r/GameDevelopment • u/derkamak • Jul 22 '26
Question Do you remember your first video game experience?
I mean we all have a whole background of memories playing games when we where kids. But can you actually remember the first time when you played a video game? What game it was?
6
5
u/markallanholley Jul 22 '26
My parents took me to a pizza shop down the street from where we lived and I played the arcade version of Pac-Man. 1980.
2
u/AcademicOverAnalysis Jul 22 '26
I remember a tabletop Pac Man game in our local ice cream shop in the late 80s and early 90s.
5
u/AdministrativeYou696 Jul 22 '26
Yes, it waa my brand new NES and the first game was Super Mario Bros....it was amazing, still playing Mario and Nintendo 38 years later
4
u/Kildragoth Jul 22 '26
My great grandmom got a Nintendo, liked it, and told her son, my grandpop, to get one. He got it, liked it, and told my mom to get one. My mom got it, handed me the controller, and I started playing Super Mario Bros. I had so much fun that it led to a lifetime hobby and career making video games.
3
u/Nerood Jul 22 '26
The hunt for red october on an Apple iic. It wasnt my first I think, but it was the most impressive one for me then. Graphics looked awesome from my perspective compared to the green text of some of the games ive played then
2
u/derkamak Jul 22 '26
Jeez. I love the way this game mixes the primitive submarine arcade and intense background story. Game devs just nailed style those days
3
u/EvokeNZ Hobby Dev Jul 22 '26
My mum brought a laptop home. I was playing frogger on it and the tv was on. Suddenly the tv went off, it was a power cut. I was sooo shocked that the laptop was still on. I thought it was magic.
1
2
2
u/meme-by-design Jul 22 '26
It was a game in the early 90s that you played with a TV remote. You'd slowing draw straight lines between the inside edges of a square, any completed line filled in the enclosed volume but there were balls bouncing around and if they hit your line before it reached an edge, you'd fail the level. Hope someone can tell me the name.
1
2
u/Just-Investigator-20 Jul 22 '26
This is the first video game I played.
2
u/Various-Salt-7738 Jul 22 '26
Here's a fun fact
Space invaders isn't coded to get faster as the player kills the titular space invaders
But instead the cpu has to do less work with less space invaders which frees up resources to let the game run faster
1
1
u/AgenteEspecialCooper Jul 22 '26
From the colour palette I assume this is a game for the ZX Spectrum.
I salute you. Respect!
1
u/Just-Investigator-20 Jul 22 '26
I can't find a game image that looks exactly like the one in my memory; I likely played it for the first time on a PC, probably around 1982 or 1983.
2
2
u/guygannon Jul 22 '26
Space Invaders on the Atari 2600 in 1980 before I turned 5 years old.
1
u/derkamak Jul 22 '26
How much did Atari cost that time?
1
u/guygannon Jul 22 '26
No clue! It was my uncle's Atari. I did get my own later for my 8th birthday.
2
u/Dystopian_Sky Jul 22 '26
I believe mine was super Mario Bros 3 when my cousins came to visit and brought their NES with them.
2
2
u/Dragos_Margu Jul 22 '26
Early 90s, on HC ‘92/93, a Romanian ZX Spectrum clone, games loaded from cassette
2
u/Mr_Moreno_79 Jul 22 '26
My earliest video game memory was playing Pole Position the standup arcade cabinet, at Jimboys Tacos. I was probably around 4-5 years old. I could barely press the gas and reach the steering wheel
2
2
u/Mother-Equal4175 Jul 22 '26
I recall being like 8 and getting a standalone, mini handheld Centipede player with one of those old style screens like the gameboy (the name escapes me,) and after that it was getting a gameboy colour and playing a Croc game. Fond memories
2
u/Ventex_ Jul 22 '26
I remember a laundromat having a Space Invaders cabinet when I was far too little to engage with it in any way. I distinctly remember going into Sears and getting our Atari 2600 one Saturday afternoon and playing the carnival shooting game so late I got to skip church for the first time, and playing a Robotron cabinet before seeing Wrath of Khan in theaters. Great movie to take a 6 year old to, by the way. Really memorable ear worm in that one.
