I’m sure we’ve done this before. But I’ve been here for almost five years and I want to do it again! What was the first video game you ever played? Can you remember?
I’m pretty sure mine was Horace Goes Skiing on the Spectrum 48k. I think. I can’t tell for sure.
In 1986 my uncle dropped off a Spectrum 48k at my house with a metric butt-tonne of pirated video games. It was up there with the best days of my life. I think the first game I played from the pile was Horace Goes Skiing but it could have been Way of the Exploding Fist or Nodes of Yesod. I can’t be 100%.
How about you guys and girls?
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153 responses to “Tell Us Dammit: The First Video Game You Ever Played?”
Batman on the Commodore 64. Don’t remember it very well, but I do clearly remember the shot of Jack Napier falling into the vat of acid.
That’s one of my very early ones as well, cant be 100% sure but maybe it was that or one of the Olympic games (maybe winter games).
The very first game I can remember getting heavily into was Pool or Radiance, my mind was totally blown. POR, Airwolf, Beachhead and Predator (man I loved those games) were what I think set me on the path to loving video games like I do.
The first game I can remember playing is Combat on my Grandparent’s 2600 when I was 5 or so. I also have memories of playing the Mario/Duck-Hunt combo cartridge on my Uncle’s NES but I think that was a couple years later.
I’m on the early 2600 game human cannonball then also later Mario/Duck-Hunt combo cartridge and Bubble-Bobble.
Yeah I can remember Bubble-Bobble in the local chip shop. me and my mates lost some coins and time to that one. It was that and Street Fighter and Golden Axe in the shop, we would just take it in turns going from one to the other (when we weren’t acting a fool in front of the local girls)
Bubble Bobble! I used to play that with my dad on our ST 1040. I would have been 7 or 8 at that point.
Heh, we must be about the same age. My first game was either Pitfall! on the Atari 2600 or Mine Storm on the Vectrex. They both came out in 1982/1983, so I would have been 4 or 5. I remember it was before I started Kindergarten in 1984 in any case. It’s amazing how vivid memories are even all these years later.
Close but no cigar, born in 82 so this would have been around ’87 or so.
Something on Commodore 64, I was only 4 or 5. Have no idea what it was or what it was called.
Just remember playing with my uncle who was still in high school at the time.
Asteroids on Atari 400
Spyro the Dragon! 😀
I was about 4 or 5, I think.
It was one of the demo games that they had set up on the display PlayStation at my local technology store 🙂
YOUNG!
Kids and their 3D rendered hoozamajigs. Back in MY day we had to use our imaginations to get the graphics to work properly.
Back when my game told me…in text…that a damned wooden door stood before me, I knew there was a wooden door before me and when I typed Y I entered that bastard like a boss.
That’s right! And when I typed ‘go north’ I imagined that I strode to the north like a badass!
I Zorked the f$%^ out of ‘Go North’ I think I kept dying just after the letterbox…but I would have been 5 or 6. Who remembers Olympic Decathlon? My brother and I loved that game. We had to work together to do the pole vault. I have so many early gaming memories that I can’t remember my first game. Could have been on my Intellevision or my Aunt’s Atari…or a Game and Watch.
Would that be Daley Thompson’s Olympic Decathlon? That was almost the first game that I owned but it didn’t work for some reason (Commodore 64 cassette though…lol). So my first ‘owned’ game turned out to be Ghostbusters on C64 (also cassette).
Nah it wasn’t that one, it was just called Olympic Decathlon. I played it on PC.
It’s actually called Microsoft Decathlon.
Pong. Yes I am that old.
Yeah, I think it may have been Pong for me. On an Aussie Atari knock-off console called a Hanimex that had two paddle controllers.
First arcade game I can remember playing was Asteroids.
Spot on! I was trying to think of the actual console and you nailed it!
Cool, I’ve never met anyone that’s even heard of the thing before, let alone owned one. I couldn’t quite remember the spelling so only found out it was an Aussie console when I Googled it.
I never knew the name but I was another who played pong on one of those.
My first was some car/racing game on a Hanimex, the system my parents got came with controllers had a number pad on them that barely got used!
I vaguely remember some battle ships type game.
Oh yeah, was it the game where there was a battleship up top dropping depth charges, and a sub down the bottom firing torpedos upwards? My brother and I played the shit out of that.
Sounds like Sub Hunt on the Intellivision.
Same here dude. Great memories with that beast!!
There was one of those in my Pop’s house – I don’t think we pulled it out though till he knew I had an interest in games so it wasn’t the first
I posted later with my games, but I’m pretty sure mine was a Hanimex too. I just remember it played Atari games.
