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My First Gaming Memory

January 14, 2008 - -

I just finished reading a Joystiq post entitled Their First Time - Video Game Luminaries Share Their First Gaming Memories, and it was interesting enough to me that I've decided to follow suit and post my own first gaming memories. If only I could get my homebrew blog to implement trackback.

PongIt took a lot of thought to identify which of the numerous video game related memories was truly chronologically first, but after ruling out Galaxians at Tony's Barber Shop, Asteroids at the racketball club, and the Frogger machine at Bristol Pizza, I've decided that my first experience with video games was the Pong machine at my next door neighbor's house. It was a Pong machine, and did nothing else, but boy was it cool.

It wasn't until a few years later that my father would come home with our Atari 2600 and I'd learn the joys of Combat, Space Invaders and Video Pinball. Meanwhile, my next door neighbor had to go out and get a Colecovision, while some other kid up the street got Intellivision.

I also remember playing Oregon Trail and Where In the World is Carmen, San Diego? on the Apple 2c computers at school, but that may have been a good while later. So what's your first video game related memory?

Comments on My First Gaming Memory
 
Comment Mon, January 14 - 4:09 PM by tagger
Not sure which was first--it was either ADVENT (a.k.a. Colossal Cave Adventure), written in FORTRAN and running on a KA-10 of Civil War, written in BASIC for PDP-11 and FOCAL for PDP-8.

Later we had Asteroids, running on a GT-40 and written in assembler (a GT-40 is a PDP-11/05 with a plasma display and light pen). There was also quite a good Lunar Lander game that ran on that machine.

I first played these games in 1973 or 1974. While working at DEC in the Maynard Mill.

 
Comment Mon, January 14 - 9:54 PM by pmd
For video games, it had to be PONG. Back then, you bought the units in the sporting goods section next to the fishing poles and guns. The dangerous period in my life didn't happen though until I was playing 'Sabotage' on the Apple II and this kid Michael told me his dad (or some family member) made it. Naturally, I didn't believe him... but I suddenly realized these games came from SOMEWHERE. Shortly later, I got my TRS-80 and wrote all sorts of nonsense. It wasn't until just now that I've discovered both the designer's and the kids last names were Allen. A common last name, so it could be just coincidence.

"Sabotage"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage_%28computer_game%29

As far as Arcade Games, the first one I saw was Asteroids which had to be some kind of fluke since there were 3.5 times more Space Invaders machines out there.

"Chronology of Arcade Video Games"
http://www.islandnet.com/~kpolsson/arcade/
 
Comment Tue, January 15 - 5:55 AM by The Dock
My first game was Pong. My parents had purchased it for one of my older brother's birthday or Christmas I forget which and needless to say that got me started. It had a switch between one player and two player and if you put the switch only half way you had two player with one player having three bars to block the pong instead of one. Kind of a two player with a handicap option. The unit very much resembled the first 2600's in outward appearance. This was I want to say circa 1979 - 1980. Its amazing how much games have changed.