I was three years old in 1991, and I lived with my entire family. They got an NES and started loving video games. Some of the most popular games we got were Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, Ninja Gaiden, and Tecmo Bowl.
Eventually they got interested in the newer technology, so they bought the Super Nintendo, Genesis, Game Boy, Game Gear, and a PC. The most well loved genre was platformers, so Mario, Bubsy, Sonic the Hedgehog, and Commander Keen got lots of playtime.
So, how did you get into video games?
How did you get into video games?
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Michael Prymula
How did you get into video games?
Back in the late 90s, my cousin was staying at our house and she had brought along her Sega Genesis with dozens of games and set it up in my bedroom, the first game I watched her play was Sonic The Hedgehog 2, I tried it out myself one day, and the rest is history. Soon I was playing every game she had brought along, stuff like Primal Rage, Jurassic Park, Road Rash 2, both Bubsy games, all the Sonic games excluding Sonic and Knuckles. Soon my grandfather ended up buying me a Genesis and I started buying games for it from all the local game stores and my cousin also gave me all of her Genesis games when she moved out of our house. After that it was a few years before I bought another game system(though my parents did get me a Sega Nomad for my birthday, which certainly came in handy on those long car trips we took whenever my parents had to go to a convention out of town) I remember how excited I was when Sonic Adventure first came out, I saved up my money for months so I could buy a Dreamcast just for that game(though I also got both Power Stone games, Sonic Shuffle, Sonic Adventure 2 and a few others I can't recall) and somewhere down the line I bought a Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance, though the Dreamcast got most of my attention, unfortunately my Dreamcast started having problems and eventually became unplayable. So I then ended up buying a Gamecube and a DS later on, once the Gamecube was discontinued I decided to sell it and jump ship over to the Xbox 360 since I was really looking forward to Sonic06(and i'm probably one the few people in existence who actually LIKES that game) My most recent system was a PSP that I got for my birthday 2 years ago, now i've got my sights set on the 3DS for Christmas!
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Calysma1
- Posts: 83
- Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm
How did you get into video games?
Best as I can remember, I first got into gaming via our family's first home computer, an Apple IIc. 
My dad got a whole lot of bootleg games for it from somewhere, and I had huge fun in my childhood playing the likes of Karateka, Chivalry, Lemonade Stand, Captain Goodnight, etc. (We also had an Intellivision when I was very young as well, but I unfortunately don't remember very much of it.)
My dad got a whole lot of bootleg games for it from somewhere, and I had huge fun in my childhood playing the likes of Karateka, Chivalry, Lemonade Stand, Captain Goodnight, etc. (We also had an Intellivision when I was very young as well, but I unfortunately don't remember very much of it.)I later graduated to the IBM PC and Commodore Amiga in the late 80s/early 90s. Later still, my parents got me a Mega Drive for my birthday in ’94 (or thereabouts), but I only had a handful of games for it, and I didn't really get into console gaming until we got a PlayStation in 1998. (I effectively abandoned PC gaming not long after because the PC scene was shifting to 3D accelerator cards, which none of our family PCs had until 2004. I still have a soft spot for the old DOS games, though, which I still play today—via DOSBox on my iMac.)
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JWK1
- Posts: 904
- Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm
How did you get into video games?
Great topic! Along with a new computer, my father purchased a floppy disc Atari in 1984 when I was four-- to be honest, I'm not even sure what the name of the system was. But I knew I loved it, my favorite games being Pengo, Ms. Pacman, Ball Blaster, Jump Man and some of S. Miyamoto's first works like Donkey Kong and Popeye. I'm guessing my dad got the system cheap as the VG crash had just occurred. There was also an arcade that my parents would let me play in after watching a movie at the mall, but most of my arcade love came from the local 7-11 where they had a constant rotation of great arcades like Punch-Out and Gauntlet. When they got a new arcade in called Super Mario Brothers I was hooked. We begged for an NES for almost two years and then Christmas of 1986 we got the system, SMB/Duck Hunt/Track and Field and Pinball. My two brothers and I became addicts very, very quickly. The next year, 1987, saw the release of most of the games that would shape my gaming tastes for the rest of my life: Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Kid Icarus, Punch-Out, and (of course) Castlevania. I was the platformer freak, my older brother was the RPG guy (we owned the original Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest/Warrior), and my younger brother loved sports games (Baseball Stars, Double Dribble, Tecmo Bowl).
