I used to watch my dad play Heroes III and later SC. Remember thinking that a goliath was a supermarine, and that a barracks was an unfinished giant robot. It still looks like a Thor to me. Well, eventually I started playing.... don't remember how.

Zelda: A Link to the Past

This game got me hooked on video games, and inspired me to create imaginary worlds; e.g. card games, board games, starcraft maps, written stories, and recently I started learning to code in AS3, C++, and Python. I am still a newbie at C++ and Python, but in AS3 I followed a tutorialish thingy and created my own game, which introduced me to OOP.

Anyways, thanks to Zelda LTTP I now have realized a passion in game design, and I want to get into the field of programming as well. My goal is to work for none other than Blizzard

Shortly after Zelda I was introduced to Diablo II and SC. I took off from there.

About 1.5 years ago I FINALLY got internet for the first time (dialup) and started playing on b.net. About a yearish ago I started making maps for SC, then later found Clan Orig, then SEN.

Dune 2000 to Starcraft (because dune didn't have a good fan base)

I think my first game was Reader Rabbit. I slowly moved up to Cosmic Osmo and Sim City. I later got into Myst. Then WarCraft, StarCraft, and Diablo. StarCraft stuck with me in particular because I remember having the demo loaded on a ton of computers at my school so we could take advantage of the LAN feature. Being a lazy computer lab technician paid off.

Started on Freddie The Fish, Putput, and Full Throttle because they were free disks by babysitter had around at her house. They had a PC before we did. Additionally, Mech Commander Gold was one of the finest games I have ever played. I hate that it doesn't work right on XP. :C Around this time I also played Zelda: ALttP on the SNES along with Mario, Ninja Turtles, Jurassic Park, and Power Rangers. Come to think of it we had a lot of SNES games. Anyway, not long after, I picked up Diablo, then Starcraft, and it went on from there. I got my first taste if Bnet at 9 or 10 when one of my friends got dial-up.

Hm. Pokemon Yellow, Phantasy Star Online (For Dreamcast) and FF3 were the oldest games i remember playing, i got into sc at like 7, what stuck to me was making stuff. I bet sc wuldnt have half the life-span it did if it wasnt for blizzard's brilliant idea of making a campaign editor. Which later branched off into programs made by diff people, simply becuz they wanted to improve an awesome thing

Let's see how well I remember this stuff... When I was VERY little I remember playing old platformer games... Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure, the Commander Keen series, and others... Then I remember playing some FPS games, Wolf 3d, Doom, Heretic, and when I was 6 my brothers downloaded the SC shareware version and I learned to play SC, we eventually bought retail and that's the game that's stuck with me all these years. Also, back when I had my first N64 I played OoT a lot, as well as Majora's Mask, DK64, Mario Kart 64 and other awesome games. There've been other games along the way (various C&C games, the KOTOR series on xbox, the Half-Life 2 series) but the older ones are the ones that stuck with me the most. In fact, recently I've acquired a new N64 so I could play OoT again =D

Oh, the memories.

My first game ever was Team Fortress Classic I was probably around 4 or 5 and then I got into Resident Evil 2 and then played some wrestling games all on the N64. I eventually asked for a playstation and played the Twisted Metal games then I got a PS2 then Xbox and so on.

Boy I sure do miss Team Fortress Classic

lol... Good ol' Reader Rabbit. I still have it in the other room.

My friend has Freddi Fish on his desk for some reason. ;o His (older) sister plays it, and apparently is sad because she says it is hard and a children's game. "Humongous Entertainment" is a gross name for a children's game company.

I remember getting our SNES for Christmas one year... I have no idea how old I was (I was pretty young), I just remember my sister opening the package and me not really paying attention. Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario All-Stars, Super Mario RPG, StarFox, etc. I also played a lot of Sonic 2 when it was available (neighbors, orthodontist for some reason, and my dad's friend let us borrow it, too). Then we got our N64 when it came out with SM64, OoT, StarFox64, etc. Then we moved and our neighbors introduced us (my brother and I) to StarCraft. We got it shortly after.

first game: Pokemon blue for gameboy
first online: Rise Of Nations

I started by playing "Twisted Metal 2" and "Mario Party" with my friends, and even before that, I would catch glimpses of my cousin playing StarCraft and my friends dad playing Quake 3 arena. Eventually I got a Gameboy with Pokemon Yellow, and eventually, a copy of StarCraft.

