At some point or another, we all had our gateway drug. That first time we picked up a controller or jabbed at a keyboard and realised we could actually control what was happening on-screen. For a lot of people who’ve been used to entertainment as a totally passive experience, whether that’s watching TV or listening to music, it’s incredibly intoxicating to find something you can interact with in this way.
But we all had to start somewhere; appropriately enough, we start at the beginning. Our first ever game. We’re interested in a couple of things here. Firstly, the first ever game you can remember playing; and secondly, the first game you can remember owning, whether you received it as a gift or bought it for yourself, but basically just that first time you had a game that was 100% yours.
I’ll start things off, and the first game I ever played is a bit of a toss-up between three titles, none of which I’m 100% sure were my first games. These were Worms, Labyrinth of Time, and Hugo’s House of Horrors. If I had to guess I’d say Hugo’s House of Horrors was the first, but I played all of these on my family’s first Gateway PC. I think it had a 133MHz Pentium CPU or thereabouts, and this was in the days before graphics cards were really a thing. I had zero idea what I was even doing in Hugo’s House of Horrors, but I figured out how to load it up in DOS and that was enough for me.
While I spent a fair bit of time messing around with the limited games I could get my hands on, the first that was ever actually bought for me was Super Mario All-Stars + Super Mario World on the SNES. I got the console with that bundled in on my 6th or 7th birthday, so around 1994 or so, and I still think it holds up as one of the greatest game collections of all time, and certainly the best pack-in with a console.
Enough about me, what about you? What was your earliest gaming memory? And what was the first ever game you could call your own?
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For me the first game was either Crash Bandicoot 3: Warped or Mega man 8 Both of which I'm happy that they've been remastered/ ported to pc
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first game i ever played was i think hide and go seek atari 2600. to be honest i started on an apple IIe and atari 5200 so i could not recall there was qix
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If memory serves....Rockman on the VIC 20....1984.
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Mine was probably Need for Speed III Hot Pursuit on our neighbour's pc, i was around 6 and at that time i didn't have a pc . I got my first from my uncle at 9 or something, that beautiful humble thing came with Prince of Persia Dos floppy and win95 which had also a loose power connector on the back of the case. I remember, i always used to put someting with thick books under the cable to stabilize the tilting down otherwise it would not power up :) Those were the cozy days.
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The first game I ever played overall is Prince of Persia for MS-DOS. Great game. It was hard, I was like 4 at the time, around 1991, but still great game. Back then my mother had computer she needed few times per month, so for rest of the month, I was using it to play games.
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Obviously, don't ask me for specs, earliest I remember was having 133Mhz CPU, oldest hard drive I managed to find somewhere was 600MB. I know I was at some point happy to get 128MB of RAM. And I forgot which was my first graphic card, oldest I can name was GeForce 2 MX with 32MB of VRAM. Though this was much latter...
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As far as Windows goes, I started with 3.1, which I almost never used. Then Windows 95, which I did use, because I had some games for it. Granted that first one I really loved that did require Windows was StarCraft. That CD literally got destroyed by me using it so much. :-D
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I do not remember the name of the games I played when I was around 10 years old on some kind of console. But I remember the first game which I played when I got my first computer (386). It was Prince of Persia.
http://www.game-debate.com/games/index.php?g_id=1482&game=Prince%20of%20Persia%20(1989)&pc
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When i was around 5yo we have a NES copy and the oldest games that i can remember are Super Mario Bross, Circus Charlie, Adventure Island and Battle City
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gran turismo psone xD
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I believe it was Gauntlet 2 that old arcade game if u remember :)
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First game ever played - something on the ZX81 which i copied out of a magazine when i was 7 back in the early 1980's - so long ago i have no idea what.
First game bought with my own money - something for the ZX Speccy 48K in 1984!!
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Good for you! Speccy 4 Life! First game I ever played was Spectral Invaders. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rfTyR6ywdk
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So I'm not the oldest one. I thought after my post someone would respond with "What's a Commodore 64?"
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Pong, must've been 1979 or so, the first game that was my own was Checkers for Atari 2600 as a birthday gift (I was less than impressed, but still).
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Sonic the Hedgehog 2. God I love that game
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ChopLifter on my friends Commodore 64, I was 4. God I'm old
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Oddworld on PS1, but i couldnt manage to finish it with 3-5 years old. Then the first i passed was Ratchet & Clank for PS2.
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Call of Duty: Ghosts. These were days... nowadays Call of Duty just isn't the same. :(
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God I feel old now. Also, damn you picked a bad time to get into COD lol
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I appreciate your username.
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Thanks
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I played my first game on my 3rd birthday when I got my PS1 and the game was the Spyro the Dragon (I am very excited about the remake)
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Any one remember Asteroid?
I played a nokia mobile version of it as my first game.
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The first Jazz Jackrabbit!!! Brings back so much memories :-)
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The earliest one I can remember is Golden Axe on Sega Mega Drive.
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For me that would be Prince of Persia on ms-dos : D
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Which one?
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That would be the one from 1990, long time ago : D