All three of us owned a Game Boy and we got a SNES when it came out, too, which became my system of choice for about 10 years, as I resisted the transition to 3D. My younger brother however bought literally EVERYTHING; Game Gear, Play Station, Jaguar (for the record, I really liked the Wolfenstein port), Virtual Boy, Dream Cast, XBox, etc. Unfortunately, I felt that since my next door neighbor and best friend owned both the Genesis and Sega CD, I never made the plunge. The PS2 pulled me into current gaming and I've gotten only handheld systems since marriage. I'm stoked for the 3DS as I will once again get to see my favorite N64 games ported to a handheld (plus, Street Fighter IV will be cool to have, too).
All three of us owned a Game Boy and we got a SNES when it came out, too, which became my system of choice for about 10 years, as I resisted the transition to 3D. My younger brother however bought literally EVERYTHING; Game Gear, Play Station, Jaguar (for the record, I really liked the Wolfenstein port), Virtual Boy, Dream Cast, XBox, etc. Unfortunately, I felt that since my next door neighbor and best friend owned both the Genesis and Sega CD, I never made the plunge. The PS2 pulled me into current gaming and I've gotten only handheld systems since marriage. I'm stoked for the 3DS as I will once again get to see my favorite N64 games ported to a handheld (plus, Street Fighter IV will be cool to have, too).
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Pixelcade1
- Posts: 903
- Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm
How did you get into video games?
Early 80's with LCD and things like Mattel Football at my friends house. I suppose anything electronic. Then consoles and the rest is history.
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m0zart1
- Posts: 3117
- Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm
How did you get into video games?
Honestly, my whole life has been video games it seems. I've never had a truly dry period, though I have went through downtrends of interest. My grandmother bought me an Odyssey when I was just a baby, which I didn't get to play until a few years later with my dad. It was interesting and fun for me at the time, but I think I was just enjoying it more as time with my dad than I was so much the system, since I had no comprehension of anything other than the Table Tennis game (the ancestor of Pong).
We played that thing to death though until I started school, when we "upgraded" to a Sears Pong console. Then about 1980 my dad bought us an Atari, and I spent a lot of time on that system. Among my favorite games as time went on with that system were the games unique to the console rather than the arcade clones, such as ET and the like.
Honestly though, I was more of an arcade person at that period in my life than I was an Atari guy. The thing about home consoles at the time was that if I were to really be interested in one, I wanted something that had arcade quality presentation, with games reproduced exactly as they were in the arcades, and that simply wasn't available at the time. I absolutely loved Donkey Kong and later Donkey Kong Jr., along with Pac-Man and Mrs. Pac-Man. I also had a thing for Time Pilot. But I didn't like their home console versions because they were inferior in most cases.
It was the mid-80s when I discovered a game that would change my view of video games in the arcades. That was the arcade version of Super Mario Bros. Keep in mind, neither me nor most of my friends had any knowledge of a home console called the NES. It was not public knowledge yet in small areas like mine. So as far as I knew, Super Mario Bros. was an arcade game first. For over a year, my friends and I dominated the local arcade's SMB machine. I was absolutely in love with that game and thought it to be so new and inventive that I could feel synapses waking up and firing in my brain for the first time.
Then around 1986 I found out about the NES. I saw it in a catalog for Sears and was surprised with the screen shots that were contained in the catalog for the games. Hogan's Alley, Duck Hunt, Track and Field, etc. were all basically looking EXACTLY like they did in the arcade versions, which were popular in my local arcade. This convinced me that the Nintendo system was the home arcade system I had been waiting for. And when I saw an arcade quality Super Mario Bros. actually came for free with the system, I knew I had to get one. We were kind of a poor family and getting a console like that was not easy, so my brother and I worked a lot of odd jobs around town to fund it. We fell short, but my dad made up the difference as part of a Christmas present, and boom -- we had an NES.
It didn't take long for me to be at least slightly disappointed though. What I really wanted was to bring the Super Mario Bros. arcade experience home with me, but as I played through the game I realized that it seemed a bit like a gimped version of the arcade game. So given how I had seen this time and time again with the Atari, CV, and INTV, I was sure that the sequence here was that the home game had to be cut down to work properly on the NES. Little did I know that SMB was actually first released on the NES and that the arcade version was actually an enhanced version of that game. To me it seemed like the reverse of that scenario with the common trend, so I stopped playing the NES and went back to the arcades.