Shit, me too. I had the Tandy knockoff, it came with a realsitic handgun, and it was awesome!
I then had some hanimex thing that took cartridges and had a game where you could jump things on a motorbike, then got my Atari 400 with Asteroids and Star Raiders.
Played Star Raiders for about two years almost every day, man I loved that game. 3D graphics in 1979, WTF!
I think Pong for me as well, or some version of it on a TV console. Was at a birthday day party for my mate and we were probably around 7 so perhaps 1980 or 81.
dark cloud on the ps2 or mario 64 one of those two
Pretty sure it was Tony Hawk Pro Skater 3 on the PS1 (which I played on my brand new PS2). Either that or Crash Bash.
Brøderbund’s Space Invaders on the Apple IIc at around 5 or 6.
Friendlyware P.C. Arcade on monochrome.
Spectre (Battlezone clone) on an Mac LC. OH GOD IM SO OLD
“Alex Kidd in Miracle World” that was built into the Sega Master System.
We used to call him “Alex the Kid” because we couldn’t read. I was legitimately mind-blown when I found out so many years later that Kidd was his surname. Alex Kidd still sounds weird to me. Not enough syllables.
I only just realised it was Alex Kidd as a result of your comment…
……………. speechless…………. I went straight to google thinking ‘surely not’….. well there you go. Alex Kidd……….
I always knew that the box said Alex Kidd, but we still called him ‘the kid’ because clearly whoever made it was wrong.
Also did you know that ‘The Beatles’was a pun? Because I’d seriously never paid any attention to how it was spelt until I saw a CD cover a couple of years back. That was a mind blow.
wow. just wow. i had never realized that beatles pun. mind definitely now blown.
Wow. I do not remember the first, but I remember some space game on grandparent’s neighbours atari something…. …and my Donkey Kong Game-and-Watch.
Pong on Atari (console)
Captain Comic on Olivetti 286 (PC)
Super Mario Bros. Best christmas gift I ever had.
and Skifree on the PC, that damn Yeti still gives me nightmares!!
voodoo vince on the original xbox <3
Excellent game.
I faintly remember the luxury wood paneling of a 2600 and a very basic tank game on one of those “Heaps-o-Games” cartridges.
Me too, that was also my introduction to gaming. I’m guessing it had Combat (a two player dogfighting game with planes) and Indy 500?
Basketball on the Atari 2600 ~79. Remember it clearly, afternoon matine with a mate to see the first Star Wars, then we went home to his place to shoot some hoops.
I think Gauntlet or The Mummy on Spectrum, possibly Rainbow Islands
It’s either:
– Mario Bros on NES at a family friend’s house, or
– Alley Cat on my Uncle’s something-or-other.
Alley Cat is a brilliant example of some of the completely unrepresentative game names we used to get. Fun game, not what I expected when I loaded it up.
Harpoon, and Fire Brigade are others.
Alley cat was the first PC game I played, the author was a genius, he also did Necromancer, one of the best, weird games *ever*.
I used to LOVE Alley Cat!!
Alley Cat was one of my first games, maybe the first I played but really can’t remember. I do remember preferring Frogger, Bouncing babies, Tapper, Buck Rogers and some q*Bert rip off that used to play the Merrie Melodies tune .
Wow… Alley Cat, I remember that game. From waaaaaaaaay back. I can’t remember what I played it on though…
Street Fighter II on the SNES, I still remember my brother and sister trying to teach me how to do a hadouken.
Fun fact: my family migrated to Australia while I was still in my mother’s womb and they had to live with my cousins while parents were trying to find their feet. My dad always told me that all my cousins and siblings used to play was SFII and that the constant ‘yoga fires’ and ‘yoga flames’ would make him nauseous. So I reckon my love for Street Fighter started well before I was born.
Combat or Indy 500 on Atari 2600. Can’t remember which. Them paddle controls…
Pretty sure mine was A PGA tour game on Win96, I also played another world but I can remember which first.
Hard to remember that far back
Either Colecovision (Gorg or Smurfs), Atari 2600 (Got a bunch of games with it but maybe marine wars or space invanders) or C64 (Boulder-dash)
Honestly I can’t remember. It wasn’t some life changing event that stuck with me and I was insanely young. I remember a lot of games I played when I was really young but I don’t remember being introduced to them at any point.
Pretty sure it was Kings Quest 1 on an IBM XT.
Either Burgertime or Shark! Shark! on the Intellivision in the mid eighties sometime.