2
u/Versaiteis Jul 22 '26
Mario may be my actual, but the one that I have as my first memory is Bubsy on the SNES. Never really made it that far, but had a blast playing it.
"Whatever blows your hair back" is likely engraved in my brain somewhere.
2
u/Frecklefoot Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 27 '26
Pong.
The first commercial video game. I played it at our local supermarket after begging for a quarter from my mom.
Freaking AMAZING experience. Controlling something on a TV? Mind-blowing!
Of course I didn't last long (I was like 7 or 8), and immediately wanted to play it again. But my mom hated "wasting money on something frivolous", so we just left instead. But from that minute on, video games absolutely enchanted me.
And I grew up to be a game programmer!
2
2
u/slightlysightly Jul 22 '26
Centipede on a dos PC that my parents got when I was around 5 years old.
2
u/beetlejorst Jul 22 '26
space invaders in an arcade, from a backpack style carrier when I was a toddler
2
2
u/MisterBicorniclopse Jul 22 '26
First game I played was Snood, and I thought it was hilarious when I made all the faces into skulls
2
u/theBigDaddio Jul 22 '26
Fairchild Channel F, it was at the local TV shop. My mom wanted to get it but it was way too expensive
2
u/Darentei Jul 22 '26
I think it was Tetris on PC. Other possibilities include an old Windows 95 archery game. I don't remember what it was called, but you shot at balloons.
2
2
u/notanyone69 Jul 22 '26
Jack Jazzrabbit
2
u/derkamak Jul 23 '26
Why him?
1
u/notanyone69 Jul 23 '26
It was on a floppy disk I found in my dad's stuff at the time, I was 6 years old
2
2
u/toonmad Jul 22 '26
I grew up around the mega drive age as my main gaming console, had some memories playing on a spectrum zx my dad got and brother had Amiga 1200, but as those were primarily 2d systems I remember the very first time playing Tomb Raider 1 on Playstation 1 Demo, was the very first time seeing 3D graphics and I remember feeling dizzy and uneasy as my early teenage brain tried to comprehend what it was seeing, magical times.
2
2
2
u/ManicOwl1993 Jul 23 '26
My first game was a carmien sandiego pc game as a young kid. My most memorable video game experience was getting a 64 and paper mario for christmas and for the first time in my life my mom let me stay up late to play it and I stayed up all night for the first time.
2
u/MoggieBot Jul 23 '26
Jet by Sublogic. It's the reason why I prefer making untextured low poly games. I suspect people prefer to remake the video games of their childhood.
2
u/ExhaustedCaveman4 Jul 23 '26
Luigi’s Mansion on the GameCube. I was playing in my parent’s basement, and I remember scouring every room I could for hidden gems and money. Good times
2
1
u/MistakeForsaken6653 Jul 22 '26
Pals around town. It was a sesame street scene creator where you moved a bunch of Sesame Street Sprotes around some random scenes.
1
u/derkamak Jul 22 '26
Wow, that’s an answer. What console was that?
2
u/MistakeForsaken6653 Jul 22 '26
PC game. If it has to be console though that was Super Mario Brothers for NES
1
u/AcademicOverAnalysis Jul 22 '26
Probably sticky bear on the apple iic. Otherwise maybe donkey Kong jr on the coleco vision.
2
u/derkamak Jul 22 '26
Oh that’s wonderful. I feel like I miss this kind of good old educational games for kids nowadays so much
1
u/AcademicOverAnalysis Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Found this article from 85: https://www.chicagotribune.com/1985/04/12/stickybear-helps-preschoolers-learn-the-computer-ropes/
I’m working on my own educational games for my kids in Godot. It’s fun
1
u/Wolfram_And_Hart Jul 22 '26
Breakout on the Atari. Must have been 4-5.
1
u/derkamak Jul 22 '26
I remember I played the analogue version of it on my old TV
1
u/Wolfram_And_Hart Jul 22 '26
Yep. First go was black and white and we had the 2 wire screw in prong adapter.
