What was the first videogame you ever remember playing?

Mine was Star Wars in an arcade in Scarborough when I would've been around 3 and a half years old, I had no idea what I was doing but the music and speech I can still remember now:

Probably either Scramble or Galaxians in an arcade in the early 80s. Can't remember which specifically, but it was definitely one of those two.

I can't recall if we had an Acorn Electron or Atari 2600 in our home first?

But whichever it was, it was either the good version of Space Invaders or the shit version of it:

I'm 99% certain it was Mario 64.

Zelda: Link's Awakening. I tried playing it before I could read so naturally I didn't get very far. But man, I loved it!

Super Mario Bros for the NES. When I played it as a little kid I wasn't very good so I never got very far. But I had a lot of fun playing those first few levels over and over again.

Technically, it was probably Pong.
But my first real memory is playing Combat on the Atari 2600 my parents bought me for Christmas in 1981.

I can't exactly remember the first game I ever played, but I think I can remember the first game I saw played. While I may have been aware of videogames before, the first time I actually came in to contact with them was when someone living on the same road as me as a kid got an N64. First thing I can remember seeing them play was Yoshi's Story. I might have played it too, although at the time I think we were all too young to really understand it. Or at least I was. Couldn't make any progress. I remember it seeming very strange and surreal to me back then. They had a few other games too, but I can't remember what they were. One was a racing game of some sort, where you drove things like pickups and buggies. Never been able to find out what it was.

Not long after that I got a Game Boy Color, and Pokemon Yellow. That was the first game I actually owned myself. At some point after that I got my own N64 as I got more in to the Pokemon craze. Got Stadium and Snap. Then I came across a strange little oddity called Majora's Mask. Later got Oracle of Seasons on GBC as well, although I didn't get in to that like I did MM.

I have a vivid memory of my dad lifting me up to play a driving game on a ferry over to Ireland. I must have been about 2 or 3, and although I don't remember what game it was, it was a top down racer, and you used a steering wheel.

After that I remember playing a motorbike game in a pub in Wales as a very young kid, it was an upright game which you used the handlebars to steer.

The first arcade game I remember the name of that I played was Commando in the same Welsh pub. I remember my dad used to ask if I wanted to play 'the helicopter game' (because you'd get dropped off by the chopper at the start).

As for home computers, we got an Amstrad CPC when I was 7 (1986) which I loved, but mainly because I'd played Dynamite Dan at a friends and thought it was incredible. As a really young kid I'd play the Roland games (...On The Ropes, ...In Time, ...In The Caves etc.) I also remember falling in love with Ye Ar King Fu at said friends house too).

It's a haze of memories but it was one of the following games:

Zillion
Spy vs spy (on a credit card thing for the master system)
Galaga? clone (portable thing with solid metal stick)
My hero (also on a card thing I think)
Pong (odd home console with turny dial things)

In the arcade it was probably R-type

I'm not sure which but I know my best memories were with that first time my older brother brought over a master system and a copy of Star Wars (which bizarrely had a domestos advert in the middle of it).

I'm a bit younger than some folk here but I get the feeling I played a lot of the stuff that had been left in my grans attic for 10 years when I was young, none of the games really seem to exist and searching the internet does nothing to help.

Harrier Attack on the Amstrad CPC464. My dad would control the plane and I would sit on his knee hammering space and shift to drop bombs and shoot missiles. I then got into the world of illicit gambling via Fruit Machine. My relative lack of success ended my gambling career at the age of four.

Alex79uk wrote:I have a vivid memory of my dad lifting me up to play a driving game on a ferry over to Ireland. I must have been about 2 or 3, and although I don't remember what game it was, it was a top down racer, and you used a steering wheel

That time frame narrows it down quite a lot, most likely one of the games in the Atari series that started with Gran Trak 10 and ended with Super Sprint. There's another I'm thinking of that is similar to Spy Hunter in look but a fair bit older. Can't recall the name though.

Great thread, loving hearing all the games people first played. The N64 ones make me wince with age though !!!

Mine was Alex the Kid in Miricle World on my Christmas Master System 2.