I remember watching all the cool kids play Burgertime in our school library’s C64. There was also a transformers game. None of us Kindergarteners were allowed to play though 🙁
Space Invaders cocktail cabinet at a safeway/woolworths in Alice Springs, 1981. I was around 3 and a half, closer to 4. It was a few more years before I played games again. When I was 7 it was all bump ‘n jump, popeye, bombjack and track ‘n field.
My first games I can remember actively playing was Donkey Kong and Mouse Trap on the ColecoVision. I know it said first game but I got them both with the system and can’t recall exactly which one I played first.
Not sure if either were my first games played but i remember as a very young 2-3 year old playing duck hunt and that running mat game on the nes.
Getting the feeling I’m a lot younger than the rest of you guys, because my first was Crash Bandicoot: The Wrath of Cortex on the PS2 when I was seven.
Magic carpet on DOS, you ride around on a magic carpet and fight dragons, was sweet
I think maybe Cobb & Co on the Commodore 64? Memories a bit hazy that long ago.
The first game that I remember playing was The Wild Bunch on the old tape cassette Amstrad. Had so much fun getting to the town to play text based poker.
River Raid – Atari 2600 then pacman… or vice versa… can’t remember which order.
I was just about to comment the same thing! River Raid sure does look like a piece of shit now but back then it was my world before and after school.
You were lucky you had the machine. I had to constantly go over to my cousins place and play it. And every time my parents would leave, I would just sit there cross legged praying that they would never notice me. Somehow… they always did. 🙁 I would then go home and draw pictures of the game pretending to the play it. It was never the same. Good times.
Aztec on the Apple II.
/feels old
Aztec was awesome. I was terrified of those snakes.
I also played Karateka to death.
And that 5.25 floppy drive loading noise. It really takes me back.
someone bought me ‘apple panic’ when i was sick with the chickenpox… i played that to death as well.
Hmm that i can remember would probably be Motorbike racing and Seaquest on the Atari 2600 (had to Google it to remember it’s name!) =)
Loved SeaQuest – one of my favourite Atari games.
Hmm that’s really hard to recall; we got our first computer when I was about 5 I think, but my grandma and uncle who we visited in the holidays frequently also had a computer.
I would hazard a guess it is one of these:
* Ski Free
* Doom
* Heavy Gear
* Some 3D Golf Game installed on our Win98 computer
I have a strong feeling it was ski free though, vivid memories of that damn yeti running across and gobbling up my character. That and running into a lot of trees and rocks. Ahh memories…
It was an incredible day when I discovered that you could actually get away from the Yeti.
You CAN get away from the yeti?!?!
My whole outlook on life has changed..
Either Pitfall or Space Invaders on the Atari 2600.
Pitfall….sooooooo good !
My first game I ever played (and had no idea what I was doing in) was Dragster for the Atari 2600. The game that kicked off my Video Game obsession though was Super Mario Bros. for the NES. At the ripe old age of 2.
Reading over this list, jesus you people are OLD. I was half expecting “halo” or “call of duty 4” or something.
Mine was Digger, now playable in a browser. Yep, I’m old too.
http://www.futrega.org/digger/
Yup, sure seems like the average age is over 30 around here.
Terra Cresta for the C64 was my first one I remember
I can’t remember the first game I ever played. But I remember the first 2 games I ever owned. Ghostbusters 2 and All dogs go to heaven. Ghostbusters 2 was so freaking hard and a lot of it had to do with luck…. I remember trying to break a fellow ghost buster out of the asylum if they failed a mission was nigh impossible.
Space Invaders. The original arcade game on one of those sit-down table top cabinets. 20 cents a game!
Rogue on computer.
Space invaders for video game.
Played pinball first though and have been addicted ever since.
Kings Quest on my parents old IBM. I think my parents picked it up in a bargain bin.
Saboteur on C64
Balderdash on C64.
Mine was Space Invaders on the Atari 2600 back in the dark days of the late 70s early 80s…
My 11 year old Son, when he was in his mothers womb, was around 8 months along when he played his first game lol. He was kicking up a storm one night, so we laid the PS2 controller on her stomach, held it down a bit, I was playing a Streetfighter game (I think it was actually MVC2?). For around 30 seconds or so he was making Ken punch and kick randomly on screen 😀
That is simply great
Bug Hunt on the Atari XE in 1991.
Probably Tetris
Probably Gateway to Apshai on C64. It makes me a bit sad to think that my son’s answer is Angry Birds…
Pretty sure it was Oregon Trail, in all its’ 5.25″ glory, on a school computer.