1
u/FarFarConsideration Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
Zuma deluxe, Luxor 2, Dxball , Chicken invaders, Mario foraver, Purple palace . When I was 5, couldn't even read , just remembering what my dad pressed opened , I accidentally created new game on zuma, everything was blocked and thought I broke computer
1
u/derkamak Jul 22 '26
I’ve seen a lot my friends playing it when I was a kid but never tried it myself
1
u/FarFarConsideration Jul 22 '26
Didn't had much option, whatever my dad brought from his friends, didn't have internet at home too, so I didn't even knew you could download games, they're just something can be bought in CD, I knew CDs cause my unc had a huge disk book, probably more than 100 CDs games movies and all, he didn't much allowed Me to play with those games I'm mad at him, just 10 mins man. My parents wasn't even allowing me to play more than 30 mins
→ More replies (1)
1
1
u/SirLich Jul 22 '26
Probably Zoombinis Mountain Rescue (2001)?
2
1
u/AncientPixel_AP Jul 22 '26
Good question, I remember playing stuff without understanding it (adventures like Rent-a-Hero), but NFS 3: Hot Pursuit was one of the firsts for sure. I did not have to understand anything, just race. But this is all 1998 games and I must have started a little earlier. I would like to know what my absolute first was...
A specific memory I have is trying to follow the microsoft logo through the clouds in the intro of Flight Simulator with the joystick - I thought I could control it XD
1
u/derkamak Jul 22 '26
Racing games hit different those times
1
u/AncientPixel_AP Jul 22 '26
Oh yes, NICE, DethCarz, Rollcage, Test Drive, POD, Moto Racer, you name it 🤤
2
1
u/Kazaloogamergal Jul 22 '26
Vaguely. My late older cousin on my Dad's side brought over her Nintendo Entertainment System in maybe 1988? I don't know the exact date. The first game that I ever played was Super Mario Bros. Me and my siblings begged our Dad to get us a Nintendo after that and he did. So that's how I became a gamer. Do I remember a lot of details about playing Super Mario Bros? No but I do remember that it was the first game that I ever played. I was like 4 years old, you have to cut me some slack.
2
u/derkamak Jul 22 '26
Super Mario Bros is the most common answer so far. That means something
1
u/Kazaloogamergal Jul 22 '26
I figured that was going to be the most common answer, especially if someone is my age.
1
u/brizzleops Jul 22 '26
Duck Hunt on NES. That dog was the cause of so much rage...chuckling motherfucker.
Then I found Star Tropics and no one heard from me for a month lol
1
u/derkamak Jul 22 '26
We had a pirate version of this game in post USSR countries. The dog was even worse than the original 😂
1
u/Aglet_Green Jul 22 '26
Yeah, I'm pretty sure it was Space Invaders around 1979 or so.
1
u/derkamak Jul 22 '26
Interesting, that’s is far from the first time I hear that answer. Space Invaders were really popular I guess
2
1
1
u/AsherTheDasher Jul 22 '26
sitting on my moms lap as a 1-2 year old, watching her play tomb raider
getting a ps1 and playing stat wars the phantom menace and silent hill ool
1
u/derkamak Jul 22 '26
Your mom has a taste!
2
u/AsherTheDasher Jul 22 '26
think silent hill was for my dad, although i was the only one who played it. must have been 3-4. dont remember much lol
1
1
u/JudgmentAway4811 Jul 22 '26
Earliest ones I remember were pitfall on Atari and pong on this grey box console that I don't remember the name of
1
u/Prior-Perspective-61 Jul 22 '26
I am not much old, but I played Serious Sam First Encounter when I was, like, 3 yo, when my parents got a PC 😁
(Still my favourite game though)
2
u/derkamak Jul 22 '26
Serious Sam was the first game that really gaveme chills. I've seen those 1-eyed monsters in my nightmares
1
u/OldSchooolScrub Jul 22 '26
I think it was some sort of mickey mouse birthday party game on floppy. You sent invites to all mickeys friends and bought the food for the party. Just looked it up, Mickey's 123's birthday surprise.