First arcade game I can remember starring at in awe, was Turtles. The one with the first level being in burning building then fighting Bebop & Rocksteady in the far room. I remember being totally entranced by it. I think it may have been in Butlins in the early 90's.

DomsBeard wrote:What was the first videogame you ever remember playing?

Mine was Star Wars in an arcade in Scarborough when I would've been around 3 and a half years old, I had no idea what I was doing but the music and speech I can still remember now:

While Star Wars was not the first game I remember playing, that particular cabinet does trigger early memories, as I remember seeing it on a childhood trip to the Blue Mountains (back when arcade cabinets would be found in the oddest of places).

The sights and sounds of the arcade during childhood both drew me in, and occasionally intimidated me. And that particular Star Wars cabinet, even if I could fully grasp what it was all about at the time, just triggered so much of my childish imagination, putting aside the real world physics of space for more fantastical elements.

But as for the earliest game I remember playing... might have been an old LCD game and watch styled game from the markets. It certainly wasn't' a Nintendo Game & Watch-branded game, as that was a bit more pricey as far as my parents were concerned, but it was a simplistic game, and it certainly was the beginning of a life-long love affair with gaming.

The first videogame I personally owned was Burgertime for the NES. It was a Christmas gift, my personal game for the NES console my brother and I were expected to share. I don't remember exactly how long it took, but I'm sure it was less than a year before I had my own console, too, because we didn't share too well (for the record, his game was Castlevania). The first game I have a distinct memory of playing, though? Well, I do have a distinct memory of playing Burgertime that morning once we got the NES plugged into the family TV. I also have distinct memories of Bug's Bunny Crazy Castle, the first game I can remember regarding as my "favorite," but also, of course, The Legend of Zelda. I was too young to really remember clearly which was first chronologically.

Mine was Tennis (Pong) on something with a wooden box my uncle bought in the late 70's. It had two paddles, a lightgun, and you flicked a switch to cycle between tennis, football (Pong with two bats) and a couple of games where you shot a square moving around the screen, providing you had the gun pressed against the TV! It was also the first game I owned when we got our own Interstate console sook after, with exactly the same set up. I can still picture the garish orange box it came in now.

I thought that the earliest memory of playing a videogame was either Super Mario Bros 3 on my cousins' NES or any of the games from the Mega Games 2 and 3 cartridges that came with our Mega Drive (Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Revenge of Shinobi, Super Thunder Blade, Super Monaco GP and Alien Storm) when I was 6. But after seeing the mention of Space Invaders above I remembered that our school had an old computer (even by early 90s standards I think) that if we got there early, maybe half eight which was well before the school buses, we were allowed to play an old simple enough black and white Space Invaders game on it. I couldn't say what the machine was or what the actual name on the Space Invaders clone was as I was only 5.

Can't remember which mode I played first but I suspect it was actually one of the gun modes (not featured in the video) using the light gun that came with the Binatone TV Master Mk VI

Both the old Binatone multi-pong machines and a ZX81 were definitely early purchases in my childhood, but I'm still pretty sure I was exposed to arcade machines on holiday parks first. There may not be much of a time gap in it though, so I could be wrong.

The ZX81 was definitely the first thing I ever did any coding on though. I started young (although not as young as the current UK national curriculum starts to teach it now, which I approve of immensely)

Flabyo wrote:

Alex79uk wrote:I have a vivid memory of my dad lifting me up to play a driving game on a ferry over to Ireland. I must have been about 2 or 3, and although I don't remember what game it was, it was a top down racer, and you used a steering wheel

That time frame narrows it down quite a lot, most likely one of the games in the Atari series that started with Gran Trak 10 and ended with Super Sprint. There's another I'm thinking of that is similar to Spy Hunter in look but a fair bit older. Can't recall the name though.

I was convinced it was in colour but looking at the Atari ones, Super Sprint wouldn't have been out yet, so perhaps it was one of the earlier black and white ones then. For some reason, and I'm sure I must be confusing memories in to one another, but there's a thing nagging in my head it was actually a lorry I was driving, too! God knows what that was!