Your first gaming memory?

[Apocalypse 31]

Played a few Atari games; Pitfall, Racing.

First PC game was Micropose The Ancient Art of War in The Skies. A fantastic WW1 air strategy game that let players set bombing targets or air interdiction missions, then play the missions in side-scroll perspective. I must've had weeks of game time.

My first FPS (TPS, really) was Seal Team. A Vietnam squad-based game that I remember being difficult, but had good character development, almost like an RPG.

[Toonces]

Man alive, I didn't think anyone by me ever got the Telstar!

I started with that.

Sometime in the vicinity I took a computer class with the TRS-80 that had some dungeon crawler on it and also a Star Trek game that I recently downloaded for my Kindle Fire (W00t!).

Sometime around there we got the Atari 2600.  Space Invaders and Asteroids are obvious first games.  Anything by Activision was boss!  Yes, Pitfall was the bomb.  Remember when you could get some computer magazine and it would have a program you could type into Basic and then play on your computer?  I would have my mom read me the code while I typed it in (or vice versa).

I had a Ti-99 and the only game I remember from that era was Tunnels of Doom.  On a cassette where you had to have the volume set just right or it wouldn't load.  But damn were those the days or what?!  I remember playing that with my friends all summer long where we'd take turns at the controls and each of us would tell the guy at the controls how to move our character.  God, what fun that was!

Moving on from there I got an Atari 1200XL and the first game I spent my "own" money on was Sublogic Flight Simulator for $50.  My brother got the C-64 and we played the crap out of games by Epyx(?) and Red Storm Rising.  I remember some game called "Morloc's Tower" that I never could figure out.  On C-64 we played a bunch of the Olympics sports games in addition to RSR.  On Atari I also remember some game by Grigsby about WW2 carrier warfare; google would turn it up; you had to point your carriers into the right direction to launch your aircraft...

Good times.

In the arcade, I was always a fan of Defender and an obscure game called Time Bandits.  Oh, and Missile Command.

[FlickJax]

Man alive, I didn't think anyone by me ever got the Telstar!

I started with that.

Sometime in the vicinity I took a computer class with the TRS-80 that had some dungeon crawler on it and also a Star Trek game that I recently downloaded for my Kindle Fire (W00t!).

Sometime around there we got the Atari 2600.  Space Invaders and Asteroids are obvious first games.  Anything by Activision was boss!  Yes, Pitfall was the bomb.  Remember when you could get some computer magazine and it would have a program you could type into Basic and then play on your computer?  I would have my mom read me the code while I typed it in (or vice versa).

I had a Ti-99 and the only game I remember from that era was Tunnels of Doom.  On a cassette where you had to have the volume set just right or it wouldn't load.  But damn were those the days or what?!  I remember playing that with my friends all summer long where we'd take turns at the controls and each of us would tell the guy at the controls how to move our character.  God, what fun that was!

Moving on from there I got an Atari 1200XL and the first game I spent my "own" money on was Sublogic Flight Simulator for $50.  My brother got the C-64 and we played the crap out of games by Epyx(?) and Red Storm Rising.  I remember some game called "Morloc's Tower" that I never could figure out.  On C-64 we played a bunch of the Olympics sports games in addition to RSR.  On Atari I also remember some game by Grigsby about WW2 carrier warfare; google would turn it up; you had to point your carriers into the right direction to launch your aircraft...

Good times.

In the arcade, I was always a fan of Defender and an obscure game called Time Bandits.  Oh, and Missile Command.

I wanted a TI-99 but I am grateful that my parents overruled my wishes and bought me my wondrous Vic 20 instead :)

[MikeGER]

Good times.

In the arcade, I was always a fan of Defender and an obscure game called Time Bandits.  Oh, and Missile Command.

in the arcade i was the king of 'Red Barron'
http://www.pinballrebel.com/arcade/atari/red_baron/red_baron.htm

and

Starwars to sit into:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_(1983_video_game)
(IIRC, playing half an hour and longer -maybe even indefinitely, i cant remember-  with one! coin) 

and a little Battlezone to, but not in the high score list all to much so

[BanzaiCat]

First wargame: Avalon Hill's "Luftwaffe" when I was 12 in 1976.

Ha! That was my first boardgame too. I remember buying it from a Toys-R-Us of all places, back in 1981 or so.

My first clear memory is when I was about 8 years old in 1977. My dad was a Marine officer working with computers on base in Quantico, VA. I was with him where he works for some reason, and he sat me down at a terminal where I played BASIC games including Stock Market and some bullfighting game.



This Coleco TELSTAR was our first "home" system. All you could play on it was Tennis, a glorified version of Pong (there might have been an extra line or two in the display to make it so), and apparently it "only" cost $50 in late 70s money. The next system he bought was the Atari 2600. I still remember his eyes lighting up at the display at Sears that had a TV on an endcap playing some 2600 game, I can't even remember what it was now.

Starwars to sit into:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_(1983_video_game)
(IIRC, playing half an hour and longer -maybe even indefinitely, i cant remember-  with one! coin)

Yes! A friend of mine and I could play that for literally hours (we went for four hours one night; the arcade had to throw us out and he got pissy about how long we played on a couple of quarters). He was great at the tower portion, I was great at the trench portion, so we'd each do those parts, and trade off with the TIE fighter battles. We'd always start it at the Hard level to get that 800,000 point bonus. :D I remember we'd go see movies, play this game, and often have to leave it for someone else to play because the movie would start but we'd be far from finished with it.

In the mid-80s my grandfather had a Ti-99. I remember playing Hunt the Wumpus, which got old pretty quick. Fortunately for me, he soon bought an Apple II, which was my first foray into real computer gaming.