Your first video game you ever played.

[vdeane]

Does Speak & Spell qualify as a video game?

Only if people's heads are shaped like one.

[J3ebrules]

Tetris, on the big ol' grey GameBoy!

[J3ebrules]

I have no idea which game it would be specifically but it was certainly something for the Atari 7800 (possibly a 2600 game given the console's backward compatibility).

From the computer side we didn't get a PC until 1995 but I would've played some games before then in the school computer labs like the Munchers series, Oregon Trail and the like. On a tangential note I was surprised to learn just how old Oregon Trail is. I would've guessed it first came out in the 1980s but the original version actually dates to 1971 and ran on HP minicomputers.

OMG I could not for the life of me remember what those games were called! Number Munchers!!! I use DOS-BOX to emulate those old games I played as a kid, and I was thinking of that game series but couldn't remember what it was called.

[wxfree]

I remember playing Pitfall on my older cousin's Atari X?00.  The first one I was good at was Super Mario Bros.  I still have all of the video games I ever bought, including that one.  I'm quite good at it; I can go through and win the game, and then go win the second harder level, something my friends had never seen before.

[KeithE4Phx]

Mine was an early version of Pong that one of my HS teachers in Indiana brought to school in 1973.  It was a big box that connected to a TV, with a couple of crude joysticks.  I'd never seen something like that before, and I have no idea where he got the thing or who made it. 

Two years later, after college, I was hired by Midway Mfg. Co. in Franklin Park IL, west of Chicago, and worked on every game they manufactured between Wheels II and Space Invaders before I left in 1978.  I think I've played only a dozen or so arcade-style video games since.

[Route66Fan]

I think the first game I played was the 1989 DOS version of Wheel of Fortune back in the early 90's.

[LM117]

Super Mario Bros. on my older cousin's NES around 1993-94. I wanted one for myself ever since, so I was given a Super Nintendo for Christmas in 1994 when we were living in Belleville, MI. Even though I was 5, I remember it like yesterday. It came with Super Mario All-Stars, Super Mario World, and my grandparents had thrown in "We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story"  since l used to watch that movie a lot.

Looking back, I feel bad for my folks because I didn't pay much attention to the other presents I got that year, except for the red Radio Flyer wagon that I put in front of the TV in the living room to lay in with a pillow while I played the SNES. I don't think that's what my parents had in mind when they bought me that wagon!

[DandyDan]

I assume it was Pac Man at the roller skating rink I went to as a kid in the early 80's. I have no idea what game I first played on the Atari 2600 when we got that, but I suspect when we went to my cousins house, we probably played Pac Man there on the one they had. Hell, my cousin and I would get into fights over Pac Man.

[roadman]

For me, it was Paper Boy on my nephew's NES.  Apart from that and Silent Service, a WWII submarine game for NES that my nephew's stepfather and I used to play, I never really got into gaming.  The sole exception is Train Dispatcher II, a railroad dispatching simulation that was made by a company that used to make signal control equipment for the railroads.  You can set it to play in real time, and one of the simulations you can control is Amtrak's ex-New Haven line between Boston, MA and Guilford, CT.

[inkyatari]

Pong.

A game we have yet to cover on Pie Factory Podcast (my arcade game podcast)

[GCrites]

Arcade: Ms. Pac-Man at the local DQ

Home: Either Space Invaders or E.T. over at a friends house in 1984. Maybe Asteroids. It was a binge, so I don't remember what order. And it was the setting everyone thinks of -- on a floor TV in the den of a split level with dark wood paneling and blue-green textured carpet.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

I think it was Mario 3.

[PHLBOS]

One restaurant that my family went to a few times circa 1974-75 named Pasta Time in Revere, MA had the original(?) arcade version of Pong near the cash register.  That was where my brother & I played our first video game.

[rawmustard]

It could either be Pac-Man or Centipede on an arcade cabinet somewhere. On a home system, I can vaguely remember my uncle having an Atari 8-bit system, which I think I played Pole Position (if there were other titles he had, I've clearly forgotten them).

[Henry]

For me, it was Pac-Man in the arcade. My first console game would be Pong.

[frankenroad]

Probably "Pong" in the late 1970's.  It was a one piece console unit with two dial controllers which hooked up to your TV set.  Seemed revolutionary at the time.  Looked something like this: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Pong_game_on_TV.jpg

That was definitely mine - my roommate and I played it a lot in our apartment, which we were in from 1977 to 1979.

[Duke87]

I don't definitively know.

My grandparents had an NES, so it was likely something on that, but I don't know which game may have been in the system the first time I actually wielded a controller.

[inkyatari]

Shameless self-promotion...

Pie Factory Podcast

The current episode, #99, we talk about the arcade games Blaster, and Cloak & Dagger

[ozarkman417]

That probably goes to the Windows XP pinball game. I was around 5 years old. I installed Windows XP in a virtual machine just so I could play that game not too long ago.

SM-G965U

[US 81]

Pong, about 1977, when some family in the farm town of my youth could finally afford one.

Seemed pretty darn cool at the time....

[RobbieL2415]

Tetris, on the big ol' grey GameBoy!

We had the Nintendo version of Tetris for the NES.

[Max Rockatansky]

Tetris, on the big ol' grey GameBoy!

We had the Nintendo version of Tetris for the NES.

I had the Tengen Version which in my opinion was better the what Nintendo put out for the NES.  We had several DOS based copies of Tetris also, probably never would have gotten it on Game Boy if it wasn't the pack-in game. 

[ftballfan]

RollerCoaster Tycoon

[paulthemapguy]

My mom refused to get us video games until she eventually caved Christmas 1998.  For Christmas my brother and I got an N64, so the first console game I ever played was Super Mario 64.  I still have it to this day--and the N64 is the only console I kept from my childhood, for nostalgia reasons.

[JoePCool14]

My mom refused to get us video games until she eventually caved Christmas 1998.  For Christmas my brother and I got an N64, so the first console game I ever played was Super Mario 64.  I still have it to this day--and the N64 is the only console I kept from my childhood, for nostalgia reasons.

A very solid first game indeed. Sadly I am still waiting to play this one.

My first title was probably something on the original Xbox. It might be Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom. Such a classic personally and still my favorite 3D platformer. And yes, I'm beyond excited for the remake coming soon.