Tell Us Dammit

13 years ago

March 17, 2011 at 11:00 am

Dammit we want you to tell us stuff – can you remember the first video game you ever played? What was it – and what was it like?

This isn’t some marketing survey or whatever. It’s an emotional investment in you. Yes, we’re interested in knowing you, Kotaku reader person. You probably know enough about us – more than you even want to, we’re sure. But, hey, we’d like to know about you, too.

I have a rough idea – I’m pretty sure the first game I ever played was Horace Goes Skiing on the Spectrum 48k, a computer that wasn’t released in Australia. I was obsessed with games from day one, and all of my primary school work jotter are filled with tales of what games I was playing, what I loved, what I hated.

What was your first game? And can you remember what it felt like to play games for the first time?

Comments

73 responses to “Tell Us Dammit”

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Stevorooni

March 17, 2011 at 11:05 am

The Asteroids type game on the Vectrex but I was probably too young to appreciate it at the time.

The obsession truly started with the Double Dragon Arcade game.

Reply
Gorzilla

March 17, 2011 at 11:11 am

Probbably Comsmo’s Cosmic Adventure.
a 2d platformer featuring an alien with suction caps for hands. That’s abbout all I can remember about it.

Reply
1. Benjamin Colagrande
  
  March 17, 2011 at 2:22 pm
  
  dude…..
  
  nostalg’d hard at that, he was looking for his parents if memory serves
  
  wicked game
  
  kudos to you good sir, many many kudos
  
  Reply
  1. Gorzilla
    
    March 17, 2011 at 2:45 pm
    
    That’s right, he was looking for his parents.
    The memories, they come flooding back!
    
    Reply
2. Ben White
  
  March 17, 2011 at 2:32 pm
  
  Played that to DEATH.
  I loved pretty much every Apogee game I played.
  
  Reply
Shane

March 17, 2011 at 11:13 am

The first Legend of Zelda on the NES. I thought the name entry part was the entire game for about two weeks.

Reply
1. Mark Serrels
  
  March 17, 2011 at 11:15 am
  
  I think I’ve heard you say this before. Still awesome.
  
  Reply
2. Stevorooni
  
  March 17, 2011 at 11:17 am
  
  When I first played Ghosts and Goblins on the Commodore 64 I thought the entire game consisted of killing zombies in the beginning area, I didn’t realise I could jump over the gravestone and there was an entire series of levels to explore!
  
  Reply
Trjn

March 17, 2011 at 11:15 am

There were a bunch of educational games that I played as a child, but the only one I can remember the name of was James Pond…which really wasn’t all that educational.

Then there was also some weird sports game that involved hang gliding, Tetris and a few years after that Sonic the Hedgehog, Alex the Kidd, Columns and Mortal Kombat.

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AmbroseIV

March 17, 2011 at 11:18 am

Hmm. Difficult to say because I can’t even remember the games I played last week, but it was probably one of the following five:

Budokan: The Martial Spirit (DOS)
Stunts (DOS)
Boulderdash (C64)
Super Cycle (C64)
Ikari Warriors (C64)

I can recall they were fun at the time, but nothing else really stands out (I was about… 4 y/o) – I’d go back and give ’em a whirl, but none have aged particularly well…

Reply
welbot

March 17, 2011 at 11:19 am

First game I ever played was PacMan.. on this!
http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/5808/tomypacman7yz.jpg

It belonged to my uncle.. i spent soooo many hours playing that!

Reply
Dire Wolf

March 17, 2011 at 11:20 am

I think it might have been Super Mario World on the SNES.

Reply
Wanderlei silva is my biznitch

March 17, 2011 at 11:21 am

Bruce lee on the atari 800lx, awesome game for its time…never finished it but it was the first game that really hooked me…that was almost 20 years ago!

Reply
thistler

March 17, 2011 at 11:25 am

I’m pretty sure it was Space Invaders in a cocktail cabinet. I was 3-4 yrs old, it was in Alice Springs and I was hooked. The next 12 years my parents stopped all pocket money so I wouldn’t waste it in an arcade. I had to resort to stealing soft-drink bottles from people’s door steps to get the 20cent deposit.