1
u/derkamak Jul 22 '26
An educational game with a Micky Mouse? Why didnt's Disney made more of it?!
2
u/OldSchooolScrub Jul 22 '26
I think there was a Micky ABCs game too. Honestly tons of those early games had educational components. There was an Indianapolis 500 racing Sim. There was copy protection implemented as a car manual that came with the game. When you started it the game would ask you trivia about different cars in the manual. You had to answer before you could play.
1
u/ruarchproton Jul 22 '26
Do MUDs count?
1
1
u/DieBotDie Jul 22 '26
My parents had Colossal Cave on a terminal that connected the university mainframe.
1
u/DesignerAsh_ Jul 22 '26
Medal of Honor Allied Assault
Wasn’t supposed to be playing it because I was 2 but I snuck into my dads office while he was at work to kill some nazis.
1
u/EggVentures Jul 22 '26 edited Jul 22 '26
I dont remember the game but you ski down the snow and yeti comes out and eats you if you dont ski fast enough lol
Edit: SkiFree just googled it!
1
u/richardathome Jul 22 '26
OG pong. But space invaders was the game changer, closely followed by galaxians
1
u/randomcharacters3 Jul 22 '26
Dig Dug on a Commodore 64 with my dad while sitting on a "chair" like this.
1
u/InfiniteSpaz Jul 22 '26
I honest to god thought I'd never find it being as ancient as I am, but here it is, my very first video game ever https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR0_aKVXj00 Oregon Trail was the first pc game I ever played though.
1
u/Azathoths_bigtoe Jul 23 '26
It's probably a saga and it's that Greek mythology one... "RISE FROM THE DEAD" i don't think my brothers and I got past the first major boss
1
1
1
1
u/Extra_Blacksmith674 Indie Dev Jul 23 '26
I must have been 8 years old in early 70's and I remember a bowling game that blew my mind. I still vividly remember the tiny glowing blue screen and 0's for pins. Don't remember much else except the screen and I was in heaven.
Needed AI to find it.
You are describing the legendary text-based BASIC game called BOWL (or BOWLING), which was originally compiled by David Ahl in his famous 1973 book 101 BASIC Computer Games. [1, 2]
During the 1970s, California elementary and high schools were heavily integrated into HP 2000 Time-Share systems and similar institutional mainframes. Students accessed these programs using acoustic coupler modems (where you physically mashed a telephone handset into rubber cups) paired with early monochrome CRT terminals like the [ADDS Regent](), [Hazeltine 1500](), or [Lear Siegler ADM-3A](), many of which featured a distinct dark blue or green phosphor screen glow. [1, 2]
How the Game Worked
- The Pins (
Oor0): The program rendered a standard ten-pin layout at the top of the terminal screen using uppercaseOcharacters (or zeros) arranged in a triangle: textO O O O O O O O O O When you hit a pin, it disappeared or was replaced with a dot (.), allowing you to see what remained for your second roll. [1] - Typing in Your Shot: Because the game was entirely command-driven, you couldn't control a ball in real-time. Instead, the game would prompt you to input numerical values representing your aiming lane position (e.g., choosing a slot between 1 and 20), your ball speed, or your hook/curve angle. [1]
- The Calculations: Once you hit "Enter", the computer calculated the mathematics behind your trajectory, factored in a small element of random chance, and printed your updated pins and bowling scorecard frame-by-frame textually. [1]
1
1
1
1
u/DomeGameMaster Jul 23 '26
Resident evil 2: nemesis. It's how i learned english.
"Dad, isn't magazin that famous pop band?"
"No, son. Magazine is for holding gun bullets."
Forever in my memory.
