldn't mind hearing your stories if you felt like sharing.

Earliest gaming memories were "taking turns" playing Wolfenstein 3D with my dad while sitting in his lap. Taking turns in quotes because I was like 5 years old and didn't know what the hell I was doing

Playing Ghosts 'n' Goblins at the arcade as a kid. I used to pester my dad to hold me up so I could reach the buttons.

Then he got me a Speccy for my birthday.

I had older sibilings so gaming was just a thing that was around.

My earliest memories were watching them play and co-op games. Things like Altered Beasts, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe.

Sonic 3 (if you can call that Co-op)

I remember getting Alone In The Dark and really liking it but being too stupid to solve the puzzles. So I'd make my sibling play it and they could solve the puzzles but hated the game lol

My older brother got NES with Mario Bros/Duck Hunt for his Bday in 1989.

My parents just bought me a Game Boy Color and Pokemon Blue one day. I guess just because they thought I would enjoy it.

TomClark posted...

Playing Ghosts 'n' Goblins at the arcade as a kid. I used to pester my dad to hold me up so I could reach the buttons.

Then he got me a Speccy for my birthday.

Oh man you just awoke a memory. My parents split in 99 and my dad had me on my birthday that year and we went to the bowling alley and it also happened to be the birthday of his new gfs son with the same name as me. The party was 100% for him my dad gave me a handful of quarters and I sat in the arcade by myself playing Metal Slug. The next day when my mom came to get me and my sister he was drunk and getting violent refusing to give us back to my mom and that was the last time I saw him for like six years because he got arrested a few weeks later for holding his new gf and kid captive. He had severe brain damage and was a hard-core alcoholic not making any excuses for the man but he wasn't right.

The daycare I went to when mom was working during the week had an NES, so that was my first exposure to games. I enjoyed it enough to ask my parents for an SNES for christmas.

FF4 is what really made me a gamer though. It helped kick off my love for fantasy and rpgs.

Pac Man arcade around 1981.

Me and friends use to save our ice cream quarters through the school week and hit the corner Chevron.

Or the Hop-In and play Star Wars a few years later.

Mid 80s the Boys Club had a few TVs set up hooked to Atari's and some arcade cabinets like Carnival and Cheyenne.

It was funny to us because one black guy who worked there would play Cheyenne and when he killed a attacking native it would say "pale face".

I played my first video game at a roller skating place in San Diego when I was 5 years old. Me, my mom, and my sister were skating (my dad was overseas with the Navy at the time) and I was taking a break. Mom called me over and gave me a quarter - I plunked it into a nearby Pac-Man machine.

Family got its first home console (Atari 2600) for Christmas 1981 - as they say, the rest is history.

PS1. Not sure which came first but Spyro and Crash Bandicoot are definitely my earliest memories of gaming.

Also later playing tons and tons of NHL FaceOff 2001 with my dad.

I remember him playing lots of PC games like Wolfenstein, Outlaws, early CoDs and Half-Life. Was always a treat when my mom was out running errands and I could watch him play

Playing Bubble Bobble with my mom

My dad had an NES. Gaming precedes my earliest memories, but it was SMB/Duck Hunt.

My earliest memory was pretending to read what the villagers in Zelda 2 were saying and making conversations, and being more excited over Mega Man 3 over SMB3 when looking at Nintendo Power

Born in 82, we had an Atari 2600 which was fine, but when I saw SMB at a friend's house, it blew my fucking mind

CinderLock posted...

Oh man you just awoke a memory. My parents split in 99 and my dad had me on my birthday that year and we went to the bowling alley and it also happened to be the birthday of his new gfs son with the same name as me. The party was 100% for him my dad gave me a handful of quarters and I sat in the arcade by myself playing Metal Slug. The next day when my mom came to get me and my sister he was drunk and getting violent refusing to give us back to my mom and that was the last time I saw him for like six years because he got arrested a few weeks later for holding his new gf and kid captive. He had severe brain damage and was a hard-core alcoholic not making any excuses for the man but he wasn't right.

Yikes, sorry.

I got a Gameboy and an NES when I was about 5. I think my mom got them more for herself then for me but I enjoyed them.

Been gaming pretty much my whole life.

Think it was the Commodore 64, there was a program on it like Text To Speech, was pretty cool, then I moved onto Nintendo, then it was PlayStation and finally Xbox.

Gaming was so good back in the 90's

Got a NES for my 3rd birthday in 1991

My older brother got the NES for christmas in 1987, when I was 4 years old. It was a little before nintendo started packing the NES with the mario bros duck hunt combo....ours just came with a stand-alone super mario bros. Apparently the stand-alone mario bros bundle was exclusive to north america. (it was 99.99).

My family played the hell out of that NES.

TomClark posted...

Yikes, sorry.

You're good lol. That's my bad I worded that like it was repressed when in reality I just forgot.

My mom came home late from a shopping trip, and surprised me with a NES. I got to stay up late (on a school night!) playing Mario and Duck Hunt.

I got a Gameboy soon after and got into LoZ Link's Awakening, which became my all-time favorite. That game blew me away and I've been a gamer ever since.