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Dave Goodfellow

March 17, 2011 at 11:25 am

I remember it clear as day – Zelda II on NES

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Michael

March 17, 2011 at 11:26 am

It was either Donkey Kong or Q*Bert on the mighty Intellivision. Ahhh, that system rocked. Q*Bert was good but I didn’t realise how bad the port of Donkey Kong was until I played the arcade original years later 😛 Still, very fond memories.

Reply
Elly Hart

March 17, 2011 at 11:26 am

Jazz Jackrabbit would have been among the first… and Sonic the Hedgehog on Nintendo 64.

Reply
1. Trjn
  
  March 17, 2011 at 11:29 am
  
  “Sonic the Hedgehog on Nintendo 64.”
  
  Classroom battles have been started for less blasphemous comments than this. Prepare thyself for war!
  
  Reply
  1. Neil Mac
    
    March 17, 2011 at 11:57 am
    
    Easy tiger. Nintendo won, remember?
    
    Reply
    1. Trjn
      
      March 17, 2011 at 12:07 pm
      
      And I’m still bitter about it!
      
      Reply
2. Gorzilla
  
  March 17, 2011 at 12:24 pm
  
  Did Elly just troll us?
  Oh please tell me that was a troll, or that Elly is a super nerd who haced a Nintendo to play Sega games at teh age of 6 or something.
  
  Reply
  1. Elly Hart
    
    March 17, 2011 at 12:27 pm
    
    Uhh OK can someone tell me what console it would have been? I just remember playing it in the early ’90s. Maybe Mega Drive.
    
    Reply
    1. Michael
      
      March 17, 2011 at 12:58 pm
      
      You’re not really a gamer, are you? You’re just a pretender. We’re onto you! Haha! Your secret is out!
      
      Seriously though it would have been the Mega Drive. Nintendo and Sega were in competition then and there was no way a Sega game would be on a Nintendo platform. Even if it *was* the Nintendo 64 (which it wasn’t), that wasn’t released until the mid-90’s at best (1997 in Australia).
      
      Reply
      1. Mark Serrels
        
        March 17, 2011 at 12:59 pm
        
        I don’t think Elly has ever pretended to be a gamer. No secret there.
      2. AmbroseIV
        
        March 17, 2011 at 1:45 pm
        
        All she tried to do was contribute to the article and they turned her away!
        
        :'(
      3. Mark Serrels
        
        March 17, 2011 at 1:47 pm
        
        IT MADE ME SAD!
        
        (alright back to twitter)
      4. Gorzilla
        
        March 17, 2011 at 2:51 pm
        
        I feel mean now, and slightly disappointed.
        
        I was really hoping it was a troll in the same spirit of that NCIS episode you guys posted on the other day.
        
        By the way, Is it true Mike Fahey holds the top scores in nearly every MMO ever?
HindenLagen

March 17, 2011 at 11:27 am

I’m pretty sure the first videogame I played was Kirby’s adventure on the NES over at a mate’s place. I remember begging my parents for a NES and tada! they whipped out an old atari from the garage. I can’t remember what version atari it was but it did have a ton of pre-installed games on the console.

Reply
BlueMaxima

March 17, 2011 at 11:28 am

Donkey Kong Land on GameBoy. The multiple levels and playable characters made me think “Wow, games can do all this?!”

Reply
ShiggyNinty

March 17, 2011 at 11:31 am

Sonic the Hedgehog on the Mega Drive back when I was 3. Still got great memories of that game.

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Andrew Burdusel

March 17, 2011 at 11:35 am

First video game I ever played was Pitfall on the Atari 2600. One of my dads friends had the system sitting in his garage for years and let us have it.

It was ok for what it was. The first system I really put a lot of playtime into was the SEGA master system.

Reply
Jesse Dobie

March 17, 2011 at 11:41 am

Barely remember but I’m pretty sure it was Alex Kidd in Miracle World, on Sega Master System.

Would’ve been 2 or 3 years old. Older brothers would’ve borrowed the console from the toy library.

Can’t remember what I thought or felt at the time, but I know I’ve had one controller or another in hand ever since.

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Blaghman: Minecraft’s Michelangelo

March 17, 2011 at 11:41 am

Definitely something.

I have no idea, I was playing games since I was small, and they were all master race games, so there was a large selection that’s all blurry in my mind.

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706

March 17, 2011 at 11:48 am

Paganitzu, still remember my father showing it to me when I was a kid and me trying to figure out what you had to do. I remember I could never get past a moving rock style maze/puzzle which I often saw in games afterwards.