Think it was probably Asteroids on a C64 with cassette drive at my mate’s place when I was in primary school. Or possibly Galaga at the video arcade on King St Newcastle in the 70s.
I would love to be able to say Joust too, that was my favourite arcade game but not the first.
Probably one of those Nintendo handhelds if that counts?
Otherwise it’d be a cartridge C64 game like International Soccer or Lemans with the paddle haha
This is going to show how old I am, and also how lucky I am to have an awesome dad whose favourite weekend activity was going to Tandy and tinkering with computers.
The first game I ever recall playing was Shooting Gallery on the Tandy TRS-80 Colour Computer. It was on a cassette, and we played it with a single-button joystick. My mum was an absolute genius at this game.
Earliest one I remember is some pseudo-3D golf game on my parents’ friends computer. Earliest one I owned, Pokemon Red on the GB Brick.
Do you still own it? I just dug my copy up. Those things are worth a mint now.
Nah… left it with my parents when I went to uni, and it got sold in a garage sale.
Possibly Pitfall or Centipede on my bros 2600. The first game I played on MY first console? Alex Kidd or Wonder Boy on Master System.
The original Rise of the Triad, damn i played the shit out of the shareware version.
Super Mario Bros. All Stars on SNES back around when i was about 6. My personal favourite mario game ever
c64? I can go earlier than that..
Gridrunner on the vic-20
I really can’t remember, i played something on the Atari … EDIT: I remembered, it was Battlezone!!! Just googled it and had a massive flashback lol
My first strong memory is of playing doom, still remember having to open it through DOS lol Then it was on to NES and pretty much every console thereafter 🙂
Ooo, either Beauty and the Beast or Super Pro Football on the Intellivision (Yeah! Worst controller ever!). Maybe Donkey Kong Jnr on a Game and Watch?
It’s amazing how quickly technology has changed, it really accentuates the age differences here, doesn’t it?
Definitely something on Atari 2600 back in the early 80s. Probably PacMan or Surround.
Mousetrap on the Colecovision circa 1982.
Anyone remember the Dick Smith VZ200 ?
Anyone?
I came from a poor family.
I now own most consoles in a personal display/collection. How times change.
Seriously we are an old lot here aren’t we!
A shite game called ‘Circus’ https://encrypted-tbn2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcS5Vi_salBt5CS5aar_464G9DWfGX0VQ-Pnhgjzf4cclS-mZV14 was my first game I remember. But then seriously got into C64 classics like Winter Games, Wizard of Wor, F14 Tomcat.
Good times.
So you’re basically saying that you’re just a poor boy from a poor family?
Yeah but fortunately the VZ200 spared me my life from that monstrosity.
But easy come, easy go.
They were good times.
Yes! We had a VZ 200. I can remember playing a Pacman ripoff on it called “Ghost Hunter”.
When we upgraded to a C64, we were blown away by the graphics. Especially on “Defender of the Crown”.
Yes, “upgrade” to a C64. There’s a comment you don’t hear often.
No, we had the Tandy Coco!
Another World/Out of This World, I think. I was three, and saw my dad playing it, but he had to go to the bathroom. So I picked up the controller and started playing, and the charcater had a bunch of huge rocks fall onto him, with the screen flashing and shaking. I shit myself (figuratively) and ran off, balling my eyes out. Video games are great.
Easy, Pong.
Well, not QUITE pong, it was a 1970s console that had just a knockoff of pong. It was a huge and heavy (though I was 4 at the time so it was probably fairly small) metal box with a pair of sliders and a coax out. Beyond the power cable, that was it, didn’t even have an on switch, you just turned it on at the wall and I seem to recall that it didn’t even keep score it was so damned primitive.
I kinda miss the old hunk of junk, it was one step up from an oscilloscope but I’d love to give it another go.
Jazz Jackrabbit
I haven’t read everyone’s responses (yet) but I am sure a lot of them will be the Mario Bros/Duck Hunt cart. Specifically my first game was Mario Bros.
Memories….
arcade ghosts and goblins. 20 cents per play. i went through 5 dollars worth in 10 mins playing it when i was 6.
Can’t recall exactly but it could have been tetris when I got my gameboy, alex kidd on sms, olympic games/tmnt on commodore 64. Maybe have also been an old handheld, I still have an old golf one my dad bought (with an $80 price tag from myers for a black on green overlay handheld from the 80s) or the game and watch donkey kong my cousins had. Those are the earliest things I remember playing.
Pretty sure it was Pitfall on Atari
First game I remember playing was Dungeons and Dragons on Intellivision.
