For me, it was when I was about 5, and we had a Sega Saturn. I loved that system, there were so many fun games for it. Then, when i was 9, we got a Gamecube, and now I am a wii-dict.

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For me, it was when I was about 5, and we had a Sega Saturn. I loved that system, there were so many fun games for it. Then, when i was 9, we got a Gamecube, and now I am a wii-dict.

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Sorry, my internet was having issues.

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Actually it was my parents--they gave me my first console, the Atari 2600, then an NES, and then a few years ago a PS2 for my birthday.

What turned me into a complete gaming nut though is the DS/PSP combination--portable gaming is more convenient for me, i.e. the daily commute, business trips, sometimes my lunch break at work. I still use my PS2, though I play more DVDs than games with it these days. . .

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Oh man, that makes me feel old. I bought my Gamecube when I graduated college. Spencer, so that makes you what....like 15 or so? When I was 9, I was playing with my NES.

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We had an Atari also (in fact, I still have that Atari), but I was too young then to appreciate it. It belonged to my parents!

Tomorrow, I may have to ask how many of us remember our parents playing. It's so strange that this idea that games are for children came about, because one of my earliest gaming memories is of my dad playing through the original Zelda on one life (never dying)... channel 3 was always dominated by Zelda when he was on one of his missions. If he still played, he'd be really into the kick-your-ass dungeon crawlers of today, because he really looked for ways to make games more challenging.

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Like probably everybody else my age, we had an Atari (5200 AND 2600/7800) a NES and a variety of the usual games (SMB1/2/3, Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior, etc), and a Gameboy and Game Gear, but that was kid stuff.

My *real* introduction to modern gaming, and what ultimately drove my current interest in it was RE: Code Veronica for the Dreamcast (circa 1999, age 23). That was the first time when I was truly able to see video games as something more on par with movies or novels than just "home arcade" games you didn't have to put quarters in. I remembered being absolutely amazed when I played through the first half of the game with Claire and realized that I had to do it again with Chris. Just thinking about it makes me want to break out the gamecube version and give it another run-through.

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#5 Loban - I second that. I just turned 26 and all of a sudden feels old.

When I was 4 or 5 I went to a birthday party and played Super Mario and Duck Hunt on an NES. An uncle also had a Q*Bert arcade game. That's how it all began..

Other landmarks include discovering RPGs (i.e. Final Fantasy) in high school and playing lots of Smash Bros in the dorms at college (my college years were perfectly timed to include both N64 and GCN versions which was great!)

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Arcade games are where I started. My first game was the original Rampage when I was about 4. My parents gave me a NES for Christmas, 1988, and I've been gaming ever since.

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My parents bought me an NES for my 5th birthday.

@Alisha: My dad was the same way. I don't remember him taking over the NES much, but he would always steal my Gameboy to play Tetris.

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Atari2600->NES->SNES/GameBoy->64->several years of a lack of $->DS\Wii\360

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My gaming started out in a very different way. When I was 5 my father bought our first PC so he could dial into work from home (yay 2400baud modem!).

I got my game on with a Tandy1000 286 with 640K of RAM (because that is all we'd EVER need, right?!) and two floppy drives (5 1/4 and a 3 1/2) - about a year or two later I got to put in a 40MB hard card! (Yes, *I* put it in. Yes, I was 6 or 7 at the time.)

I was busting out the Sopwith Camel, Marble Madness, SimCity, Micropose F-19 Stealth Fighter, and Where in the ______ is Carmen Sandiago? (I had 3 or 4 of those!)

When I was 10 I finally got my hands on a brick/Game Boy. I barely played it though.

I didn't get into consoles until when I was 18 I bought an original NES at a yard sale just before leaving for college (circa 1998).

Since then, I had a PS2 for about 2 years, then I broke up with that girlfriend. About 8 months ago I got my DS, and my love of consoles was finally solidified to the point that I actually play them on a regular basis.

The computer is still my first gaming passion, though (Don't hate me! Please!)

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FelixLeech, I hear ya. You just can't beat PC gaming. Unfortunately, as consoles get more powerful and become more like PCs, I'm afraid the PC gaming market will slowly die off. It's too bad too, cause playing an FPS on a console sucks.

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I got started with captain comic for my old 286! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Comic

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I started on the Intellivision playing Bump and Jump and Boxing. Then "Santa" brought me a NES with that wonderful gold cartridge of Zelda and Rad Racer. I played a lot of Blades of Steel and X-Wing games on Commodore 64.

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My older brother wrote some very basic video games on the early minicomputers that I remember playing.
I remember Pong and the early games, but what really grabbed me in the arcades was Asteroids, and to a lesser degree Lunar Lander.

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when i was in first grade my neighbor had an atari and when his mother babysat me and my sister I'd go over and play.

I spent the summers at my Dad's and he had a Commodore 64 with th little game cartridges that you plugged into the back of the keyboard, (rat race!). I was also a big, big pac-man fan;) but the NES I got in 2nd grade probably started it all for me.

The local movie rental place started renting games, so I played almost everything, them we got a gameboy, a gamegear, and a super nintendo that we played through highschool.

I kind of got out of console gaming, though I got into PC gaming at that time and most of the way through college, though I did go over and play my friend amanda's N64. Then my senior year I got a gamecube and animal crossing...its been all down hill from there ;).

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Aside from a little 2600, I too started with computer games, on an IBM 8086. Playing games by Sierra like King's Quest, Space Quest and Police Quest were the bomb.

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Actually, I'd have to say it was my parents. They bought an Atari 2600 when I was just a wee lad, 6 I guess, and they were actually more into it than I was. Then my competitive nature kicked in and I fell in love with gaming over marathon sessions of Kaboom! against my mom. Add in a Commodore 64 with a nice selection of black market games fed to me by my cousin (who was later arrested by the FBI) and type-in-the-game books from the library and I've been an avid gamer ever since. I've actually never had a break, though I've gone from computer to console back and forth quite a few times.

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My father had bought a TurboGrafx-16 around the time of its U.S. release, and that's where I got started. It's probably also where I got my hate of any and all kinds of strategy games (including Strategy-RPGs). I remember the only game I could competently play was Devil's Crush, which is still an awesome game.

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