Playing those games early totally changed my interests in gaming. Twisted Metal, StarCraft and Arena FPS's are my favorite games now.

I also used to watch my dad play Age of Empires with my uncle over a direct IP connection... I would always want to play, but he wouldn't let me because they were playing against computers on hardest difficulty, and I wasn't good enough.

I started out with Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? on one of those old 5" floppy "diskettes," along with Red Baron and some old side scrolling ninja game. First console was an NES, and I remember games like the original Legend of Zelda and an old Ultima title. Got a Windows 98 PC in 3rd-ish grade, and started playing Starcraft, Baldur's Gate, X-Wing/Tie-Fighter, and Dark Forces. First online game was StarCraft, and the first map I played was a Starship Troopers one. That was about 2001 or so. Haven't looked back since.

I never had a system as a child, aside from an ever-upgrading Game Boy. So in that sense, my very first game was Pokemon Red. My cousin also had an SNES and PS1 upon which I would obsessively play Donkey Kong Country and Twisted Metal, respectively, whenever I was able to. My first PC game, I believe, was StarCraft itself. Or possibly WarCraft 2. I got them within weeks of each other, anyways.
Now, years later, I own my own XBox 360, PS3, SNES, and N64, along with numerous PC games. I always think it's ironic that I never had a console or much in the way of computer games growing up, compared to the amount of gaming I do now.

My dad had an Atari 2600. Warlords was my favorite game.

Later, he got an NES and my family would play SMB3, Golf, etc. I myself got really into Contra, Zelda, and the Megaman series (especially 2).

For PC, I got started with Lords of the Realm 2. Awesome game, it was a turn-based strategy game with RTS battles. Then I got into Warcraft 2, Diablo 1, and Heroes of Might and Magic.

StarCraft came next and I played it and Diablo 1 almost exclusively until I finally upgraded from a 56k and 15MB of RAM. Counter-Strike was awesome from then on.

Oh yeah, I forgot. My first online game was SC, but I used to have shitty Internet and rarely played because of this. The first game I played online with any regularity was Half-Life: Opposing Force, which I still play (steam names anyone?)

I always had a mac so my gaming was limited. I played Doom 2 at like the age of 5. About a year later, I started getting hooked on Diablo 1, which was great. Then a few years later starcraft came out and my brother showed it to me. It was awesome and we would stay up until 4 in the morning sometimes playing fastest melee 1v1 and getting a huge army with the only rule being we could only attack each other when we said we were ready (which would usually take hours). Several years later, my mom got a job so I couldn't go home after school any more (instead I went to my dad's shop) and my brother convinced my mom to buy Diablo 2 for me. It was pretty great; I still think it's my favorite game. About 8-10 years ago, I started mapping a little on staredit. I tried to get my brother to do it too but he wasn't nearly as into it. In recent years I've started getting more into it (especially when I came onto this site).

Ultimately, staredit is the thing that made me switch my career goal from violin performance to engineering.

Was it Shinobi?
Check here.

My family had an NES when I grew up, and SMB, Tetris , 2 Zeldas and Contra were all favorites (I still got em!). The first Pokemons (you know, before they gayed it) where an awesome fix for long car rides. The first CnC on PC was a real time strategy gem that introduced me to that kind of gameplay and I fell in love as did my dad. First person shooter intro was probably DOOM or Wolf3d. I am currently mulling over the idea of hooking my NES up to my nice big screen. Super Mario Brothers/Duck Hunt in all their glory ftw...

Seconded.

Although X-Wing / TIE-Fighter were a little better and also quite a bit earlier. These were highly addictive and I played them through countless times. I think here's where my hardcore gaming career started.

My very first game on PC was AFT (Chuck Yeager's Advanced Flight Trainer) ... a cga flight simulator.
Followed by eatit a pacman clone.
And then Commander Keen 1-7 + Keen Dreams

Descent was my first multiplayer game, played at a community house in my town.

Starcraft was my first online game. At first I played it via direct telephone connection with a friend of mine.
Later I used a dial up modem to play a few b.net games. But soon I forgot about that until I got DSL a few years later and became a StarCraft addict.