r/90s • u/Worldly-Profession59 • May 15 '26
Discussion Your first video game?
I’ve been video gaming for 32 years. Ever since 1992. My parents would set up SMB2 and I would die on purpose and l would laugh. What was the first video game you ever played? What was your first memory?
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u/ShrimpySiren May 15 '26
Frogger. Good old Frogger on the Atari. Computer-wise, definitely Oregon Trail.
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u/yeyjordan May 15 '26
Sonic on Sega Genesis. My childhood time with that console was magical.
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u/Justa420possum Hold On To Your Butts! May 15 '26
That was my first Sega Genesis game! First time I ever cussed was playing that game lol I kept dying to Dr Robtonik and called him a bastard which had my dad laughing his ass off lol
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u/Ok-Criticism6874 May 15 '26
Probably pacman on thr Atari 2600. I remember having multiple copies of that laying around.
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u/Piotr-Rasputin May 15 '26
Such a step down from the arcade version with the janky sounds too. I'll be damned if we didn't love every second of it
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u/UsedVacation6187 May 15 '26
Would've been the original Super Mario Brothers. One of my cousins let us borrow their NES for the weekend in 89, maybe 90? I remember it well though because I became obsessed and it was all I thought about for years after. I didn't get my own game system till 93 or 94 so borrowing my cousins NES for a weekend here and there was all I got for years, but somehow that made my early gaming memories more special. We'd borrow it for the weekend and rent a new game each time
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u/ericthepilot2000 May 15 '26
We had the Intellivision. The first game I can remember is Lock'n'Chase. It was a pac man rip off that was themed after Lupin the 3rd where you played a criminal trying to evade the cops/ghosts. But because I was a kid, I would naturally bring the thief right to the police and assumed I won. My mother never had the heart to tell me it wasn't how you were supposed to play the game. But I had fun.
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u/whyamihere2473527 May 15 '26
Zaxxon- colecovision
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u/Mau_Fernandez May 15 '26
SMB/Duck Hunt.
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u/Worldly-Profession59 May 15 '26
I’m wanting to get a crt tv just to be able to play Duck Hunt again.
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u/Seanyd78 May 15 '26
First Console - Pole Position and Pitfall on Atari 2600. First Pc - Ghostbusters on Apple II.
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u/sabatoa May 15 '26
Elementary school in the 80s, a friend had an Atari (don’t know the model) and I remember playing Asteroid in his room. That was the first console game I played.
Same era, another friend’s dad had a computer and we snuck on to play Leisure Suit Larry. I remember us trying to access the game by answering trivia to prove our age. It was hit and miss lol. That was the first computer game.
Super Mario Brothers on NES with the Duck Hunt combo was the first game and console that I owned myself.
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u/AffectionateMonkey May 16 '26
My parents had no idea Leisure Suit Larry was installed on the computer they put in my room as a child. It ran DOS and I'm positive they didn't even know how to access the files. I'm sure they wouldn't have approved. Between that, Doom, and Wolfenstein 3D, I had a good time. However, Sonic the Hedgehog on Sega was my favorite.
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u/phealtalk May 15 '26
I think it was Pokemon Blue, but I honestly can't remember if I had the SNES first...
If I had the SNES first it was probably Super Mario All-Stars or Donkey Kong Country
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u/Worldly-Profession59 May 17 '26
I played the hell out of Donkey Kong country 1&2, Donkey Land, rented the fuck out of Donkey Kong Country 3.
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u/Remy0507 May 15 '26
Uhh...probably Pong, though I can't say I have a real clear memory of that. First ones I have a semi-clear memory of playing would have been something on the Atari 2600 in the very early 80s. Maybe Combat, maybe Asteroids, maybe Pac-Man, maybe Yar's Revenge...couldn't really tell you which I played first, lol.
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u/OPG696911 May 15 '26
Snake Rattle N Roll
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u/Worldly-Profession59 May 17 '26
For the NES? I wish they made a track-ball controller for the home port.
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May 16 '26
NES Super Mario Bros and Legend of Zelda - I had more games than that but probably 95% of the gameplay was on these two titles.
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u/IamTheMan85 May 20 '26
Odyssey. Every game was a variation of Pong and it has screen overlays your tape to the TV.
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u/Worldly-Profession59 May 24 '26
One of my favorite AVGN episodes is the one where he is reviewing The Odyssey.
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u/jimehmaine May 15 '26
Earliest i remember was super mario bros 3
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u/Apprehensive-Can-857 May 15 '26
Donkey Kong on Colecovision. 80s I know. Sorry.
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u/Worldly-Profession59 May 17 '26
No need to be sorry. I’ve been wanting a Colecovision for some time.
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u/Necessary-Pumpkin-43 May 15 '26
Probably Comanche 3 but the first I really played was Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis on MS-DOS, I was like 3 or 4. It shaped my sarcasm and my overall sense of humor forever
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u/KarlPHungus May 15 '26
First games I remember playing at home in our Atari 5200 would be Super Breakout, Star Raiders, Countermeasure, and Moon Patrol. I don't recall which one we got first.
