Printable View
I'm just curious to see how long some of you have been playing videogames for; I think this board in particular will yield a relatively narrow sample of responses. If there is a period of time that you did not play games and then started again, count that as "playing games". I'm more or less curious to know how long its been since you picked up a controller for the very first time.
I vividly remember playing games since I was like 3-4. So it's been at least 20 years for me.
15 years roughly, gotta say that my interest has waned in the last 2-3 years or so.
For some reason I have zero interest in the current gen games. Weird, since I was all over the ps2 and the game cube when they were released.
Go figure.
Quoted for mother fucking truth!!! This is exactly how I feel!Quote:
Originally Posted by Late
When I was about 2 I used to play a good bit of Atari 2600 at my Grandparents house. On Christmas of '85, a month before my third birthday, my brother and I got our first NES. I've been a pretty obsessed gamer ever since.
So yeah, I've been gaming for about 24 years. Out of all the years I've been gaming, I think the mid '90s was probably the most exciting period. So many systems, new forms of media, and the imagination companies used made that a great time to be a gamer.
I was born in '84, and I can remember playing The Legend of Zelda when my brothers got it in '87. My first experience with video games was pressing the B button repeatedly and being mesmerized by Link dropping bomb after bomb.
So I guess I started at the age of 3, which makes me a 22 year video game veteran now.
Similar for me - born in '84 and the first game I remember playing is the Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt combo.Quote:
Originally Posted by Zenimus
I started in the NES era, enjoyed gaming as a bigger kid with the SNES, and fell in love with gaming via the combination of Diehard GameFan Magazine + the Sega Saturn.
I wouldn't say i've playing games since I was 3, as I don't know the first time I played an NES, but it's definitely 15+ years, with a serious interest in games occuring within the last 14/15 or so years.
I think games just keep getting better.
As followup poll Buro, why not make a poll to see how old to see how old everyone is, though certainly we'll get some of that information out of this thread.
First game console was the Sega Master System.
Got it when I was 6.
I think anyone on this site is going to have at least 10 years under their belt.
My earliest memories were playing games in pizza parlors like Super Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Vanguard. I'm 33 years old now.
I still play when I can, and I will always play on many different types of formats. Retro, next-gen, iPod... wherever and whenever.
I have no recollection of ever taking a huge sabbatical from gaming. Even now, with life catching up to me and I have less time to play games, I play some sort of game at least 2 times a week... if not, more.
I will most likely die a gamer; it's just in my blood.
I am just fortunate I lived during the golden ages of arcade gaming, when you had awesome arcades around town, many classic, innovative games came out and there were arcade cabs in most convenience stores. If I have children who become gamers, I would not hesitate to tell them about the "good ol' days".
I was also fortunate to experience game centers here in Japan, and I was there when Street Fighter IV had loketests in places like Osaka, Nagoya and Tokyo. I have lived a dream that few people could live, and I realize that... I really am lucky.
Twenty-five...going on twenty-six years as a videogame lover now.
I started playing Atari 2600 when I was five.
My first system was an Atari 2600 my sister gave me when she went off to college. I then got a Nintendo on Christmas of '87. Years later, I got a Sega Genesis and Game Boy for Christmas. I then got a Super Nintendo. Once I reached junior high, and then started high school, I quit console gaming and jumped on the PC gaming bandwagon. You were in the cool kid in school if you have a PC with Doom II, Wolfenstein 3D, Warcraft 2, Quake 2, MechWarrior, Dark Forces/Jedi Knight, and the LucasArts games. I then later got back into the arcade scene and was heavy into Sega, so I got a Saturn that Christmas. Little did I know at the time, that the Saturn was about to die a quick death. A few days later, I traded it for a N64 and Zelda: Ocarina of Time. I don't know how, but somehow at this point, I had no idea or concept of Playstation. It wasn't until my birthday my junior year of high school that I learned about this cool looking game coming out called Final Fantasy VII. I got a PS and FF7 that year for my birthday, and have been a hardcore gamer, and have owned at least once, every console that has come out since.
My earliest vg experiences date back to the 70s when I was five or six years old and used to play stuff like Space Race or Gun Fight at a mall my parents and me used to go to on our weekly shopping tour.
My first console was a Pong variant ("Universum Pong"). Had to skip the 2600 because my parents did not want to buy me one so I played the games at my friends' Atari instead. Then a Commodore C64 entered our house and from then on I discovered the joys of 8bit micros and games... those were the best days of my life, gaming-wise.
Then there was the Master System, Amiga, Mega Drive, etc.
So... I've been playing videogames for more than 30 years.
I remember playing Bump N Jump when I was three back in 1983. My father helped me with the controls while I played. The same went for a cockpit cab Pole Position (feet couldn't reach the pedals). As for console gaming, I think I played Combat around the same time.