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codework

March 17, 2011 at 11:49 am

Transylvania on the Apple IIe. Graphical / text adventure with verb/noun entry. I had saved my pocket money to buy it to use on the school library’s computer during lunch breaks in year 6.

Might not have been the first game I ever played. But it was certainly the first one I invested in.

(If you don’t count Game and Watch handhelds)

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v4next

March 17, 2011 at 11:49 am

Probably Donkey Kong Game & Watch. Then alot of Tiger LCD’s. Then discovered Alex Kidd in Miracle World on the Master System, which really was the game that made me a gamer! After that game I HAD to have a Master System! Then discovered all the great MS games, with The Ninja being the first cartridge I ever bought. Also discovered the NES over friends houses, we used to swap entire consoles and games, something I would never even think of doing nowadays!

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Braaains

March 17, 2011 at 11:49 am

Space Invaders on one of those old sit-down table type arcade cabinets. That would have been about 1979/80 when I was about 4 or 5 years old.

Reply
Strange

March 17, 2011 at 11:51 am

An adventure game called ‘Down the Mine’ on the good old Amstrad. It had a game-breaking bug so you could never finish it, but I was hooked nevertheless.

Reply
NotoriousR, Q-Bo’s Page 5 Thunder Stealerer

March 17, 2011 at 11:53 am

The original Crash Bandicoot on PS1 is the first game I’ve owned and played to completion. I think I might have played other games before that, but they were just at my friends/cousins houses. SO they don’t count. Crash, however, does. I still have the disc 🙂

Reply
Neil Mac

March 17, 2011 at 11:54 am

Namco-Bandai’s Galaga on a cocktail cabinet. Parentals learned quickly that a young me could be kept quietly entertained at the local for hours with a fistful of 20c pieces.

Reply
Benny3

March 17, 2011 at 11:57 am

Bezerk on the Atari 2600 Jr.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berzerk

Reply
1. Benny3
  
  March 17, 2011 at 12:07 pm
  
  *Berzerk.
  
  Reply
Fenixius

March 17, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Donkey Kong Country, SNES, at my neighbours’ house. Best intro to gaming I could have ever hoped for.

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terry

March 17, 2011 at 12:00 pm

double dragon on the atari 2600

Reply
Spandexman

March 17, 2011 at 12:01 pm

When I was 5 my family visited some friends. Me being only 5, wandered off and took a tour of their house.
I made my way upstairs and stumbled across a 2nd living room…
The living room had a NES hooked up and turned on, Super Mario Bros was paused.
I was instantly drawn to the bright colours, picked up the controller and the rest is history…

Reply
Dean

March 17, 2011 at 12:04 pm

My dad told me the first game I played was galaga at an airport. He used to like to tell me as he thought it was hilarious that I cried after the game finished because I didn’t get a prize. I was four and I guess I still haven’t received a prize after all these years of gaming.

Reply
Tech Knight

March 17, 2011 at 12:10 pm

Double Dragon 2 on the NES, that was so much fun back then. Being the early version of machine I once was, I kept doing A+B twice for the jump and spin kick as many times as I could xD

Reply
Seb

March 17, 2011 at 12:14 pm

The videogame is easy to remember – Pong, there really wasn’t much else you could play at home in the mid 70s.

My first console was a cheap and cheerful system that just played 10 inbuilt variations on pong. In black and white.

After about a year, I was given my first cartridge based game system – the Hanimex SD70. With pong based games (of course), and a cool stunt motorcycle game.

Reply
dzc12

March 17, 2011 at 12:15 pm

Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade – The Action Game on my families first PC. I couldn’t make the first jump. 🙁

There was also an RPG that was on 7 floppy’s and there was no graphics until you entered a battle or the shop. Everything else was text. I can’t for the life of me remember what that was…

Reply
lamboman007, nostalgia freak

March 17, 2011 at 12:18 pm

The first game I ever played was Electronic Arts’ Shockwave Assault. Loved that game, though I was too young to actually now how to play it that well. Me and my dad would play, he would use the keyboard, I would use the joystick, though I’m not sure whether I was actually controlling anything, or if my dad was doing it all…but still, it was great fun.

Reply
Unicron

March 17, 2011 at 12:27 pm

The first videogame i played would be the ‘Fire’ game and watch game i got for my 6th b’day and in the arcades, what else? Space invaders!