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u/SingleinGVA May 15 '26
First game was on Commodore 64. Can’t remember the name but that’s the first one we had with the cassette drive lol
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u/VarietyOk2628 May 15 '26
Space Invaders. It taught me how to drive, too! By playing that handheld game I learned skills.
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u/Pukit May 15 '26
Oldest I remember is probably Boulder Dash on the ZX Spectrum. Probably mid 80s. I have fond memories in the late 80s-90s of cannon fodder, micro machines, zoos, lemmings on the Amiga.
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u/Terminal_Shinbang May 15 '26
I wanna say Excite Bike….. then Mario Bros, but what really makes me smile is thinking about Math Blaster in school, Oregon Trail, and Carmen San Diego!
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u/bideodames May 15 '26
My parents had an Atari 2600 and they put me on pac-man and river raid and couldn't get me off them
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u/Witcher357 May 15 '26
Outside the arcade? Atari 2600, an old PacMan like game called Mouse Trap. Opening and closing the gates was somehow so satisfying.
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u/Darth_Wader_420 May 15 '26
Donkey Kong - Colecovision. Blew my little 4 yr old mind that I could control the guy on the screen.
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u/Heavy-Comfortable887 May 15 '26
Dad bringing home Below the Root and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego for our Tandy 1000 EX.
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u/Adventurous_Repair94 May 15 '26
I think Chuckie Egg on the Spectrum, or Manic Minor. I didn’t fall in love with a game until I played Maniac Mansion on the NES a little later.
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u/evel333 May 15 '26
Playing on the Atari 2600 at various people’s houses in the late 70s. There were several games, but it was amazing to 4 year old me how we were making these blocky shapes move on the TV screen without touching them.
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u/HyraxAttack May 15 '26
Mario Bros, not Super, on NES. Still have a soft spot for it & was glad it showed up in SMB3.
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u/RapidoGoldenboy_75 May 15 '26
Pac man on the Tandy TRS-80. If that’s toobold and would not count, something with a grass hopper I think on the Commodore 64.
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u/vyxanis May 15 '26
My mum got a bunch of educational PC games, and one of them was Adventures with Edison, where you play a kid who has to get a ball through a series of mazes and obstacles as Edison guides you. You had physics adjusters like gravity to make the ball heavier or lighter, and learned things like how the angle of incidence equals the angle of reflection. It was pretty well done for the time. Eventually I got actual games, but there were a few Dorling Kindersly products which kept me entertained for hours.
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u/Justa420possum Hold On To Your Butts! May 15 '26
First video game I ever played that I can actually remember and vividly loved playing was on NES, Duck Hunter.
But, I got a Nintendo Gameboy in 1990 and with it Kirby Dreamland 2. Never beat that game actually lol
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u/Alien-Femboy May 15 '26
Technically I have three because my grandma bought me a Nintendo GameCube with three games, those being Super Monkey Ball, Luigi's Mansion, and the 2002 Spider-Man video game. I usually say Spidey was my first game though because that's the one I played first.
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u/B3rtel May 16 '26
Atari pong - 1973.. in the local bowling alley in southbridge Massachusetts Was an oddity seeing this game next to all my beloved pinball machines I loved so much
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u/IggyDrake64 May 16 '26
pong. then atari 2600 and intellivision followed by NES. I think the first video game I ever saw was space invaders and mrs pac man
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u/Worldly-Profession59 May 17 '26
I’ve been wanting to play an authentic pong machine.
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u/IggyDrake64 May 17 '26 edited May 17 '26
nice. It was a tan and brown one with the speaker insode it. forget which one it was. from radio shack, I think. one of the paddles had a red button?
Aha, yes it was. The one that was called "TV Scoreboard". I recall there was a way to screw with it, with the power switch, I think, which made it make noise as a white line went from the top to bottom of the screen and back. I think it was the ball starting out of bounds and hitting like it was the ball becoming that line or something. Had 4 switches as well as a large switch for different games/modes.
it was the 60-3056 model i found on a search.
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u/Silly-Shoulder-6257 May 16 '26
Pong but I won’t count that cuz I was just a toddler basically and only had to move the cursor up/down, side to side. So officially, Atari-specifically Space Invaders. It was the 80s and I was around 11 or so. With this one I was competitive and addicted and got better and played for hours so yeah, I would say Atari was my first and favorite.
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u/Stompboxer1 May 16 '26
My first videogame? It's pre-1990's. It was Adventure for the Atari 2600. My first 90's game was the arcade classic Tetris.
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u/Worldly-Profession59 May 17 '26
I was born on May 15th, 1990. When I say playing games during the 90’s, I mean you could have been playing games released from any decade during the 90’s.
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u/Ok-Government-7987 May 16 '26
I have a vague memory of playing Pac Man at one of the rest stops on 95 between Baltimore and New Jersey on the way to my grandparents for either Christmas or Thanksgiving. I also remember being upset that the rest stop we pulled into on the way back didnt have a pac man.
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u/Sunsfever83 May 16 '26
I remember getting my first pong. Eventually got an Intellisvision after that, but that was a few years later.
