[Campion]

Well, I guess I've said it in the title really, in this thread I'd really like to hear about your first gaming experience and what affect it had on you.

To be fair, I guess I should go first! My very first experience of gaming was on a Spectrum ZX81, and having no tape deck to load games from, and none to save my own creations to, my first gaming experience was probably a little unusual. It was a game called 'Missile Attack' in BASIC, the code for which was located in a book of games for the system that I borrowed from the local library.

It was a really simple game where you had to fire bolts from a gun at the bottom of the screen to destroy the blobs that were dropping from the sky... all the while in ASCII graphics as I recall.

Having less patience back then than I do now, this was a bit of a frustrating experience because the Spectrum was linked up to the only telly in the house (in the lounge) I had to program and play the game between coming home from school and the six o'clock news...

So I really only ever got to play it for about half an hour a night!

Frustrating, but exciting enough to keep me coming back I guess. I'm rather glad that things have changed though.




Campion.

[Mark]

Hard to remember exactly but probably the first electronic game I played was the Caveman LCD game.



Wow, just looking at that brings back LOADS of memories!

My brother had Astro Wars at the same time so I played that alot too!



I would lie on the carpet playing these plugged into the mains for ages (it was that or batteries)!

I remember feeling my world fall down when I was about to beat my high score on Astro Wars and my brother ran by, his foot taking the power lead out of the game....

Then it was a bunch of games on the Atari XL!



I remember Whirlynurd, Bruce Lee, Ninja, Beer Belly Burt's Brew Biz as games I used to play alot

Wow, remembering the days when you could buy a game on tape for £1.99 from the corner shop on the way home from school, wait aaages for it to load (properly) and then be bitterly dissapointed by the graphics as the pics on the back of the box were for the Commodore 64 (curse you small print!).

Still, you would play games to death that you would give up on in minutes now as they were too hard or rubbish!

[davejm]

I'd played on a few of those electronic games, but my first experience with a videogame of my own was when my Dad bought me a Commodore 16 when I was 5 years old.

That first game?

... BMX Simulator!

[Mark]

BMX simulaaatooorr!!!!

I was thinking about that when writing my post but couldn't remember how 'early' it was in my gaming history!

I used to LOVE that game, timing the acceleration on the corners!

They need to xbox live multiplayer this bad boy

[Super Stu]

I had that AstroWars! I also had this:



man, I can even recall the sound effects in my head.

As for actual videogames, I'm really struggling to think of my first, such a long time ago. There's a couple I remember pretty vividly, though:

Empire Strikes Back on the Atari 2600:


Trans Am on the Spectrum


Both belonged to my cousin. He'd just sent his Spectrum off to Sinclair to get the memory upgraded to 48k from 16k (or was it a bolt on kit? I don't remember, one of the two). I think this is one of the games that would actually work in 16k of memory, though.

Empire on the Atari 2600 was odd - you had a button which would cycle the colour palette.

First video game I owned was... well, my first console was a Coleco Vision which came with three games:

Donkey Kong (Nintendo)


Smurfs


Zaxxon (Sega)


Random trivia: can anyone think of any consoles in between the Coleco Vision and the Gamecube which had both Nintendo and Sega games on it? I remember thinking it was a big deal when I got my Gamecube to see both companies making games for it, as I recall couldn't recall anything other than back on my Coleco.

[Gimpy]

Heh, came in here to post Zaxxon and Smurfs, I used to love my Coleco Vision. Also Silkworm, Rainbow Island, and the Dizzy games all left lasting impressions

[Bazry]

My first gaming memory is of Batman on the Amstrad CPC

[Super Stu]

My mate had a CPC 464, about the time I got a Spectrum+ (a year after the Coleco). He was only allowed to get it out every now and again, rather than it being out all of the time. He also had a green screen monitor for it, which just added to the whole mystique

It all felt a bit posh though, no wonder Sugar bought Sinclair.

[Bazry]

We had the monitor aswell. We went from the CPC to a Spectrum+2 and then I got the floppy disk Spectrum+3, which I only ever had the 2 disks that came with it

Then I still remember the day my mum took us to Argos to buy the Turtles SE NES, I tried buying one on Ebay a while back but it went for daft money, so I settled for just a standard boxed one instead

[Super Stu]

You know, I've never actually seen a Spectrum+3 before. I think, at that point, Sugar had started taking over manufacturing and the black +2 was the Amstrad version of the +2, and the +3 was based on the chassis of the CPC 6128? At least, it looked an awful lot like it. I wish I'd got to see one. Do you still have it?

Speaking of long lost Spectrums, I don't suppose anyone had a QL? I'd love to have a go of one of those.

[Bazry]

No if I remember rightly it broke and would no longer read the disks. I still have the Spectrum+2 though with all the games. Think theres a light gun and a light pen in the big bag we have aswell

[Super Stu]

Light pen, fancy. We had the official Sinclair light gun, which was awful. As I recall, it'd intercept the RF signal to the TV and had a camera at the front. I think the only games I ever had for it were the dreadful ones it came with

We should split these posts into a big Sinclair love-in.

[Plopboy]

3D Monster Maze IIRC

[JayArr]

Chances are the first game I played was some rubbish educational game on the BBC at school, Granny's Garden or Geordie Racer most likely. First proper game that I remember would have been the Italia 90 game on the Mega Drive. Had it on one of those Mega Games cartridges along with Columns and Super Hang-On.

First PC game was Worms, got it free when we got our first computer in 1996.

Actually, thinking about it we had an Amiga 500 before the Mega Drive, so I would have played something on that first. James Pond or The New Zealand Story (which to this day I still have no clue what I was doing) in all likelihood.

[Bazry]

oh Granny's Garden, I now want to play it

[Shiryou]

...THE CAVEMAN GAME. Oh my gawwd now that takes me back. I still have it I think, hidden up in the loft! Do want! And I think that was my first game too

[geekette]

I was a BBC Micro girl from 1983, and I remember my brother copying pages of code in from magazines, as well as loading games from tapes, and both taking ages and having a high chance of not working properly! I'm struggling to think of the games which predated us getting a floppy disk drive. I remember later on we had snapper and frogger and frak and monster and elite and meteors and hunchback and citadel and chuckie egg. We also had some text based adventures. I know my parents were keen on logo and educational things too. I don't seem to remember Granny's Garden though

[davejm]

geekette, on 28 July 2010 - 09:40 PM, said:

I remember my brother copying pages of code in from magazines

I used to do that!

[JBS]

Have no idea what so ever what the first game I played/owned was to be honest.

The first game I actually remember asking for and getting was WWF WrestleMania Challenge on the NES. Loved it at the time, I remember being disappointed that it didnt have the British Bulldog in it though.

[CosmoKramer]

No idea of my first game, but my first memory of a game was on the megadrive, playing Streets of Rage, Golden Axe and Sonic the Hedgehog. I loved Golden Axe. So much so I bought it off Xbox Arcade, that game that I struggled with at the age of 6 was completed within an hour.