However, in 1987 my grandmother stepped in again and bought me two games for Christmas that year. Metroid and the Legend of Zelda. Playing those games changed my view of gaming in much the same way that the arcade version of Super Mario Bros. did, only this time they gave me a reason to build a preference for the home console over the arcade. They were the kind of games that absolutely enthralled me, with their system of caverns, exploration, and open environmental puzzled worlds. They were also the kind of games that I could not imagine playing in an arcade. The closest thing I could think of was something like Gauntlet, but it just went on forever (at least from my perspective at the time), and had no real story or goal. These two home games gave me a different sense of gaming, one that I preferred over arcade style gaming. And 23 years later, Zelda and Metroid are still my two favorite game series.
It's ironic to me looking back that Nintendo, the company that expanded my view of gaming into the pagent-form with more than just strictly the gameplay at heart is now the company trying to sell people on going back to simpler times. I don't mind it so much as I fully understand that it's an attempt to keep relevant in the market, but it does strike me as an odd turn of events.
We played that thing to death though until I started school, when we "upgraded" to a Sears Pong console. Then about 1980 my dad bought us an Atari, and I spent a lot of time on that system. Among my favorite games as time went on with that system were the games unique to the console rather than the arcade clones, such as ET and the like.
Honestly though, I was more of an arcade person at that period in my life than I was an Atari guy. The thing about home consoles at the time was that if I were to really be interested in one, I wanted something that had arcade quality presentation, with games reproduced exactly as they were in the arcades, and that simply wasn't available at the time. I absolutely loved Donkey Kong and later Donkey Kong Jr., along with Pac-Man and Mrs. Pac-Man. I also had a thing for Time Pilot. But I didn't like their home console versions because they were inferior in most cases.
It was the mid-80s when I discovered a game that would change my view of video games in the arcades. That was the arcade version of Super Mario Bros. Keep in mind, neither me nor most of my friends had any knowledge of a home console called the NES. It was not public knowledge yet in small areas like mine. So as far as I knew, Super Mario Bros. was an arcade game first. For over a year, my friends and I dominated the local arcade's SMB machine. I was absolutely in love with that game and thought it to be so new and inventive that I could feel synapses waking up and firing in my brain for the first time.
Then around 1986 I found out about the NES. I saw it in a catalog for Sears and was surprised with the screen shots that were contained in the catalog for the games. Hogan's Alley, Duck Hunt, Track and Field, etc. were all basically looking EXACTLY like they did in the arcade versions, which were popular in my local arcade. This convinced me that the Nintendo system was the home arcade system I had been waiting for. And when I saw an arcade quality Super Mario Bros. actually came for free with the system, I knew I had to get one. We were kind of a poor family and getting a console like that was not easy, so my brother and I worked a lot of odd jobs around town to fund it. We fell short, but my dad made up the difference as part of a Christmas present, and boom -- we had an NES.
It didn't take long for me to be at least slightly disappointed though. What I really wanted was to bring the Super Mario Bros. arcade experience home with me, but as I played through the game I realized that it seemed a bit like a gimped version of the arcade game. So given how I had seen this time and time again with the Atari, CV, and INTV, I was sure that the sequence here was that the home game had to be cut down to work properly on the NES. Little did I know that SMB was actually first released on the NES and that the arcade version was actually an enhanced version of that game. To me it seemed like the reverse of that scenario with the common trend, so I stopped playing the NES and went back to the arcades.
However, in 1987 my grandmother stepped in again and bought me two games for Christmas that year. Metroid and the Legend of Zelda. Playing those games changed my view of gaming in much the same way that the arcade version of Super Mario Bros. did, only this time they gave me a reason to build a preference for the home console over the arcade. They were the kind of games that absolutely enthralled me, with their system of caverns, exploration, and open environmental puzzled worlds. They were also the kind of games that I could not imagine playing in an arcade. The closest thing I could think of was something like Gauntlet, but it just went on forever (at least from my perspective at the time), and had no real story or goal. These two home games gave me a different sense of gaming, one that I preferred over arcade style gaming. And 23 years later, Zelda and Metroid are still my two favorite game series.