Good times and lots of 20’s spent at the Warnambool bowling alley.

Ahhh, the 80’s.

A small story about the Fire, game and watch.
Due to electronic toys being new to kids back then, well to me anyway. I accidentally sneezed on the screen one night while i was playing it in bed and being 6 years old, what do i decide to do to clean the screen?….wash it under the tap!!!
My whole little life came crashing down around me as i watched my beloved toy slowly dying in front of my eyes.

If this story can help just 1 child then i feel the recounting of this disturbing part of my childhood will be worth it.

Kids, handheld videogames and water DON’T MIX!!

Reply
1. thistler
  
  March 17, 2011 at 12:45 pm
  
  Pins ‘n Play? I think my brother had a green-house game and donkey kong game and watch. I had a cheap yellow submarine game that I loved dearly for car trips (like the Nullabor)
  
  Reply
EzyLee

March 17, 2011 at 12:28 pm

Tennis on the Odyssey 4000 at my grand parents house.

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Cerzel

March 17, 2011 at 12:29 pm

The All-Stars version of Super Mario Bros.
I remember waking up one night and going to my parents’ room (as you do when you’re a little kid) and on the way I found my mum struggling to make that jump at the start of Stage 1-2 of the Lost Levels. She told me to go to bed and then claimed I just dreamt it.
A few weeks later my parents suddenly reveal that they’ve won a SNES and let me and my brother start playing it. It came with All-Stars, Punch Out and Killer Instinct, the latter of which was taken away immediately and Punch Out taken away later.
But, yeah.

Reply
masha2932

March 17, 2011 at 12:35 pm

Disney’s lion king on the SNES. An 2d side scrolling platformer with beautiful graphics that still stand up today.

Reply
Brian Costelloe

March 17, 2011 at 12:44 pm

Spacies upright cabinet with the buttons not a joystick while standing on a milk crate to see the screen in a milk bar approx 1979. I’ve grown up as the gaming industry has grown. First game I owned though would have to be PACAR on the Sega SC-3000. A car Pacman clone game. Ah the memories!

Reply
Robert (B-ob)

March 17, 2011 at 12:46 pm

Something on the Atari. My Grandmother had one, for when the Grandkids were over, so it would have been something like that one tank game, PacMan or E.T. I remember back then, even as a 5-6 year old thinking that the E.T. game was really really really bad.

Either that, or the original Mario Bros. I remember my Uncle got a NES around the same time (this would have been 86 or 87, I think), and we’d play that and Duck Hunt.

Reply
Plainview

March 17, 2011 at 12:50 pm

: (
it was the mid 1980s, far from my life
as i imagined it, when i was first to discover
the black magic contained deep within
the Etch A Sketch Animator . . .
and i was never to be the same again.
Transfixed, entrapped by its charm as it were, I
journeyed far beyond the boundaries of
decent society; never to return.

Etch A Sketch Animator took me far beyond the
precipice of my preconceptions of life and
all things. it was like a portal, a doorway if you
prefer, into something incomprehensible; the
eternal question without answer, a life
journey, a reason to be.

Etch A Sketch Animator was going places, and I
too was going places. The most perfect
match, perhaps even the proverbial bad
romance; both of us, perhaps too
wild at heart, seeking cheap thrills and
dangerous escape in all the
wrong places.
Love & gray fox visions,
Plainview.
: )

………………………………………………………………..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj8xfyc-pD4

………………………………………………………………………

Reply
Glenn

March 17, 2011 at 1:18 pm

Warcraft: Orcs and Humans. I would have been no younger than 7 years old at the time, I honestly can’t remember when I played it. Since then, I have put aside some time to playing any Starcraft/Warcraft game once a year, Blizzard better make Warcraft 4 soon!

Reply
James Mac

March 17, 2011 at 1:18 pm

Commander Keen 2

Apogee were the business back in the day.

Reply
Dan New

March 17, 2011 at 1:26 pm

Oof it would have been when I was three, back on the ol’ 286. What a behemoth, didn’t even have enough disk space to install the mouse.

I believe the game was Carmen San Diego, and without fail used to make me crap my pants when you found the robber and he’d do a seedy little walk across the screen.

Good times.

