What was your first gaming system (either console or computer), and how old were you when you got it?

I started with the Atari 2600 in 1983, when I was 8. I moved over to the Commodore 64 in 1988, the Amiga 1200 in 1993 (this was notable for being the first system I could afford with my own money) and I finally got my first PC in 1998. What about you guys?

My family got a PC with Windows 3.11 back in 1995. Didn't really have many games on it until we upgraded it when Windows 98 came out. After that I got a Game Boy Advance at some point (after having borrowed my older cousin's Game Boy for a few years to play Pokémon Red and Gold) and an Xbox. Guessing this was around 2002. Bought my very own PC in 2005. Still have it, although most of the hardware has been switched out after the motherboard sorta exploded in 2010.

Edit: I'm born in 1989, so you do the math

Sega Genesis. Maybe like 5?

Gosh, hard to keep track, childhood feels like a bit of a blur.. I vaguely remember playing learning games on my dad's PC as a very young child, around 3-4 years old in 1994-95, and later playing Diablo 1 sitting in my dad's lap. My brother also owned a Super Nintendo which I often enviously watched him play Chrono Trigger on (I didn't get to play ). At some point, probably birthdays in the mid to late 90s, I was gifted my own devices, I remember a Gameboy Color, Playstation 1 and my own PC which my dad had built from parts which was frustratingly prone to overheating. From that point on, I fully committed to Playstations as my console of choice, having owned one each of the PS2, PS3 and PS4, and also always had my own PC on which I spent many hours playing SC and Diablo.

The first must've been a handheld "car race" simulator. A simple lcd display with 3 lanes where you needed to evade the cars you overtake.

I think I had one of these as well at some point:

The first real console I had was the SEGA Master System

My first PC was a Compaq Portable with an Intel 8088 CPU at 4.77 MHz and an integrated green monochrome monitor. OS was MSDOS already.
Sadly when I tried to copy over my first PC game (AFT) that I had on floppy disk the HDD died, so it never became a "gaming system".

So my first gaming PC was the Amstrad Mega PC. A console (SEGA Mega Drive) and PC (386) in one casing! It could switch the monitor between the 2 modes which otherwise ran independently. I loved that thing. I still have it.
I even upgraded it with a 230MB HDD and 4MB of RAM. Later added a co-processor and finally even more video RAM so I could play games that required vesa standard: 640x480. This allowed me to play The Settlers with my friend in local pvp split screen. I used the mouse, he used the joystick (you can see it in the foto above). He said he doesn't mind. Good times.

After that my history became pretty boring. I can't even fully remember the things that came after it.
I think an Intel Pentium @ 200 MHz, AMD K6/2, i5-2500k and today I have a i7-8700k. Never owned any consoles again. PC way too exciting.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Dec 17 2021, 4:57 pm by NudeRaider.

First and last console: NES.
First PC: can't remember, but first game I played was Commander Keen. Definitely had a Pentium something at one point too which I played Red Alert on.

Played Quest for Glory Trial by Fire and Conquest of Camelot. They actually came with both 5.25-inch and 3.5 inch floppy disks, but by the time I came into existence 5.25 inches (when floppy discs were actually floppy) were already obsolete. Installing them I had to insert and eject like 16 floppy disks in the A: drive, OR I could play without installing but then whenever I reached a new level I'd have to eject and insert the next disk. RIP A: drive.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 16 2021, 11:41 am by Oh_Man.

Oh shit, I'd forgotten about those things! Think I knew someone who had one of those sometime in the early 90s.

Come to think of it, I got some crappy handheld game that was like a shitty Space Invaders, but with dinosaurs. Must've been five or six at the time, cause I got it on a plane when we went to Spain on holiday.

My father had this pong console. I cannot remember how old I was.

Oh god, we had that, too! But I don't think I had any interest in that one. At least I cannot remember.

Commodore64 when I was 4-5, I believe (father bought it off from a work colleague). Then my brother received a GameBoy at some point, and a SNES later. Then a Win95 computer with 100mhz and a turbo button that slowed the computer down to 10mhz. C&C Red Alert was released around that time as it was the first complex game we had (so I guess that it was Xmas 1996 when I just had turned 8).