It's ironic to me looking back that Nintendo, the company that expanded my view of gaming into the pagent-form with more than just strictly the gameplay at heart is now the company trying to sell people on going back to simpler times. I don't mind it so much as I fully understand that it's an attempt to keep relevant in the market, but it does strike me as an odd turn of events.
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Will Patrick
How did you get into video games?
Christmas morning when I was eight years old. I woke up to the sound of Target Fun, which was the Sears branding of Air-Sea Battle. My brother was playing it on our second TV, which was black and white! By noon we were trying to get to 99 points. And thus my love of video games began....
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JesusSaves
How did you get into video games?
Played some old computer games like Snake and Pac-man...
And then my dad came home with a Playstation, Gran Turismo (the reason he bought the console) and a Demo disc containing multiple games like Spyro, Medievil, Metal Gear Solid, Soul Reaver, Madden, and a few others.
And then my dad came home with a Playstation, Gran Turismo (the reason he bought the console) and a Demo disc containing multiple games like Spyro, Medievil, Metal Gear Solid, Soul Reaver, Madden, and a few others.
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Greisha1
- Posts: 707
- Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm
How did you get into video games?
Before I had any game system in the house, it was awesome to go to one of my cousins' houses and play the NES. Man oh man how I sucked at Punch Out, Zelda, and all of those games. (At the time, I thought it sometimes more fun to watch them play -- they could actually beat things!) And I was OK with playing them every once in a while.
Meanwhile, (true story) my Dad was coming home pretty late from work every night for a while, and my Mom wondered what the heck was going on. Somebody had seen his work van in the next county over. But he wasn't hanging out with some floozy -- he was at a 7-11 playing Galaga. Supposedly.
Because of this, my parents bought a NES. That's right, to keep my Dad at home. I remember the night we went to Circus World "for a surprise;" never in a million years was I expecting to come home with the Nintendo Entertainment System. I was a "deer-in-headlights" in the store, followed by me ranting, yelling, and barking like a dog (don't ask) on the way home. And when we got home, my Dad hooked it up to the TV and my brain turned to mush when the Super Mario Bros. logo rushed onto the screen from the right. It was NINTENDO. ON MY TV. I pressed start.
I've been pressing start ever since.
Meanwhile, (true story) my Dad was coming home pretty late from work every night for a while, and my Mom wondered what the heck was going on. Somebody had seen his work van in the next county over. But he wasn't hanging out with some floozy -- he was at a 7-11 playing Galaga. Supposedly.
Because of this, my parents bought a NES. That's right, to keep my Dad at home. I remember the night we went to Circus World "for a surprise;" never in a million years was I expecting to come home with the Nintendo Entertainment System. I was a "deer-in-headlights" in the store, followed by me ranting, yelling, and barking like a dog (don't ask) on the way home. And when we got home, my Dad hooked it up to the TV and my brain turned to mush when the Super Mario Bros. logo rushed onto the screen from the right. It was NINTENDO. ON MY TV. I pressed start.
I've been pressing start ever since.
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YAGRS
How did you get into video games?
I started out with the family's Atari 2600. Though I enjoyed playing the system (especially Moon Patrol, Berzerk, and Yars Revenge), it was nothing more than an occasional diversion. I guess, like many others, I really became hooked when the NES was released. My dad bought one the first time we saw it on an end cap in Target. This was before the system was available with Super Mario Bros. (ours came with the light gun and R.O.B., which I regret selling at a yard sale later). I'm not sure what prompted my dad to buy the system that day (he never played video games), but he made me very happy with his decision 
Though the system was bought for the family, it soon became mine, since my brothers were older and interested in things other than video games. Soon after, I found myself with a Sega Master System (one of my better Christmas presents).
In 1989, I gave up my NES so that I could buy a Sega Genesis. The NES will remain as the first system that got me into gaming, but the Genesis would become the system that kept me interested. I still have my original Genesis to this day, and it performs just as well as it did when I bought it new back in '89
Though the system was bought for the family, it soon became mine, since my brothers were older and interested in things other than video games. Soon after, I found myself with a Sega Master System (one of my better Christmas presents).
In 1989, I gave up my NES so that I could buy a Sega Genesis. The NES will remain as the first system that got me into gaming, but the Genesis would become the system that kept me interested. I still have my original Genesis to this day, and it performs just as well as it did when I bought it new back in '89
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