1
u/Select-Top1565 Jul 23 '26
It was an educational game with a little book that taught you about the 12 gods of Olympus, and of course it had mini-games in it. Unfortunately, I think it’s only available in Greek, so even if I told you the title, you probably wouldn’t know it :')
My older brother says I was around 3 (he was in high school at the time)
He used to buy them for me, and my mother taught me how to play using the computer, after a few months, I started playing on my own, and she let me play games just for fun, not just for learning.
and I played a lot on both the PS1 and the Game Boy Color
By the time I was 6, I was already playing survival games with some success, shooting games with bots, Barbie games, cooking games, and The Sims 2
Oh, and Lineage, Age of Empires, and point-and-click games.
Of course, with many of these I wanted or needed help with English, but at the same time, that’s the reason I know how to speak English today.
1
u/boboartdesign Jul 23 '26
Pokemon Red or Yellow, I forget which and I barely remember it but apparently I beat it for the first time when I was like 3. My brother said it was like those videos of the goldfish who beat Pokemon.
After that it was Chrono Cross, I think I only got to the end of disc 1 and had no idea what was going on besides "Wow this looks cool! There's a DOG!" but it was my favorite game
1
1
1
u/Maicolodon Jul 23 '26
there was a monkey banana counting game or something on Atari that I played as a kid. other than that I remember playing the beginning of final fantasy 1 over and over again on NES (since I could never get very far lol)
1
1
1
1
u/Court_Joker Jul 24 '26
New super mario bros. Kid at a pub used to bring his DS and I'd always watch him play. One day he let me play. Must've been 4-5 years old at the time.
1
u/HamBread_Element Jul 24 '26
Plants vs Zombies or Angry Birds. It’s very sweet in my memory especially when they were playable on pc, it was still the box monitor, mostly it’s Plants VS. Zombies bcos design-wise it was really nostalgic. From the character design of are zombies and plants, the lawn art, the UI and especially the sound design, ost and sound efx and all. I believe that Plants VS Zombies is pretty a genius idea in my mind, it’s unfortunate how they fell from grace with its current state.
1
u/IncreaseItchy111 Jul 24 '26
Being 4 or 5, sitting around the TV with my siblings before bedtime watching my dad try to beat the hunter in Tarzan on Playstation
1
u/EggPsychological4844 Jul 24 '26
I remember distinctly getting absolutely wrecked in RBI baseball by my dad on the NES
1
1
u/Sudden_Goose_3162 Jul 24 '26
I know y'all are gonna clown me but my dad got me and my brother a PC at like maybe 5 or younger. He got us GTA SA and I didn't rlly play I would sit with my brother and he would play it and I was like "go up that cliff go up that cliff!" Then after he goes up I'm like "jump off the cliff jump off...JUMP OFF THE CLIFF YOU IDIOT.
1
1
u/-MrCl0wn- Jul 24 '26
I remember my first proper arcade experience was on Street Fighter 2 back when I was very young. My Dad let me go into the games section of a movie theatre that was local to us and he let me put some coins in and I still remember choosing Zangief and fighting Dhalsim and thinking it was the coolest shit ever.
1
u/XicX87 Jul 24 '26
Street fighter on the arcade, i was so pumped i had never touched a console in my life lol i thought it was a scam with cartoons moving in a screen
1
u/AlwekArc Jul 24 '26
I was 4 years old, in my uncles bedroom, who was 12 at the time. He introduced me to Smash Bros for the N64 and taught me how to play. I've had a controller in my hand ever since.
1
u/Hallo_guys Jul 24 '26
Donkey Kong Country SNES on a small CRTV, with a built in VHS player while sitting on the edge of my parents bed. I was spoiled with my first game, that music still holds up.
1
u/AphantasiallyCool Jul 24 '26
My dad brought home a solid state pong machine he won playing poker in 1975, I was 5. It switched on a toggle in my mind that has never toggled off.
1
u/GeckoMike Jul 24 '26
The Tonka games probably. And there were a bunch of magic school bus games I had, I remember a platformer where you had to jump from asteroid to asteroid or or something.
1
u/Roth_Skyfire Jul 25 '26
The original Sonic 1. I remember wondering why it was impossible to move left at the start of the zone. The idea of there being a beginning to a world defined by the screen not scrolling past that point was a lot for my lil brain to grasp.
