Your first video game console
 

What was your first ever video game console? Have you had any prior experience in gaming before your first console?

A Sega Genesis was my first console that I received on Christmas of '93. Before then I've played on a NES console, along with an Atari 2600.

First one I owned was a SNES. Played one before I owned one.

The NES of course. All of us 80's kids had one. I got the NES with the Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt and Zapper combo set.

I got Mario and TMNT for NES and I was trying to beat both incredibly hard games as a 5 year old. Man, NES games were hard enough for adults, but imagine when we were kids? I don't know how any of us managed back then.

The NES. I still have awful memories of that thing. I really dislike it.

SNES. My mom got one for her birthday, I was 3 or 4 at the time so naturally I got to play/own games too.

The NES. My first game on it definitely being one of these 3:

SMB
Tetris
TMNT

The first video game I ever played was pong. I remember my dad setting it up when I was a kid. No idea what happened to it :(
My first console was the original Playstation I got for Christmas. God I loved that thing!

I never owned an NES but I knew other kids that owned the console, and I would play with them. Though if I was given the choice between choosing between the NES and SNES at this very moment, I would definitely pick the SNES.

The only Nintendo systems I've ever owned were a Gameboy Color and two N64 systems. One of the N64 consoles I got for free, the second one I had to buy because the first console died out on me.

My parents had one of those Pong machines you plugged into the TV, but I barely messed with that. The first thing I played consistently was the Coleco-Vision/Atari 2600 console. Frogger, Donkey Kong, Superman and Ghostbusters, mostly.

There are several NES games I'm still not able to beat as an adult.

I thought I was a terrible player, but turns out some of those NES games I had as kid(Top Gun II, TMNT) were just not so good and quite unfair.

When I was really young and started to know what video games were my family had a Coleco Vision. So that was my first exposure to them. My older brother also got an NES when they came out. I did have some games for the NES but it was his and he would remind me all the time.

Technically my first system was Sega Genesis. I got it for Christmas right around the time Sonic 2 came out.

Atari 2600 in 1980. Prior to that we'd had a Binatone Pong clone console, but the batteries leaked and ruined it. But the Atari was the first proper change game console.

My parents had an Atari 7800 when I was a kid. They had a lot of games that were theirs but there were quite a few they were for me and my sister as well including a couple of Sesame Street ones. I never had an NES but my parents did get me a Super Nintendo for Christmas one year, still have the silly thing. Since my parents owned the 7800 they were always big on backwards compatibility (I think they'd look for old Atari 2600 games at flea markets) so the Super Nintendo was the last console I ever really owned. I did inherit my dad's old ps1 (which she got for free off of a guy at work) when he upgraded to a ps2 though.

My folks had a Commodore VIC-20 when I was very young, and likely had it several years before I was born, that I remember playing around with when I was a kid. I think they had Galaxia and Pac-Man (or possibly the HAL Laboratory knockoff Jelly Monsters?) and that's about it.

The first console that was actually "mine" was the NES. Which I still have, and still works:

http://s30.postimg.org/tgioe3xpd/nes.jpg

Posed with the TMNT games for obvious reasons. :twink:

http://segaretro.org/images/8/84/Pla...DV1_US_Box.jpg
Sad, isn't it.

NES in December 1993. I played quite a few Arcade games and different friends NES and SNES. Edit: While different systems it appears we got our first game console on the very same day,DarkFell.

The Genesis/Mega Drive. I received one in 1996. It came bundled with Sonic 2 and Mega Games 1. I got an old Commodore 64 as a hand-me-down sometime before that, but it didn't work for some reason. I also played a few Tiger handheld LCD games like Sonic Spinball and Aladdin in 1995.

Up until about a year or so after the N64 came out, all of my consoles were hand-me-downs. My brother had the NES, SNES, and Genesis with CD attachment. As a kid, I played the **** out of that Genesis, though my first ever video game was probably Super Mario World. I still vastly preferred the Genesis and would continually beg my parents for one of my own.

