How long have you been playing videogames?

[scorponok]

My first system was an Intellivision II. So, I have been playing videogames for over 20 years.

 

[Takumaji]

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.

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.

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.

 

[Deuce]

I remember football with the trackball.

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.

 

[subcons]

Got my NES for my fifth birthday. Remember it vividly. Been playing them since.

 

[LoneSage]

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.

 

[Taiso]

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.

 

[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.

 

[evil son]

24- 25 years for me And I'm 30

 

[Taiso]

I've no idea. I only remember seeing the game. I never played it... even back then, I hated sports games.

Aw come on man. You never rocked some Cyberball?

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.

 

[Deuce]

Aw come on man. You never rocked some Cyberball?

Nah. The only sports game I ever got into was Ice Hockey for NES. That game rocked.

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.

 

[Mike Shagohod]

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.

 

[genjiglove]

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.

 

[Phyeir]

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.

 

[Yue]

Since I was 4-5 ish....my bro didn't wanna let me play because I sucked lol.

 

[Taiso]

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 owned both of these games! I'd totally forgotten about them.

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

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.

 

[payment_due]

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.

 

[NeoDragoN]

Since i was 4 so thats 23 years.

 

[OrochiEddie]

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.

 

[Arcademan]

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

 

[HeartlessNinny]

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.

 

[famicommander]

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.

 

[Professor Denim]

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.

 

[Buro Destruct]

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.

 

[BigTinz]

I think my first gaming moment was Donkey Kong in a laundry mat circa 1993.


Good times....

 

[Loopz]

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.