I wish I still had the photos from back then (the end of Asbury Park's arcade era).
A very long time. Pretty much since the things existed really. I'm 36 now, and basically started out with Space Invaders or maybe even Pong.
My actual first memory of playing a videogame is a bit hazy, but I think it all started when my dad and I stopped off at a service area during a long drive somewhere. They had what we now know as a an arcade cab. I'm pretty sure that was Space Invaders. I had never seen anything like it before, and even though I was very young at the time, was completely mesmerised by it.
I think that was the start of it all. I think I had some more exposure to them than a lot of other kids did. Arcades didn't exist back then of course, but I used to get taken to France a lot, and they always had videogames on the ferry. They were popular in French cafes too.
A bit further down the line I remember playing the likes of Phoenix and so on. I remember this one time I came across a Phoenix cab somewhere that the coin slot was screwed up, and it kept giving free credits. Luckily there were very few people around and I basically just played for free, pretending to put money in when I lost. Of course, I didn't have the actual money to put in it. That was my idea of heaven at the time. It was awesome. I couldn't have imagined anything better than that....
I digress...
I'm guessing 1979.
Don't want to derail the thread or anything, but specifically what 'videogames' existed before Space Invaders? Anyone got a history of those early games?
Super-short version:Quote:
Originally Posted by hanafuda
Lots of shooting games like Gun Fight I mentioned in my post (came out in 1975), Pong and thousands of variants, racers (mostly b/w with colored plastic overlays and steering wheel), sports games, war games (submarine games with periscopes used to be very popular back then), etc. When Space Invaders hit the arcades, the first big wave of videogame excitement was already waning again, people flocked back to pinball machines in droves, then it clicked and vg became the big thing until the early 80s when the market was oversaturated and the increasing power and thus market share of home consoles led to the big video game crash of 1984.
Video games left childhood in the late 70s and lost their virginity in 1984... from then on, the focus started to shift from arcades to home computing/entertainment, then the internet revolution also hit the video game market (or vice versa) and there we are now.
:)
I was born in 1974, and I have vague memories of being excited when I first saw Space Invaders in arcades. We also had an Atari 2600. So, over thirty years. Almost as long as it's been a real industry.
got an atari 2600 when I was 4 and shortly after a NES.
Still have it all and I still play the NES regularly.
I need to AV mod the atari, hooking it up on RF takes too much work.
Ditto. We had an Atari VCS in the house starting around 1980. I picked up the controller around age 5 in 1981. Been gaming ever since. So I guess that makes me a gamer for 28 years now.Quote:
Originally Posted by Magician
One of my earliest gaming memories is of playing an International Karate clone on a BBC Micro, can't remember what age I was though.
Anyway, my first real games machine was a 128K ZX Spectrum that I got at the age of 8 or thereabouts, and I've been a gamer ever since.
Way more then 15 years.Parents had Pong...
...Started on Atari 2600/Telstar Arcade
Taking breaks from gaming when too busy with Girfriends or ....Racing Motocross/Bikes..traveling.
Most all my Girlfriend liked games/played or was into the current sport I was into..
I had this one Chic who hated games but liked to...@@...alot.....So the..@@....Won over the game playing for awhile..I remember the times as it was when 007 Goldeneye came out/N64.....(my friends were gamers.relatives etc..her brothers were gamers)
She'd come over my place and see all my gaming stuff and hated it..,wanted me to sell it all..
I'd poke play the game when not with her,but she hated games so much that she'd call me and say"your not playing the FN game right",Get rid of that shit..........,controller in my hand.:p
then as she was around more and more I put everything away to make her ass happy..
.That had to be the longest I'd hadn't played..that.@@ .can really get a hold of you..
Since I was 5 or so, possibly younger. I'm 21 now, so that's well over 15 years.
Women come and go. Never let someone else keep you from your hobbies.
I have foggy memories of playing arcade games when I was very little. We got the Mario/Duck Hunt/Track Meet NES bundle with the running pad and light gun for christmas whenever that came out. So since 1988/89 at least.
Grew up in arcades in the 70s. I remember football with the trackball. I remember when Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pac-Man and Donkey Kong all hit. There was a mall with a great arcade within walking distance, and an even closer pizza parlor that had a DK machine, a DK Jr. machine and a Pac-Man cocktail cabinet just on the corner.
There were also a couple of mini-golf scenes in my area (Haunted Trails, Putt-Putt) that were constantly getting in really cool games before anyone else, such as Jungle King (before they changed the character from a Tarzan clone into a great white hunter), Reactor, Ghosts n Goblins, Zaxxon, Xevious, Q-bert and Mr. Do. So in my area, there was a thriving arcade scene that kept my interest level high.
I remember how massive Tron was in arcades, and how misunderstood the movie was by so many of those same people playing it.
