Your first videogame and the memories of it.

Rams969

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Like it says in the title, what do you remember being the first ever videogame you played? what memories do you associate it with? and what do you think about it now?
For me, it was Pokemon Emerald in a Game Boy advance SP, I never finished the game because I only leveled up my starter, but I remember having fun just capturing stuff and walking around the world. I kept playing Pokemon until 2016 when I realize that it after growing up the franchise lost its appeal to me.


PokemonEmeraldBox.jpg
 
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greyetch

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I remember playing CoD Big Red One. It wasn't the first game I ever played, but it was the first I ever completed. Before that it was always just playing 1 or 2 levels at a friends house, or an arcade game or whatever. The concept of "beating" a game was completely new to me.

That and Pokemon Gold/Silver. First Pokemon game I beat. It was a mind blowingly large adventure, given how you get to play through the entire first game's world after you complete the elite 4. I've never had another J/RPG come close to feeling as expansive as that one did. Probably the first time I cheesed a game mechanic, too. Save scummed the casino until I bought a dratani lol.

Slot Machine Pokemon GIF
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Orlando Smooth

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It was either Super Ghouls and Ghosts on Super Nintendo or Star Wars Dark Forces on PC, I started playing both at roughly the same time around 3 or 4 years old.

I went to an in-home daycare run by a woman who lived in our neighborhood. She had 4 kids of her own, the youngest of whom was another boy my age that I became good friends with, and she watched a few other young children too. The boy's older brother was probably middle school aged and had bought these games and we would play them during the day while he was at school. We knew the one game was a Star Wars game so we just called it "Star Wars," but we were too young to know how to read and settled on calling Super Ghouls and Ghosts "Jack Climb-it" for some reason :D: Neither game had save functionality and being basically toddlers we were terrible at both of them, so we basically played the first few levels on repeat forever. It's hard to explain the nostalgia of being a little kid, sitting on the rug a few feet away from the TV because the controller wires were so short, playing 16 bit games all afternoon. About 10 years ago I bought a Super Nintendo just to play that game again, and it was amazing how the controls, music, and weapon attributes were so deeply ingrained into my mind.

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Fig

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It was minecraft pocket edition on the family ipad. I had to convince my parents that it wasn't violent or anything. When they finally caved I made my first world (creative) and just flew around placing lava on ice to melt it. Then I built a huge diamond block that was a 'house' and filled the walls with torches. I miss those times...
 
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№56

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Midtown_Madness_2_Coverart.png2214136-age_of_empires_user.jpg
Midtown Madness 2 and Age of Empires on my cousin's family PC. I remember being amazed at how big the San Francisco map in MM2 seemed and would spend hours trying to find all the different real-world landmarks in the free drive mode. My cousin had a a wheel and pedals that connected to the computer's dedicated joystick port and every time I was over at his house I would demand that he set it up so I could practice my driving. It took me forever to learn how to steer, but once I did I was absolutely convinced that I was qualified to drive a car in real life. I don't think my cousin liked the game as much as I did, but I do remember hearing my aunt mention how he had invented an imaginary co-driver named "Grandma" that he would talk about while he played. For some reason the sentence "when [cousin's name] drives past the Coit Tower in Midtown Madness, Grandma bakes tower pies" is burned into my memory.
I was too young to really understand AoE, but I loved building cities and watching the buildings and units change appearance whenever I advanced to the next age. I wasn't good enough at tactics to beat anything but the easiest AI, but the feeling of watching my civilization grow from a tiny village to a continent-wide empire was great. Moving the little soldiers around and exploring the map was more fun than actually playing the game, just like MM2. I always played as the Choson because my cousin told me they were the best faction in the game. I didn't know anything about Korean history and assumed they were some kind of secret super-civilization that got left out of the history books because of their superior technology. The fact that my cousin showed me how to spawn nuke troopers didn't help.
Whenever my family visited my aunt and uncle's house I would beg my cousin to let me play these two games. Several years later, after I had gotten video game consoles of my own, he helped me build a Windows XP gaming PC so I could play Spore when it came out. Spore turned out to be a gigantic disappointment and a life lesson in never trusting pre-release marketing, but the day we spent building the computer is still a very happy memory. I remember being ecstatic when we got it to power on and I saw bliss.jpg for the first time.
We knew the one game was a Star Wars game so we just called it "Star Wars," but we were too young to know how to read and settled on calling Super Ghouls and Ghosts "Jack Climb-it" for some reason :D:
"Jack Climb-It" is an absolutely perfect title for a platformer game, somebody should make it real.
 
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Sketch Relics

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Huh, that's a good question actually, since I have to dig into the primordial 0~2 year old memories for it So sorry if the memories are not the best.
The candidates are.

Tempest

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AiTgA3ZOoSo

An old arcade game that my dad had a PC copy of, simple enough for me to understand, but too difficult to do well at. The only one I currently own a copy of.

