When did you first get into gaming?

[VectorX]

I go back to very nearly the very beginning, with the black and white arcade games of the 1970s. I wish I could remember what my very first game was that I ever played, but I don't, unfortunately. My guess is that it was some racing game or something.

I was probably six or seven when I played my very first game.

[TrekMD]

The first arcade game that I played was Space Invaders. A new mall had been built walking distance from my grandmother's home and my cousin and I walked there on Friday evenings to go to the arcade. I will not forget the game because I vividly remember the first time I beat the first wave of invaders (as the table was surrounded by a bunch of people), starting to celebrate, only to be killed an instant later for taking my eyes off the screen! LOL It was a sit-down machine too!

[wyldephang]

According to my family, I played my first video game when I was only two or three years old. The console would have been the NES, and the game most likely Super Mario Bros. My earliest gaming memory is from 1989-90, when I played Mega Man 2 at my grandmother's old house. I remember sitting on the floor in her bedroom, the NES set up on a TV across from the bed, cycling through the Robot Masters. This is also the first time I committed a video game tune to memory:



LINK: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHZFJ2kfHko

[sj]

Mid seventies for me. A battery powered square ball Pong type game. State of the art stuff. I was probably wearing a hand knitted multi-coloured tank-top at the time. Gary Glitter on the stereogram. Spaghetti hoops for tea.

[VectorGamer]

The first video game I ever played was Pong in 1975 at a Two Guys department store. I played by myself with one hand on each knob.

I remember playing Death Race at Papa Dino's pizza shop around '76 or '77. A couple of years later a Space Invaders cocktail at a Pizza Hut.

Got my first home console in 1980: Atari VCS along with Space Invaders from a Service Merchandise.

Two Guys and Papa Dino's aren't around anymore. Pizza Hut survived and Service Merchandise was reincarnated. 8-bit gaming lives on.

[wyldephang]

Sept 25, 2013 12:29:57 GMT -5 sj said:

Mid seventies for me. A battery powered square ball Pong type game. State of the art stuff. I was probably wearing a hand knitted multi-coloured tank-top at the time. Gary Glitter on the stereogram. Spaghetti hoops for tea.

The British is just exploding out of this post. Which reminds me, did arcade games invade U.K. pizza parlors as they did American? I remember playing Contra in a Pizza Hut in the early '90s. It was a great way to pass the time: order a personal pan pizza, play arcade games.

[sj]

I say, old chap...

^Not pizza parlors (the American is just exploding out of that phrase), but fish and chip shops. That was my first experience of Space Invaders, then Galaxian (or Galaga?)some time later. I can remember going 'Whoa! They swoop!'

[VectorX]

Could one of your reserve ships get captured and then you could use it as double firepower if you were to free it? If so, that was Galaga; if not, it was Galaxian.

[sj]

^ Can't remember... I think I was so mesmerized by the swoop element I got blasted every time.

(Actually I think it might have been Galaga )

[sj]

Actually in the aforementioned chip shop I can also remember playing Scramble (brilliant,brilliant, brilliant), Frogger and Defender (too many knobs and buttons), but I can't remember in which chronological sequence. They only had one machine and it used to get swapped over from time to time.

[VectorX]

Sept 26, 2013 11:43:28 GMT -5 sj said:

I can also remember playing Scramble (brilliant,brilliant, brilliant)

Good taste You have the Vectrex version?

[sj]

^ My fave.

[sj]

Sept 26, 2013 9:39:34 GMT -5 sj said:

(Actually I think it might have been Galaga )

Wikipedia says Galaga was '81 and Galaxian '79. My days hanging around the chip shop means Galaga was the game I played in there, although I must have played Galaxian prior to that. Probably in a pub with mum and dad, wearing an imitation leather bikers jacket drinking an ice cream soda.