So the first console I ever got was a Genesis with CD attachment then, the very one my brother had, the year he got a PlayStation. I had all the Sonic games released on the standard Genesis, Sonic CD, both Ecco games, Mortal Kombat, Lion King, and the Sega CD version of Jurassic Park. Oh and a Game Genie too. But I'm sure most of you that frequent this section know by now that my Sega CD was a piece of **** and didn't work.

My Genesis was sold at a yard sale without my knowledge when I was around 10, and I'm sure that's where a lot of the games went too, but I did manage to hold on to some of them along with the controller and wires so one of the very first things I bought when I got my first job was a replacement Genesis. I actually held a grudge against my parents for a seriously long time after hearing about them selling it. [Though I don't think they were the ones responsible, actually; we lived with an aunt and uncle as well and they were more likely to do something like that.]

I later also got the SNES, though I never got full ownership of the NES. The first console I ever got that was specifically bought for me, though, was a Nintendo 64. With it, I got Super Mario 64, Mario Kart, and Yoshi's Story. ...Funny how I lost all three of those games, oh wait no it isn't... :(

As a footnote, the Yoshi's Story cart I owned was originally my brother's. When he was at school, my mom would take me into his room so I could play his Nintendo 64, before I had one of my own. All I played on it was that, and Star Fox 64. I am saddened to say that the one Nintendo 64 game I wished for year after year but never got to own a physical copy of... was Star Fox 64. [It became one of the only Wii Virtual Console purchases I ever made, though.]

I know my family had a 2600 and Colecovision, but the first thing I ever remember playing was an NES and SMB/Duck Hunt. The first game I ever remember picking out to buy in a store was Mega Man 2. The first time I bought a game myself was Adventure Island II. The first console I ever remember getting and opening was an SNES. The first console I bought myself was a PSone.

Some great stories in here, btw.

LOL! Holy sh*t. That is upsetting. Sorry, man.

Oh man, the first game I bought for myself... I think it was Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. I remember renting it over and over and eventually saving up lunch money [by not eating lunch] to buy it for myself. I did the same thing for Pokémon FireRed and LeafGreen.

...Someone stole both FR and LG, I ended up getting a replacement LG, and my Sonic Adventure 2: Battle disc broke. [My replacement was bought by the person that broke it... then I let my cousin borrow it and he scratched it. So someone else offered to buy me ANOTHER copy.]

I had fun on it at the time, before I realized:
1) I already beat all the games in like a week
2) Not even close to the original's sound
I think I still have it somewhere....

That is a lie.

As I said before, whenever I see people saying they grew up with the N64/PS1 or even the PS2/Gamecube/Xbox as their first gaming console, it really makes me feel old.

It puts into perspective an entire new generation of gamers who then became teens and adults now represent the majority of the gaming community, while a lot of older fans have either retired from games or play a lot less. I mean all those kids who grew up playing Call of Duty will represent the future of gaming, and that's pretty scary.

Every game on there can be beaten in a single sitting, maybe two or three in a sitting. It's not unthinkable.

Not disagreeing with that. But a young kid couldn't do it. Especially if it's their first.

Kids from that same generation also grew up with stuff like Minecraft and I don't see that as quite as bad.

In this generation when you've got 8 year olds playing & cursing out grown men in Call Of Duty, are Nintendo kids outcasts, sorta? You see Nintendo fans get a lot of flack for liking "baby" games & the like, I imagine that must apply to the youth as well, maybe even more so given how badly they wanna seem adult these days. In the early 90's, when I came up, everybody loved Nintendo, for the most part. Even if you were a Sega fanboy instead, you were most likely still playing some colorful and/or cartoony titles.

I guess not a console but my first gaming device was the original Game Boy w/Tetris and Super Mario Land. My parents bought a bunch of those early GB games and we never really got any new games for it until the early-mid 90s.