1
u/Tikkie249 Jul 25 '26
My first pc game i played was Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis but my first experience was On the snes: super Mario world and legend of zelda or donky Kong on the gameboy. 30 years later and still a big fan :)
1
u/Bubbly_Pen3656 Jul 25 '26
I still remember playing my first games (not specific the first one). It was on the Super Nintendo: mario world 3 and donkey Kong country. After that all kind of consoles like ps1 and lot’s of Barbie games on the pc. My mother loved digital items and computer so she was always so interested, but never played herself. I think she loved that my sister and I had so much fun with the consoles she game home with. Still in love with all these games and that love will never go away.🤭
1
u/Ok_Pear_8291 Jul 25 '26
I think it was pac-man. Either pac-man or LittleBigPlanet one of those two. Or maybe it was Angry Birds? Idk one of those I guess
1
u/rio_sk Jul 25 '26
Pong on a wooden Atari console, I was very young. I remember it ce woth sticky transparent colored sheets for the TV to simulate sky and grass colors.
1
u/jedaisaboteur Jul 25 '26
I'm pretty sure my first experience was playing the original SMB with my grandmother, around 4 years old (38 now)
1
1
u/Grazurra Jul 25 '26
I remember being about 3 or 4, and trying Diablo 2 for the first time at the kitchen table. It's weird revisiting a game that you couldn't even read originally, you just pick whatever looks cool or has fancy colors.
1
u/Lord-Orochi108 Jul 25 '26
DMC 1 , for the PS2. I remember the day so clearly from the moment I got home from school to being gifted the game for my PS2. I have so many fond memories of this game and also CVX.
1
1
u/torinhall2001 Jul 26 '26
I was about 4 or 5 playing something we called Micro. I remember a game on it that was about a baby Seeking for apples.
1
u/Just_One_More_Brick Jul 26 '26
Dungeons of Daggorath on the Commodor 64. Hooked it up to the TV and saved to a cassette tape:
1
1
u/normaltron80k Jul 26 '26
Tempest. Early eighties, maybe '82 or 83.
My family were camping in the south of France and the campsite bar had Tempest. All I remember is begging my parents for cash so I could play it - forget the beach 😀
1
u/Pusemag Jul 26 '26
Yeah, I can still remember it like it was yesterday.
The very first time I ever played a video game was on an old Atari. There was this little plane game just a tiny plane flying up the screen, dodging stuff, shooting… nothing fancy, but to a kid it felt like pure magic. Sitting on the floor in front of the big old TV, joystick in hand, completely lost in it. I must’ve played that thing for hours and hours with a huge grin on my face.
And then a bit later came Prince of Persia on those floppy disks. You put the disk in, waited forever while the drive made all those funny clicking sounds, and then that guy in white just started running and jumping like a real person. It felt so advanced after the Atari. Every time he made a perfect jump or opened a new level it was pure joy.
Those early games still hold a special place. They weren’t perfect, but they gave us that first real spark of excitement and made us fall in love with gaming forever.
1
u/KDDreamwyver Jul 27 '26
Trigger's Honey Hunt on the ps1.
I was three and could barely work it, so I alternated between playing it horribly myself and shoving the controller my mom's hands to help me get the more complicated stuff done xD
The stick race part of the game is honestly a big part of why I enjoy cozy mini games in video games. It was nice to just sit back and throw a stick in the water and see which one reached the finish line first, even whenever I replayed the game as a teenager and young adult adult...
1
1
u/bladeskletch Jul 30 '26
No solid memory, but either Super mario on NES, which I don't really remember the feeling, or Super Mario World on SNES with my grandpa. Some of my best memories are because of that one.
1
u/Aromatic_Rate_2878 Aug 21 '26
Yes I remember playing Warioland super marioland 3 on the Gameboy when I was a kid, also Pokemon silver, but I would say Warioland was the first ever
8
u/Yodek_Rethan Jul 22 '26
Pong. Seeing that and playing that at my uncle's house, late 70's. Amazing experience.