Reply
Plainview

March 17, 2011 at 1:45 pm

: (
It was the mid 1980s, far from my life
as i imagined it, when I was first to
discover the dark and captivating magic
contained deep within
the Etch A Sketch Animator.

Transfixed, entrapped by its charm as it
were, i journeyed far beyond the boundaries
of decent society; never to return.

Etch A Sketch Animator took me far beyond
the precipice of my preconceptions of
life and all things. it was like a
portal, a doorway if you prefer, into
something incomprehensible; the
eternal question without answer, a life
journey, a reason to be.

Etch A Sketch Animator was going places, and I
too was going places. The most perfect
match, perhaps even the proverbial bad
romance; both of us, wild at heart, seeking
cheap thrills and dangerous escape in
all the wrong places.

Love and gray fox visions,
Plainview
: )

………………………………………………………..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj8xfyc-pD4

………………………………………………………………………….

Reply
1. Plainview
  
  March 17, 2011 at 2:07 pm
  
  to wash my hands of this
  double post; to stand before you
  an innocent victim and claim
  false accusation.
  
  Blame Etch A Sketch
  Animator if you must; it was
  to be my ruin, my final and most
  dramatic downfall.
  
  Love,
  Plainview.
  
  Reply
Alex Rogan

March 17, 2011 at 1:48 pm

Wonderboy III SMS. I was hooked.

Reply
oggob

March 17, 2011 at 2:03 pm

Hmmm… this is a tough one… these are the 2 that I can think of for the respective systems.

C64 – International Soccer
It was a cart game that came with it, it was actually quite fun, you were able to pick the colour of the kits, that’s as good as the customisation got.

I remember playing against my brother we would get some headers going back and forth to each other, you could get to a point where you didn’t have to move and you would be stuck in a header loop. Good times!

Atari 2600 – H.E.R.O.
Classic game, damn hard though, don’t think I ever got past level 13/14 or something like that.

Reply
Vapor

March 17, 2011 at 2:55 pm

According to parents, it was Space Invaders as a wee lad, but I don’t quite remember it. They claim my obsession with it made them buy me a Master System with Alex Kidd In Miracle World built in, which I DO remember, so Alex it is.

Reply
David Francis

March 17, 2011 at 3:10 pm

Until I was around 7 I used to have, as my only computer system, an Atari 520ST, and my dad got me a collection of games and programs to use with it. I can’t remember much of what it had in it (a pity) but I do remember avidly playing Formula One Grand Prix, Missile Command, and playing around with Neochrome and … some kind of midi program, I forget which (I couldn’t find it on the web 🙁 )

Was nice 🙂

Only game I hated on it was Robotron: 2084. Still too. Way too hard, way too freaky.

Reply
Frenchy

March 17, 2011 at 3:10 pm

Alex Kidd SMS2.
Need we say more? 🙂

Reply
Salmonpie

March 17, 2011 at 3:38 pm

It was a stone stacking game on a Dragon 32 at primary school in the UK. First arcade game was Gun Fight (I think) first game on my own computer ZX Sprectrum 48K was Through the Wall which came on a tape with it. God I am so old

Reply
Graham Jupp

March 17, 2011 at 4:12 pm

First game I ever set eyes on was Pong at a mate’s birthday party, I was perhaps 7 at the time??? I think it was the original Pong, as in that was the only game that the machine played.

First game on a computer was either Snake or Lunar Lander (or similar name) on a BBC computer at school probably around 1982.

Reply
CrowdedTrousers

March 17, 2011 at 5:52 pm

okay; to show my age; i remember being in a club with my parents and seeing my first space invader upright arcade. it blew our minds and ate our parent’s 20c pieces as fast as we could steal them.

at home, it would have been when i got a c64 in it’s infancy at about age ten along with a cartridge game called Radar Rat Race. Basic game with the worlds simplest midi rendering of 3 Blind Mice played over. And over. And over. i’m grinding my teeth thinking about it.

Reply
SupremeBeans

March 17, 2011 at 9:31 pm

DOOM, 1993 or 1994. I was three years old. Opened up a whole new world for me. My dad and I would play LAN games up until I was ten or so. Gotta start doing that again.

Reply
oscarv

March 17, 2011 at 9:47 pm

Kind of ashamed, Age Of Empires on my dads PC…

Reply

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Tell Us Dammit

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73 responses to “Tell Us Dammit”

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