My first gaming console was a NES and yes the Zapper SMB/Duck Hunt edition. Loved it but games were way too hard for me as a kid. I remember we got a SNES when it came out but we moved for 1 years and I was only allowed to bring my NES, I was pissed that I had the latest console and yet I spent another year with the NES. I actually now appreciate that I got an extra year with the NES since I still got plenty of years with my SNES.

Well I'm sure you felt bad when compared to your friends who had current gen consoles but think of it this way, that "console" had some of the best Sega Genesis games, a console many kids grew up with and own exactly those games and you had it all built in one controller. Cartridges were expensive, not many kids had more than 4 or 5 games for their consoles.

I used to feel old when people said they grew up with the PS2/Gamecube as their first console but now I see plenty of comments of people's first console being the Xbox 360 or Wii. :o

That generation lasted so long that we actually have a whole generation of kids who don't understand the concept of new consoles every few years. And what I've noticed is a large portion of "retro" fans are actually kids who's first consoles were all 3D and never once owned a "2D" console.

No, not really.

Maybe it just depends on region, because it was the opposite for me; Nintendo was looked down on and Playstation was the hotness.

But wait, you grew up in NYC, didn't you? Then my theory makes no sense because that's near where I grew up. I dunno, rambles.

But yes, I would imagine they are the outcasts because that's how it was when I was young. But I could be super wrong.

Your theory makes sense because you're talking about two different generations. Genesis vs SNES you had the majority of people having Nintendo but there were plenty of Sega fans even if they were the minority. So yeah while Sega fans called Nintendo "kiddy" it was still the majority of the people who had SNES. Now in the N64 era the "kiddy" tag was pretty much cemented but it being cheaper the Playstation had the majority of the userbase so the Playstation was the "hotness" indeed in that era. The cycle sort of repeated itself with the Wii and while Nintendo was still seen as kiddy, everyone had it but in this current gen the "kiddy" image hurts it more and I'm not sure where I"m going with this but I guess I'll go ahead and post it.

Yeah, it really probably is.

As a pure nintendo fan, I can confirm that no one respects your taste at this age.

If you had Star Battle (which was Galaxian essentially), then that was written by Satoru Iwata. Yes, that guy.

Jelly Monsters wasn't a knock-off btw. Commodore got the licence to convert Galaxian, Rally-X and Pac-Man to the Vic20 (called the Vic-1001 there) but the licence only extended to Japan. Where it tried to release the games under different names in the West (Star Battle and Jelly Monsters), then it had injunctions against them by Bally Midway and Atari respectively, because they owned the rights in the West. Rally-X had its graphics changed and renamed Radar Rat Race, and that managed to fly under the radar.

Personal PC technically

First handheld: Gameboy Advance

First home console: Xbox

Well like they say, trying too hard to act grown up is a sign of immaturity.

As for me, as far as ownership goes, my first console was of course the NES. It was the Action Set with the SMB/Duck Hunt cartridge, and the red zapper. I got it in late 1989, so I was kind of a late bloomer. Other people in my class had their NES for a while and already had a considerable amount of games.

My first video game-playing experience was on an Atari that one of my cousins had. I remember playing games like Asteroids, Pac Man, and Missile Command.

Whoa. I can't be 100% sure, but I just watched a few gameplay videos and the sounds from Star Battle do seem a bit more familiar. And the title seems more familiar, too. Though I was really young at the time, so it's impossible to be sure.

But if so... wow, Iwata's work got to me even sooner than I thought.

Right. I definitely worded that poorly/wrongly, and I'm happy to be corrected. :)

It was the superior version too, wasn't it?

The first one I played was some orange Pong clone machine (I forget the name of it... I tracked down the brand a few years ago and found it was going for about $80 but my parents sold it in the late 90's for a buck). My parents also owned an Intellivision and a Vic 20 before I was born but I didn't start using those until a bit later.