Some old physics based moon lander game where you had to maneuver your vehicle around a station-complex type level while shooting enemies, the end of each level required you to make a landing that I as a 1~2 year old sucked at. I also had a tendency to smack walls.

A black and white old style racing arcade game on PC where you where on a motorcycle, kinda like Pole Position. Would have been on an early eighties type computer, my dad used a command line prompt to start the game.

Spectre

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bxYgArR_iOg&t=481s

A battlezone clone of sorts I definitely played it, though I remember it's sequel Spectre VR way better.

Number Munchers

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=56QsvEzvSek&t=182s

Too young to actually understand what I was doing, did learn a bunch of prime numbers through shear memorization though.
 
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brentw

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Probably the earliest games I can remember were on my mom's Apple IIc.
There were a few games but the one I remember the most clearly was my little brother's favorite, a game where you drove a red fire truck through a maze to find the fire.

Another very early memory I have is a bit of an interesting story just because for years I had actually convinced myself was a false memory or a dream.
I remember my mom taking me to a gas station in the country, and there being an arcade game there of the first Super Mario Brothers. Not Mario Bros, SUPER Mario Bros.

For well over 20 years I've thought, "That can't be right, Super Mario Bros was never an arcade machine, it was on the NES."
And here just a few months ago I blew my mind, accidentally stumbling upon "VS. Super Mario Bros." the Arcade rom.
VSSMB_Title_Screen.png

IT WAS REAL!
 
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The first memory I have of video games is seeing my brother play. I was about 4-5, he was around 13, and I was pestering him because I wanted him to swim in the water. I don't recall what game it was (a RPG type game, but I recall that he said he'd drown if he went into the water), but then he played The Wind Waker and it stayed in my mind for a long time, I beat it around age 11. I also recall my parents playing Syberia and I played that game and its sequel several times throughout my childhood and teen years (have played neither Syberia 3 or 4, bought 3 but gave up around 30 minutes in because the fucking thing was awfully laggy and the camera made me nauseous, and tbh I think the first 2 were way enough, didn't need any more sequels).

The first game I played however was, I think, Kirby and the Amazing Mirror on GBA. I was 6 and the GBA was, you guess it, passed down from my brother. I recall really loving the game and making up stories with the 3 other Kirbys as I played. I would also make up scenarios such as "Kirby goes hunting" when I went into a certain forest map, I don't recall which. There was Kirby at the mountains with the snowy map, and so on. I wish I could regain this innocence and childlike imagination that just went with what it had and made up some details and was overall playful rather than making a philosophical matter out of every story I make up. My vivid imagination has stayed, but has matured.

My biggest video game love story is the Sims. Started aged 11, played on and off throughout the years, and currently am playing TS4 quite a bit.
 
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UCD

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i'm pretty sure he first game I played was super smash bros brawl at my friends house when I was about 7, Before that I had watched him play various zelda games and banjo and kazooie, but I had never played anything myself.
The first game that my family owned was a few years later when my family got a new desktop computer and let me use it for the first time. For some reason It had an angry birds promo preinstalled so I played all of the free levels and then got bored and forgot about it. After that I played various free online games and mobile games.
 
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Boxerdog

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A sonic game on the genesis, don't remember which one, i probably played flash games on the net before it but i don't remember.

I remember it specifically because after that I watched the sonic christmas special on vhs and wondered who the characters were and why there is no santa in the game.
 
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bnuungus

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The first game I remember playing was Powerstone 2 in my friends basement on their sega dreamcast. I had no clue what the hell was going on so I essentially button mashed. I'm not even sure if I knew which character was me lmao. I remember watching my dad play the windows XP candyland and monopoly games at night when my older sister and I were too afraid of thunderstorms to go to sleep. I also remember him playing Age of Empires 2: Conquerors Expansion with his friends when they would come over. I was never really good at the game myself but I have fond memories of spending hours watching them play. One of my dad's friends is so good at the game that he plays on the hardest difficulty against 4 computers who are all allied with each other against him and it's still a walk in the park for him. Now that I'm writing this I just remembered watching my dad and his friends play Windows Flight Simulator on XP as well. Kind of a tangent but a friend of mine is making a "I wanna be the Boshy" style game and I shipped him a windows flight sim controller to beat the game with. We'll see if he does.
 
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Much like Bnuungus, I remember spending far more time watching other people play games (mostly cousins and occasionally my parents) than I did play them myself I believe, which is a habit I suspect lasted until I was around ~8. As far as I can recall, my first actual hands-on experience with a game was a Star Wars branded plug and play around the mid-2000s. I don't exactly have any fond memories associated with it. It may have been this one:

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I guess this is where the kusokino began. I've heard it brought up how a lot of people start gaming by playing shovelware, and questioning how that affects how people perceive video games later on in their lives. The result is me.

From what I can recall of watching other people play games, I do have some few vivid images still intact.