Not entirely sure it was my first, but it’s the earliest I can remember: Skunny Kart on DOS. Having to remember the command prompts to get to it made it really feel like you’d earned the privilege to play it!
Prince of Persia. Never finished it, though. I got started on my pile o’ shame early.
A cheap knock-off duckhunt clone. It had the graphics of pong. A lousy light-gun that implied it was working, but was more likely just an RNG (I was lousy at the game. But I was only about 3 or 4 at the time).
Mine is probably Hang-On, in the arcades. That’s about as far back as I can remember. Got a VIC-20 at the end of the 80’s, and I think the first games I ever experienced on that system were Choplifter, Frogger and Gorf. Gorf was the game I remember playing first, though again, details are hazy.
Got a Mega Drive after that, and then a Master System, and it was all over 🙂
I think it would’ve been rebel assault II on a ’94 macintosh performa. Pretty sure. I could never get past the 3rd level where you had to maneuver the millenium falcon through an asteroid mine. I remember the CD came with so many amazing demos of upcoming lucasarts games (the dig, sam and max, dark forces (my favourite), full throttle etc). Good times.
1982, Donkey Kong on the Nintendo Game and watch, but possibly tanks on Atari may have scraped in before that.
I believe it was the original X-Wing on PC.
At the local fish and chip store in the late 70s it would have been Space Invaders or Asteroids, but at home the good ole’ ATARI 2600 – maybe Asteroids or Pitfall.
2 years old. Rockford on the Amstrad:
Pretty sure my first arcade game was a first-gen bat-and-ball effort. I remember the actual box being beige; it had about six variations – so there was a soccer one which played a bit like foosball. There was also a light gun game in there as I recall, surprisingly advanced for its time, although it was mostly just targeting a dot transiting the screen.
A few years later I first saw Frogger and Pac-Man (and Combat) on the Atari 2600 at a friend’s place; it was something of a revelation at the time.
Sim city 3000 on the Apple Macintosh and then need for speed 3 on pic
Let’s Eat Worms, Microbee
I was talking to my son the other day about the month I spent in hospital in 84 (as a 7yo) and I think that was my first encounter with one of those Nintendo LED mirror screen games (Panorama screen I think) it was a Snoopy game from memory, also played an LCD Pac-Man during my stay. shortly after got the Panorama Screen DK Jr (way better than the wide screen and kicking myself for not keeping it – why Nintenfo doesn’t release done if the better G&W games onto 3DS (think Climber, Balloon Fight, Goldcliff) is totally beyond me.
First actual video game that I can properly recall would’ve been Super Mario 2 in the shopfront of Logical Choice in the Sturt Mall (in Wagga) back in the days where a) kids could play video games in the store and 2) NES systems were prohibitively expensive!
Daley Thompson’s Decathlon on the Spectrum 48K. Fantastic. Still get arthritis in my fingers now just from that game.
Horace Goes Skiing. Top marks mind you. What can you do with 16Kb now?
Either Alex Kidd in Miracle World, or Stunts.
Pretty sure it was Yie Ar Kung Fu at the canteen at my local swimming pool. Tabletop machine, 10c per game. I was obsessed instantly. This would have been about 1986.
Can’t figure out if it would be Space Invaders, Asteroids, Lunar Lander, Missile Command Breakout… almost certainly one of those most early games I remember, but no idea which.
For console, it would be either and old original pong machine that was always at my nana’s or the VC 4000 we had as kids.
From memory it was either StarWars Empire Strikes Back or Tomcat on Atari cartridge console (not sure which model). First game on an actual DOS (it came before windows kids) PC owned in my house was probably the original X-Wing space sim. To be honest, it’s a a little hazy…
A long long time ago, in a galaxy not very far away…
Just to expand a little further, my first game that I ever bought with my own money was Eye of the Beholder III on PC.
I can’t remember for the life of me what the first game i played was or even how old i was. We had a atari, c64 and nes for as long as i can remember and i could names about 50 games across those 3 platforms that it could potentially be but i usually just tell people i was 6 and it was megaman1 😛
Now that ive given it a bit more thought im leaning towards Jack Nicolas Golf and Buggy Boy on c64
I think it was River Raid on the Atari 2600 for me. I remember playing Spiders of Mars on the VIC-20 too.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/vic20/996969-spiders-of-mars
For me its a toss up between the last ninja and blue max on C64. Or Giana Sisters or w/e it was called. Actually played through the last ninja a few years ago, was just as good as I remembered.
Hyper Olympics – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIU4fwwYd4M
It was either Donkey Kong or Q*Bert on the Intellivision.