Seeing an Atari 2600, the original woodgrain model, at my cousin’s house and playing Space Invaders, Adventure and the one with cowboys.

I was convinced the cartridges contained reels of film, but I couldn’t figure out how to make that work with all the different possibilities. I was only 4 or 5 at the time.

My cousin opened up a cartridge and I was amazing to see the circuit board with a couple of chips on inside. Blew my mind.

first, some pong-like game on someone’s zx spectrum in early 80ties. it was brief and short but very first experience. later, karateka, tetris, games like that on my and others C64.

the first game i was hooked to was Elite on same C64. it was just wow. 3d, freedom, trading, pirating, leveling up. i played only Elite for long time, played it on Amiga and my first 386 later on. still stands as my first serious gaming memory.

I recall finding the hidden area in level 1-1 in Super Mario Bros 3. In it is a 3 made of coins. I remember going “look mom! That’s how old I am!”

I remember playing the Neverhood on our first family computer back when I was 4. The art direction and story were really oddly appealing as a kid. I still think it’s a very underrated art style.

I remember being in a friend’s house. He asks me if i knew what golden eye is. I said no, and so he takes me to his room. He turns on the tv, so I ask “oh we are going to watch a james bond movie?” He laughs and says no, and presses a button on a wierd plastic box that suddenly comes to life! The tv suddenly changes, and some wierd scene plays until we get to something that looks like a dvd menu. He then gives me a wierd ass controller.

I then spent the day figuring how to stop looking up while running away from my friend headshotting me repeatadly while giggling like a schoolgirl. I enjoyed every second of it. My brain was firing up and never have I felt so excited to even being aware of such an experience existing.

My dad coming home with a ZX81. I played various games on it but the one I remember most fondly and load up occasionally today, was Forty Niner. We needed to get a 16K RAM Pack for it so it definitely wasn’t the first I played on that system.

3-4 years old, my father was sitting down and I was leaning on him and played through Kirby’s Dream Land on the original Game Boy from start to finish.

Pole vaulting in summer games!

My cousin had a bunch of Tiger Electronic and Game and Watch games just kinda tossed in a bag. I really did not like him as a kid but boy did I spend a lot of time at his house playing those games.

I don’t remember what the game was called, but I played it from a diskette on DOS, if I remember correctly. You were controlling a sort of space ship and jumping on different platforms while continuously moving forward. I loved it. But I don’t remember what it was called so I can’t look it up any more.

We also had some sort of maze game and Commander Keen. But I sucked at Commander Keen, so I never got past the first level.

Pong.

Duke Nukem 3D

Battlezone on the Atari 2600 https://atarionline.org/atari-2600/battlezone

Not necessarily my first, but my first clear memory of a gaming obsession is playing Defender on my cousin’s 2600

Jill of the Jungle is the first one I can remember playing when I was about six.