I didn't own a home console of my own until later in the 2600's life cycle because my folks didn't have a ton of cash back then. But they eventually broke down and bought me one due to my incessant begging. They got me the console and Maze Craze and gave me their portable TV/Radio combo. I had to play Maze Craze on a screen no bigger than a desktop calendar in black and white. Eventually, I got a 9" black and white as a hand me down when my older sister got a color tv or her own. I don't know that I EVER got to play my own 2600 on a color tv, but I had the biggest game library of anyone I knew and brought my games over to their houses frequently.
Never owned an Intellivision because I only really liked the first Dungeons and Dragons game for it.
Never owned a Colecovision because I couldn't convince my folks to drop cash on it after how long I begged for a 2600. I don't see it as any great loss.
never owned an Oddysey 2 even though I DESPERATELY wanted one for Quest For The Rings. I still lament never being able to play that game.
In the mid/late eighties, I got into the massive Commodore 64 scene, and I will tell you that computer was one of the best gaming consoles I ever owned. I remember all the 'hacking' parties I attended where we all brought our rigs and traded games with one another. I had nearly 1000 games for my C-64 at the end of it all, and more than a few of them were damn good. This was when I really got into RPGs, due to Ultima. I started to drift away from the console scene around this time. To be honest, I'd love to find a SIMPLE emulator that runs those games now, as most of my hardware for the C-64 doesn't work anymore and those discs are all probably rotted out.
I'd pretty much stopped going to arcades altogether, and my 2600 was so outdated due to my C-64 being such a good game machine. Then Ninja Gaiden came out for the NES. That was the game that absolutley convinced me I had to own a console again, so I took my tax return as soon as I got it and bought the NES and Ninja Gaiden. My interest in consoles has remained high ever since, and the Commodore scene sort of withered away at around the same time.
I even returned to the arcade scene when Street Fighter II came out, but we all know what's happened to arcades since those glorious days.
Good times.
Good thread.
My first system was an Intellivision II. So, I have been playing videogames for over 20 years.
Get CCS64 and you're set. Best C64 emu ever, I use it since years. It's shareware, has no trial period and can be fully used without registration but you'll get some nice extras if you register.Quote:
Originally Posted by Taiso
I still have all my C64 hardware and games, they all work flawlessly. Data density on them isn't very high and most of them were of higher quality than the trash that came out in the 90s.
Ahh, the 64 scene... those were the days... I really miss them.
I remember that, too. A bunch of Xs and Os everywhere. I thought it was Gridiron Fight, but a quick Google search nets me a completely different game, so I have no idea what it was called.Quote:
Originally Posted by Taiso
Got my NES for my fifth birthday. Remember it vividly. Been playing them since.
Supposedly I was 3 when I picked up an NES controller and started playing a Mario game.
Around 2005 my interest started to wane in video games and I started playing them less and less. Now I post more on message boards than I do play.
Takumaji:
Thanks for the suggestion on the C64 emu. I'll definitely look into it.
Deuce:
Do you remember if you could pass in that game? I think it was just running.
I've no idea. I only remember seeing the game. I never played it... even back then, I hated sports games. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Taiso
24- 25 years for me And I'm 30
Aw come on man. You never rocked some Cyberball?Quote:
Originally Posted by Deuce
Regarding that football trackball game, I think my fascination with it had nothing to do with football (I've never owned a single football game in my life, although I cop to owning some basketball games and baseball games in my time) and everything to do with seeing something I knew about being electronically represented on a screen. That's probably why it sticks so strongly in my head.
Especially considering I live in the Chicagoland area, where the Bears are king and you can't even throw a stick without hitting something Bears related on it.
Nah. The only sports game I ever got into was Ice Hockey for NES. That game rocked.Quote:
Originally Posted by Taiso
People are pretty football-happy here, too, but I've never seen the appeal. I mostly see intelligent, otherwise-rational people turn into screaming idiots over nothing of any real significance. And I won't get into the already-idiots that get drunk at games and cause nothing but annoyance and trouble.
Been playing for a quarter of a century now (since 1984).
Pops brought home the Atari 2600 from a yard sale with about 80 games. Been playing video games ever since. Though I still have yet to purchase/own any of the current generation systems [PS3, XBOX 360, Wii]. But I'm still powering up the NEO-GEO 2 SLOT and other 16-Bit systems + I'm a freggin' mad man over the Atari 5200 (especially Missile Command with teh Track Ball Controller) these days because I'd missed out on that system back in the day.
Lets see, I have memories of the Atari 2600 but I wasn't old enough to appreciate it. I just remember being at my cousins house and desperately wanting to play the Indiana Jones game on 2600 because I was obsessed with the movies but he'd never let me because the game was shitty. I also remember playing The Smurfs, which had a soundtrack that annoyed me even as a kid.