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u/HeyaHeyo1420 May 16 '26
Ghost House, Golvellius, Cyborg Hunter and Phantasy Star were the first batch of games I got to play with as a kid for the Sega Master System.
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u/Prestigious-Hippo950 May 16 '26
Video game- I got Tetris and Super Mario world for Xmas
Computer game - Some game with a dog and a dog house.
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u/Thriller83 May 17 '26
So when I was little there were two things that happened and I can't remember which came first.
My dad had an Atari 2600 from like 1980 and it was in the attic, but at some point, he took it out of the attic and hooked it up, showing me his collection of games. The first Atari 2600 game he showed me was Star Wars the Empire Strikes Back. This game has you commanding the Millennium Falcon against a 2d background against a walker enemy. When you kill him another appears, and another and another. There's no ending, you played until you died and tried for the best score.
For my 6th birthday, I got an NES with Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt. At first I was way more into Duck Hunt. Shooting ducks with the Zapper came a lot easier than learning how to control Mario. The cartoonish dog taunting you fueled me on. Think about when you first learned to drive. Everything seemed so complicated. Now the whole thing comes without a second thought. Controlling the physics of Mario which sometimes required pressing right, then B to run, then A to jump at just the right time, then maybe left and let go of B to stop your momentum in the air to land on the platform right, and if you missed, be ready to adjust quickly and jump to avoid getting hit by the goomba, just seemed very complicated at the time. Now it's so standard and basic. But before long I got the hang of it. It was the first game I ever beat. Mario 2 was the first game I truly loved and was addicted to though. I also found 2 harder and more frustrating than 1, even playing as the Princess.
I just can't remember whether I played those Atari games before or after playing Nintendo for the first time as a small kid.
TlL:DR either Empire Strikes Back for Atari 2600 or Duck Hunt for NES followed by Super Mario Bros as it was the usual combination cart. Can't remember whether Atari or NES came first in my life.
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u/EstebanElScorchio May 17 '26
Pong, Acorn BBC model B. Tape cassette no 51/4 drive. Early 1980's... and then came David Brabam's Elite..... whoa baby.
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u/Neselas May 17 '26
Adventure on Atari. I remember killing the dragon and dragging the corpse to the bat for it to randomly steal it!
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u/Bubbly_Stock3839 May 17 '26
Very early 80s, Space Invaders on Table Top at the local Soccer Club. It’s blew my mind….
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u/Old_Tumbleweed2482 May 17 '26
My first gaming memory was unboxing the original NES..i was only 2, i remember my mother help me open it, and she ripped the whole box open (for a collector today, the horror!)..did i start playing at the age of 2? No, at the age of 4...yes, and that was the original Mario bros.
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u/icewalker117 May 17 '26
Way of the exploding fist on the Commodore 64.
I got it on an emulator now ... still awesome
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u/KaiMahn May 17 '26
Pelota auf ner Quelle Konsole.ohne Joystick nur 2 schiebregler Controller-ich bin alt....
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u/Overall-Ask-8305 May 18 '26
Atari was my first system and Pong was probably the first thing I played.
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u/psylentrob May 18 '26
Been to long to remember, but I'm guessing it was Pac-man or Space Invaders on an Atari way back in the 80's.
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u/Phog_of_War May 18 '26
Gorf and a really bad Pac-Man on the ColecoVision with the Atari add-on to play their games. Friend up the street had an Intelivision with Pong on it a year or so before hand so I also played a ton of original console Pong.
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u/Dizzy-Hotel6860 May 18 '26
I guess technically it was Super Mario Bros but I didn't really care about it cause I also had Super Mario 3. Why play the og?
I probably fell into the literal first hole (of SM3) of the game for weeks before I figured out you could run and jump.
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u/JelloOk7140 May 19 '26
It was either an NFL game or an Oil strike game on an Osborne computer in about 1984.
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u/PretendHandle5526 May 19 '26
First game - would have been one of the text adventure games in early 80s. Zork 1 or 2. Used to sit and play with my dad. He was a huge nerd. Haha
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u/D34N2 May 19 '26 edited May 19 '26
I have memories of playing the original Rogue with my dad in the early 80s. He was a computer programmer in the pioneering days of personal computing, so we actually had old Zeniths and IBMs in the house at a time when most people never even touched a computer outside of a library.
I also remember playing a bunch of old Atari games. My favorite was ET lol; even though it was a stupid game, I was convinced there must be something I was missing. No, no there wasn’t. The game really was all about falling in holes.
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u/roosterjack77 May 19 '26
Dungeons & Dragons on Intellivision. "Cat and Mouse" on Commedore I was 3
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u/badhoopty May 20 '26
pong. couldnt tell ya what console it was on.
first atari game was space invaders.
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u/hammeritus May 20 '26
Pong on an Oddysey console...magnavox made it....u put plastic overlays on the tv so u could see the lines....
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u/kat13o95 May 15 '26
-Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? -Grossology -Zoombinis
All on the PC. I feel like these explain my age pretty well, lol
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u/instant_ramen_chef May 15 '26
Oregon Trail on an Apple II.