It's strange; I was born in '82 so I was like caught between two generations in a way. The "Gaming Fad" was done and Nintendo hadn't single-handedly saved the industry yet. But somehow, gaming was one of the very first things I was ever involved with. My Dad and some of his friends from work were Fad Gamers; he in particular used to play a lot of pinball and Pac-Man. Somehow he acquired an Atari 2600 and a Coleco-Vision (with the Atari 2600 add-on module) from one of his friends right around the time I was born. When I was about 3 my Dad taught me how to play Frogger and Donkey Kong and Atari Pinball and Pong. He also was a bartender on weekends, and they had a pinball machine and some other game I can't remember, but I do remember my Mom propping me up on a stool by the pinball machine every weekend.
I started getting into all the different Atari games; all my Dad's friends gave up on gaming after the crash, so I ended up getting all the stuff they got rid of.
I remember every so often he'd come home with a big box full of loose carts and spare controllers. I had like 4 copies of stupid Atari Pac-Man and Combat.
Superman, Frogger and Donkey kong were my favorites, I think.
When NES came out, I used to play Super Mario Bros. at my older sister's place, and she used to come over and play Atari with me (as well as a couple NES and Super NES games when I later got into those), but otherwise nobody in my immediate family got much into games past that. My Dad pretty much stopped playing games when he saw the NES controller had more than one button.
It was weird, people in my family got me into playing games but I stuck with it a lot longer and got into it a lot deeper than they ever did. My sister got into playing games a little bit again once she had kids, like she'll play Wii games with them and stuff, but only once in a while. My Mom literally never cared about games and thought they were a waste of time. My Dad, on the other hand, really liked the
idea of video games even though he didn't play them. He thought they were neat and was really blown away by how advanced they got over time. He didn't play them but he liked to see other people play them, and he used to go heavy on video games as gifts each Christmas. He was pretty hip with that.
Nobody I hang out with is really as into games as me and my wife are, anymore, and I play a lot more than she does. I'unno, that's just how it's always been.