And we had an electronic chess board where lamps indicated what the AI player did. But we did not know of the Castling move that it did, so we thought it was broken

Then 200mhz computer, 400 mhz computer and a 2.56ghz one with 14 or 15 years I believe. Then a laptop after finishing school.

Haha yeah these silly things. They were necessary for games that relied on cpu clock for their timings. Luckily that method was never very widespread so everybody had turbo always on.

Dinosaurs were all the rage back then

Oh man I couldn't get enough of it. Played 1-6 and Keendreams, I think. I even went to stores that showcased PCs, inserted the diskette I brought and played it right in the shop. Dopefish was dope

I remember these orgies as well. Not sure which program, but I had something that was in 3 plastic boxes, each containing 10 disks. And OF COURSE always one of them had bad sectors that needed repairing with Norton disk doctor!
And then begin the orgy anew...

For me it began with a Gameboy, years later I got a computer. I used a computer all the way until 1 month ago when I finally bought my first console in almost 20 years, a Nintendo switch.

Ah, the machine of my dreams, even more than the SNES. As far as computational power was concerned, it was the closest thing to a Neo Geo, which was beyond the reach of mortal beings.



Glad to know I'm not the only dinosaur around here LOL



Man, that thing is an invaluable collector's item! I don't think there are many of them floating around.



I remember the "disc jockey syndrome" I got from playing Monkey Island II on my Amiga. I didn't have the hard disk, so I had to constantly swap between 11 disks...



LOL I felt equally cheated the first time a C64 chess program performed en passant against me.

PC for sure. Definitely played on DOS. My first console is the original Xbox and I got it in December 2004. I definitely missed out on 1990s and early 2000s consoles like GameCube and PlayStation 2.

Game Boy in 1993 (I was 9 years old). I still have it, and it still works! I played the hell out of Tetris and Super Mario Land 2, but my favorite game was Universal Soldier. So many great memories!

If I remember correctly, that game (both in its Gameboy and Megadrive incarnations) was based on the code of Turrican II, which is a cult game on the Amiga, with some graphical changes to adapt it to the license.

When it come to game console, my first gaming system was an NES.
It was in 1989*, I was 5 when I discovered it. My elder brother was visiting a friend leaving me alone at home. I was (possibly) playing with some Lego when I heard the phone ring. My brother was on the other side telling he will bring me to his friend home as he have something super cool to show to me.
So, maybe half an hour later I discover the NES, it take me some seconds to realize that the character on the TV move when you push the buttons on the controller. The game was Super Mario Bros.

Obviously, he ask for an NES as his next Christmas present.

*The NES was sold since September 1987 in France, but it didn't immediately catch on as the first games we had were the "black box" ones and the concurrence of the Master System was stronger there.

---

The first computer in my family was an Amstrad PC 1512DD bought in 1989 or 1990 by my paternal grands-parents, but it was mainly used by one of my cousin for homework purpose. (They keep it in perfect working order with all it floppies and manuals until 1999 were they give it away to a locale association)

My really first gaming computer was a Christmas present from my maternal grand-mother (possibly pushed by my older brother) -Yes, strangely, computers were introduce in my family through our grands-parents-.
It was a non-MMX 133MHz Pentium, 16MB of RAM, around 1.7GB of HD, a 1MB PCI Cirrus Logic GPU, ISA SB compatible soundcard and Windows 95 OSR2. It was used until the hard-drive crashed in October 2002. I made most of the first version of my StarCraft campaign on this computer (and the one I have a my parents home, but I had it was bought later), also spent a shitload of time on SimCity 2000 and Dark Colony on it.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 25 2021, 2:24 pm by Zergy.

Regular Nintendo, then I upgraded to a Super Nintendo. Later I got an N64...then a PS1. Then a PS2, then a PS3, and then an xbox one

My first PC was in 1997

Post has been edited 2 time(s), last time on May 26 2022, 8:25 pm by fusiongtxo0.

I was in a hospital as a kid and played super mario sunshine on a gamecube they had while I lay in bed for 2 weeks.

Got me hooked on games for life smh

Vectrex Vectorcade or possibly an unremembered top down missile defense game on the Apple ][e
No matter still pwning n00b ants with my magnifying glass.

NES

Sega Genesis