I got a NES with Mario/Duck Hunt/Track & Field for Christmas one year but I wasn't all that interested. I remember my dad, my uncle and my brother all freaking out over it but I didn't see the big deal. I remember trying to play Mario Bros with my brother, I thought I was controlling the enemies while he controlled Mario so when he died I'd laugh and rub it in his face. I wasn't the smartest kid in the world apparently. It wasn't until later when I had a chance to sit down and play alone that I really got into it and after that I was obsessed. The grocery store we went to also rented games so my dad and I would rent a new one almost every time we did the shopping. I would play anything back then as long as the cover looked cool.
22 years that I can remember (currently 25) I have been playing video games, in fact my earliest memory is of playing Pac-Man on the Atari 2600 we used to have. Still have the actual games we have for it though that system died years ago, unfortunately.
Since I was 4-5 ish....my bro didn't wanna let me play because I sucked lol.
I owned both of these games! I'd totally forgotten about them.Quote:
Originally Posted by genjiglove
Raiders was, I believe, the first (and maybe only) 2600 game to require the use of both joysticks. That game wasn't very good but it was a pretty fucking ambitious game for its time due to the inventory management system. For a 2600 game, it was pretty complicated.
I remember how much time I spent trying to find the Yar from Yar's Revenge, which was a long rumored easter egg reported in the pages of such venerable gaming trades like Electronic Games (which is still one of my favorite video game magazines ever.)
Smurfs, I remember, had a white cartridge because it was made by Coleco. Coleco made a pretty good Venture port for the 2600 and a totally horrible Donkey Port for the 2600. The DK port's sound effedts are still commonly used in TV shows and movies today when they show a kid playing a video game. Smurfs was a super simple platformer and I remember being very let down by it. I remember the initial screens they showed in Electronic Games magazine for the Colecovision and I remember saying how awesome the smurf looked in that, just like the cartoon version. And the backgrounds for the Colecovision version were very well done. The 2600 version was...pretty bad by comparison. Still, as shitty as that game was, I still look back on it fondly:D
Oh, one more thing about the C-64 scene.
Compute! and Compute's Gazette. Great fucking magazines for the Vic-20 and C-64. They even published game code that you could type and save to disc or tape and load up and play whenever. They gave out free games in those magazines written by staff and other readers in those magazines. You just had to take the time to transcribe the code.
Those were the fucking days, man.
Good times.
Got an Atari when I was maybe 6, that would have been 83, but I remember going to my cousin's place to play Atari games before that, so I guess I've been playing since I was 5, I'm 33 now.
Since i was 4 so thats 23 years.
I was three or four when my brother bought the SNES (From Venture, anyone remember Venture department stores?), from then on it was sealed. My first experience I remember vividly of playing the first stage of Super Mario and getting mowed over by the giant Bullet Bill.
How long have I've been playing videogames? I've been playing before the concept of video games out in arcades for money. How's that for old :D
I first played games in the arcade when I was about 6 or 7, maybe a bit younger (I'm almost 30 now, so that's twenty-plus years). I still have fond memories of playing stuff like Donkey Kong, Space Harrier, and later, Double Dragon.
I got a Sega Master System as a birthday or Christmas gift a year or so later, and from there I got a Game Boy, a SNES in about 1992, and the rest, they say, is history. I've been playing games regularly ever since, no matter how destitute I was.
I've been playing video games since I was 3 or 4 years old and I'm now 19, so more than 15 years. My parents had an NES and 2600 literally my entire life.
My firsts games were on my fathers 48k.around my 4 or 5 years old,that makes 25 years in love with games.
good times,every game was memorable.everything was new.
Biggest 3 moments in this gaming life got to be the NES era(looking at the window shop, the carts seemed like candy bars,so many perfect games!),the first time i came across Samurai shodown 1 at the arcades and the very first time i played Mario 64.
This is basically the result I expected from this site; definitely an older/more dedicated crowd. I'd really like to conduct this poll on some other forums I read just to get a more "mainstream" sampling.
And just for the record, I remember being about 4 and going to Montgomery Wards with my parents. My Dad bought an NES with the Mario Bros./Duck Hunt pack-in and two games: Contra and Castlevania II.
Been non-stop since then really, I'm nearly 26 now.
I think my first gaming moment was Donkey Kong in a laundry mat circa 1993.
Good times....
Jesus Christ, for me, it's been almost 30 years...since 1981, on a fateful night when the rest of the family was going to watch Alien on HBO. My mother and Uncle didn't think I was old enough to watch it, so he sat me down in his art studio where he had a color TV and an Atari 2600 hooked up. Video Pinball was the first thing I ever played. I emerged from the room at about 3am, long after everyone had gone to sleep, and a gamer was born. Went right back in and fired up another cartridge.