What was the first video game you remember playing?

[SHaines]

No one mentioned Zork?

Zork. We had it on the Commodore 64 and I would spend every available minute in that incredible world with my trusty game guide at the ready. The "game guide" being the directions for getting to the Thief's lair in the maze.

I would set the border to black, the main desktop space to black, and the text to white, and just disappear into literally the greatest graphics of any game in human history, text-based adventure or otherwise.

 

[KDizzle]

Atari River Raid, very next game 5 minutes later was Pitfall, those are the 2 games that came with the system Christmas of 81?82?Darn Alligators.

 

[MacLeod]

Well since I date back to the 70's I guess the first one I remember is Pac Man and the first home video game would be Combat which is what came with the Atari 2600 I got for Christmas in 1981 and been hooked ever since.

 

[MatBane]

We had an old Apple II that we played some games on (Frogger, Zaxxon, Centipede, The Quest, Pac-Man...). But I didn't really get into PC Gaming until my dad bought a 386 DX. It came with Win 3.1 (I think) and two Sierra titles. The first game I remember playing was Mixed Up Mother Goose CD-ROM. The other was King's Quest V. Point and Click adventures for the win. We also got Hardball III and Mike Ditka's Ultimate Football shortly thereafter.

 

[jpishgar]

First game ever: Jungle Hunt for the Atari 2600
First NES game: Gunsmoke
First PC Game: Battlechess

Considering the second video game I ever played was the infamous E.T., I have no clue how gaming managed to stick!

 

[KarenPrada]

Definitely SMB on the OG Nintendo.

 

[Yourfacedotcom]

Chivalry on Apple II

 

[veoviscool12]

The problem with this question for me is that computers were a part of my life at such an early age that no one title sticks out as being the definite first! The first computer I owned was a Mac OS 8 put together by my dad, and he was the one who installed all the software onto it. My clearest and longest memories were of Myst, and that's usually the answer I go with. But I was definitely playing other stuff at the same time. That first cluster of computer games on my Mac was composed of:

• Spectre
• Glider 4.0
• Sim Earth
• Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0
• Sim City 2000
• Treasure Mathstorm!
• and who could forget Kid Pix ?!

 

[Zloth]

I remember Pong showing up at the bowling alley but I never played it - the pinball games were much better. There was a game with jets fighting each other, though, that got some quarters.

The first game I bought for myself was Ultima 2. I played that a LOT. I discovered that the disk for the planets wasn't copy protected so I made a copy of it and starting changing random things with a disk hex editor, which eventually led to me putting my name in mountains on one of the planets. Guess that makes me a modder!

 

[Doomed_User]

That's a hard one! I started playing them very young.

My first memories are games like Tetris, Burger Time, TMNT, Double Dragon, Popeye, Contra all on the original Game Boy. I also remember the Wolfenstine demo and windows 3.1 built in games. Not sure on the timeline of it all.

 

[Doomed_User]

The problem with this question for me is that computers were a part of my life at such an early age that no one title sticks out as being the definite first! The first computer I owned was a Mac OS 8 put together by my dad, and he was the one who installed all the software onto it. My clearest and longest memories were of Myst, and that's usually the answer I go with. But I was definitely playing other stuff at the same time. That first cluster of computer games on my Mac was composed of:

• Spectre
• Glider 4.0
• Sim Earth
• Microsoft Flight Simulator 4.0
• Sim City 2000
• Treasure Mathstorm!
• and who could forget Kid Pix ?!

Glider and Sim City 2000 bring back some strong nostalgia for me. Did you ever play Sim Tower? That was a really fun game I used to play in the computer lab in Primary School.

 

[Pizzamorg]

Maybe Mortal Kombat on the Megadrive? Weird to think that is where it all started as I've never been much of a fighting game fan after that, other than SoulCalibur games on PS1.

 

[veoviscool12]

Glider and Sim City 2000 bring back some strong nostalgia for me. Did you ever play Sim Tower? That was a really fun game I used to play in the computer lab in Primary School.

Sadly I never played Sim Tower as a kid. Our computer labs didn't really have many games on them, just Kid Pix and one of those typing programs. I have played it since then, though.

Glider 4.0 was so much fun! I remember having my mind blown once I realized that you could boost the plane. I had been playing for at least a couple of months before I found out that was a possibility, and I could finally get past the dreaded paper shredder.

 

[Lutfij]

Mortal Kombat on Nintendo Game Boy, back in 1992.

 

[Yourfacedotcom]

Glider and Sim City 2000 bring back some strong nostalgia for me. Did you ever play Sim Tower? That was a really fun game I used to play in the computer lab in Primary School.

Loved Sim Tower and Sim Ant!

 

[neogunhero]

My earliest gaming memory is of me deleting my mom's save file on Zelda: Majora's Mask for N64. She was getting very close to finishing the game. One day she let me play, but I was so young I didn't know how to work the menus. I probably thought I was making a new save file, but instead I deleted her save.

She hasn't touch that game ever since. That was nearly 20 years ago. I still feel terrible about it haha.

 

[Frindis]

My first game was Starglider on my Atari 520ST.

 

[indigit5l]

'82 here. Probably, if it was on the Atari 2600 it was Megamania. Possibly it could have been Defender, Pac-Man or Jungle Hunt though. We had a lot of Atari games.

First PC game was probably Think Quick at a school computer or daycare.

 

[Dan]

This definitely wasn't my first game, but it was the first game I really remember playing in depth, and that was a DOS game called Bio-Menace.

 

[Round]

I think the first game I ever saw in person was my Dad grappling with Tomb Raider, I remember being absolutely terrified of the T-Rex in that game. I must have been 3 or 4.

The first games I owned were Toy Story on the PC, and both Tarzan and Rayman on Playstation. Recently subbing to Uplay+ I was hyped to see the entire Rayman collection as part of the catalog.

 

[Krud]

The first game I remember playing is Pong, which is a boring, somewhat obvious answer, which is also why I never use it on forums that offer "What was the first video game you ever played" for a security question.

But since this is PC Gamer, I'll tell you the first computer game I remember playing: The Mask Of The Sun by Broderbund, on the Apple II. It was very early 80's, when I was in first grade, and probably one of the first ever color graphic text adventure games (though don't quote me on that.) Definitely the first one I ever saw. That was when I fell in love with computers, and computer games. It's also the first time I ever learned anything about Mexico and Aztecs. It was a fairly momentous bit of my childhood.

If you've never heard of it, you can see YouTube footage of it here. It hasn't aged well, at ALL, but as a kid I was blown away, as prior to that I'd only seen text on a computer.

 

[robinj]

Rogue, on my dad's unix terminal at his work. The game that roguelikes are like.

 

[Corey2788HD]

My first video game was Sonic The Hedgehog on Sega Genesis.

 

[Krud]

I remember Pong showing up at the bowling alley but I never played it - the pinball games were much better. There was a game with jets fighting each other, though, that got some quarters.

The first game I bought for myself was Ultima 2. I played that a LOT. I discovered that the disk for the planets wasn't copy protected so I made a copy of it and starting changing random things with a disk hex editor, which eventually led to me putting my name in mountains on one of the planets. Guess that makes me a modder!

I loved messing with hex editors! I used to change the messages in old Sierra games for my own amusement. And yeah, that technically counts as 'modding' in my opinion. =D

 

[MacLeod]

First game ever: Jungle Hunt for the Atari 2600

Yes!! That was my favorite Atari 2600 game! I played that game til my joystick wore out lol. Pitfall was an excellent game as well along the same lines but I thought Jungle Hunt was always a little better.

Man that's some good memories. I'd forgotten about that game til just now.