For one, I remember seeing my mother play Majora's Mask on a laptop emulator with an orange Gamecube controller plugged in in some way. It's interesting, because I don't recall her ever really using emulators on any other occasion. She also complained often about not being able to play 3d games because of her eyesight, so I'm not sure what impulse was brought upon her to lead up to that moment. I have another memory of her playing Okami at some point, complaining about the same motion sickness. The visuals in that game stand out to me a lot, even if I still haven't beaten it.

Another one was Age of Empires, like 56. I think it was either my father or perhaps an uncle, who did not let me play the game myself, so I just watched. Regardless, it did fascinate me.

I would also often be visiting my cousins during holidays, and they had a Wii in their basement. I'm pretty sure we spent most of the time playing Smash Bros, but for some reason the game I recall most was maybe this one I think
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Unusual, since I don't recall playing it on more than one occasion, and for at most 10 minutes, at that. There's just something about the menu in this game that is imprinted in my memory for some reason, and is linked to a great extent with my concept of the Wii. I can't seem to go thinking about one without thinking about the other.
 
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andreixyz

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Back in the mid 90's I was attending an after school IT programme, and was playing on a HC2000 (Romanian Spectrum ZX clone) a game similar to Bomberman. You were in a brown brick maze in a side-scrolling level, and you had to uncover the keys that would open the door to the next level. I remember you were chased by something similar to theater masks . I fondly recall the Q-A-O-P control scheme and how we connected the computer to a TV, as it had no monitor.

I am still looking for the game, and did find some things that feel close to it, but no cigar. The closest to it is Eric and the Floaters (youtube), but I still think it was a clone.

One vivid memory I still have from back then is that one day the teacher was late and we waited for her watching TV on the sets we used for computers (they were kept under lock and only she had the key), and that was the first time I saw "The Man Who Knew Too Much", one of my favourite movies to the day.
 

punishedgnome

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I don't know for sure what the first game I played was. My family had an Atari 2600 and around 20 -25 games as they were cheap as dirt by the late 1980s. It may have very well been Super Mario Bros though, because I had a lot of older cousins and as it was the late 1980s, many of them owned an NES. The games I can recall really early memories of are River Raid, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr, Pac Man and Frostbite for the Atari 2600 and Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt, Super Mario Bros 2 and Kung Fu for NES. My dad got me my own NES in 89, but I was five and I had already played many games with older cousins on their Nintendos and on the family Atari 2600 by then.

*Edit* Shit! I just remembered something else. My mom worked when I was small, so I went to a babysitter who looked after 4-5 kids. There was an NES in her basement on this big shelf in the corner. The only game was Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt and as I recall we were all so young, we were pretty bad at Mario and played Duck Hunt more. Every now and then this bearded man would show up and play it, and we'd all be excited to watch because he was so good at it. He could do the trick where you bounce on the shell on the stairs and get a bunch of 1-ups until it broke the lives counter. I don't know what the deal with that guy was or why he randomly showed up at my babysitter's house. I don't know if he was a family friend or what. I know the obvious thing to do here is a molestation joke, but it wasn't anything like that. He'd just randomly show up and crush Super Mario Bros. and leave. That's it.

Another very early memory I have is a bit of an interesting story just because for years I had actually convinced myself was a false memory or a dream.
I remember my mom taking me to a gas station in the country, and there being an arcade game there of the first Super Mario Brothers. Not Mario Bros, SUPER Mario Bros.

For well over 20 years I've thought, "That can't be right, Super Mario Bros was never an arcade machine, it was on the NES."
And here just a few months ago I blew my mind, accidentally stumbling upon "VS. Super Mario Bros." the Arcade rom.
View attachment 61183
IT WAS REAL!
I have a similar memory! I remember seeing this weird arcade version of Super Mario Bros with offputting art and a bizzarely shaped cabinet in the lobby of a hospital when I was visiting someone with my mom once. I wanted to play it but we didn't have time. I never saw it again and much like yourself, I assumed I was misremembering it because I was only 4-5 years old at the time. Surely, I thought, it was not actually an arcade machine and just some nes inside a case with a TV the hospital had set up which would explain the weird off-brand art. Then I found pictures.

e9c8a1f17f1423929931937d55833b4d.jpg

1200px-VS_Super_Mario_Bros_Arcade_Machine.jpg
 
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bnuungus

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As far as I can recall, my first actual hands-on experience with a game was a Star Wars branded plug and play around the mid-2000s.
hey I had one of those too, this one to be precise
s-l1600.jpg

I think it's still at my parents house, lol. It has like 5 pretty difficult games on there, none of which we were any good at.
 
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mesaprotector

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First game I played, no idea - first game I cared about was The Day The World Broke, for Windows 95. As a kid I'd just play the beginning, imagine myself travelling down an elevator into a quiet world of machines, dinosaurs, and solid rock, get stuck and forget about it, then try again two weeks later. Every time my dad upgraded the OS another part of the game would break. Decades later after failing to get the thing to run on an emulator I found a playthrough someone did on YT instead. 20 years from starting the game to seeing the end.
 

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