Poll: So how did you get into gaming?

[TG MLPDashie]

DOOM at the age of five, hooked ever since

 

[Mechsoap]

it started with me and a friend as infants where gifted with a nes. we never stopped...

 

[Frozen Donkey Wheel2]

Uh....Other?

Quite a few years ago(at least a decade) two of my older cousins brought their PS1 to a family renunion, and we spent it playing Spyro The Dragon(BEST. GAME. EVER.). And when they were leaving, they let us keep it, because they were planning on buying a PS2.

And I've been gaming ever since.

 

[Buizel91]

First Console i owned was a Keyboard that used Floppy Disks, it plugged into the back of the TV, think it was called The Amiga(?)

First game i acctualy enjoyed was Pokemon Yellow then my bastard Cousin decided it would be funny to save over my save -_-' i had just beaten the Pokemon league :[ Ever since then Pokemon has been a must for my Hand-Held Consoles <3

Then got a PS1 and fell in love Digimon...how i loved that game <3.

But what got me into Gaming properly was Halo 2, (I saw Halo: CE on adverts but i didn't think i would like it) First Shooter i acctualy grew to love, all other had me bored after 1 week. So after that i got Halo: CE but didn't enjoy it as much, still liked it though. So Blame Halo 2 for me being here without it i probably wouldn't enjoy gaming as much as i do now.

And that's my gaming story for you =D

 

[Appleshampoo]

Started on the PC, with a game called TIM2, or at least that was what it was called in DOS. I believe it's actually called The incredible machine...2. After that I went onto a few point and click adventure games, got a snes and mega drive, and the rest as they say, is a very wasted youth.

 

[TG MLPDashie]

13 years ago I had an NES, and I loved it, I wasn't very good, but I played it a lot. When I lost it, I still had my Gameboy and I kinda skated through until the GC, where me and my sis got it for xmas. We both loved it, but as time went by, I ended up using it more than her and now though it's dead, it's mine, I hold it's grave with me on my entertainment wall tower thingy

I didn't get into the culture until about senior year of high school, maybe even freshman year, and I got my first personal new gen system 3 days after christmas. I was mainly a nintendo fanboy, until my friend got me hooked on his xbox games that I'd play when we traded systems, and then learned of Sony and the PS2 around the time the new gens had turned 1 year old. Now I own a PS3, a 360, and I borrow my gf and her bro's Wii, and I'm just starting to get into comp. gaming w/ Steam

I've always been a gamer, I haven't immersed myself in the community until a few years ago, but I'm only 20 now, most 13 year olds are too busy ruining the image of the term "gamer" and those who play video games to care about new titles that don't have a large number on the end and a fancy shmancy franchise name on it in front, screaming over their headphones about how cool they are that they can kill you since they spend every second of their free time playing the same game and never experienceing the true world of gaming. But yeah, wasn't until I hit my late teens that I considered myself in the culture, been a hardcore gamer for years though, got my GC back in Xmas of '00, so about 10 years of hardcore gaming for me

about your third paragraph...im a 15yr old gamer and i am slightly like yahtzee with my wit and comebacks, i hate those screaming 7 yr olds cause you kill them and the 18 yr olds who are to drunk to realise whats going on and just swear and laugh in the mic with there friends. im a mature gamer for my age and i hate how my Gen is making gamers look like asses, i wish they would stop being dickwanks and grow up/sober up.

 

[bassdrum]

For my seventh birthday (at least I think it was my seventh, it's been a while), my parents bought me a Game Boy and a collection of really shitty games that I loved because I was seven. I was content with this for a while, playing casually like everyone else, but then in 2002 (or somewhere thereabouts) I got my hands on a GameCube, and that's when I really got into gaming--although it was be no means an instantaneous transformation from casual player to hardcore gamer and amateur (for now) game designer. I suppose that when I REALLY got into gaming was when I got a PS3 back in early 2008... it's just spiraled out of control from there. Games have always been important to me, and I've always loved playing them more than most of the people around me, but that was my first exposure to a powerful (i.e. non-Nintendo) system with a catalogue of mature (no, not just M-rated, but mature--games like BioShock or even bits of CoD4) games. From there, it's been a steady snowballing towards figuring out design software like the Source SDK, going of to study game development in college, and (hopefully) get a good job in the industry in the next few years.

 

[Throwitawaynow]

Got a sega and the original gameboy when I was kid. I owned 2 games for sega and 1 for gameboy the entire time I owned them, and played them almost everyday. Sonic 3 and an unnamed shooter for sega that I couldn't even get past the first level of, and an rpg-like racer where you bought parts for it with cash your earned with winning races for gameboy. I was born in 1990, holy discounts batman. What a deal too.

 

[antidonkey]

Been gaming since the late 70s. Asteroids, space invader, etc...

The gaming PC of choice for our household at the time was a TI 99-4A and the 5" floppy disk drive weighed about 20 pounds and texted based adventure games loaded from a cassette. It took about 10 minutes to load and if you didn't have the volume, tone, and balance all set right then those 10 minutes of of screeching sounds were a waste.

The console of awesomeness was the Atari 2600. Ahhhh....many late nights on that thing much to my parents distain.

My oh my how times have changed.

 

[Harker067]

Well actually I grew up on dos with games like raptor, duke nukem 2 and math rescue.

!!! If you're talking about the same Raptor I'm thinking of (DOS-era top-down shooter), you're probably the first person outside my immediate family that I've ever heard mention it. Good times.

Surprised at the apparent dominance of consoles, and even more to be called "old" at the ripe "old" age of 24. Kids these days... Anyway, I grew up as a PC gamer in the DOS era. Zeliard, SimEarth, and the free games that came along with the QBasic IDE. I remember one was a Scorched Earth clone that involved gorillas throwing bananas at each other. Ten Internet Points to anyone that remembers the Dr. Brain series by Sierra. Hell, five points to anyone who remembers Sierra at all before it went to shit.

Yup same raptor call of the shadows is i believe the subtitle. I only had the shareware but last year i bought the full game from 3d realms.

Woot 5 points! I played some kings quest 6 and 7 back in the day and I've been playing more of their old games more recently. I'm a fairly varied gamer these days with a some older and newer consols as well but dos still holds a special place in my heart.

 

[Skelebob124156]

Being doing gaming since I could remember thanks to my eldest brother, the first few games I r ember are Doom II, Duke Nukem 3D, Dark forces, Shadow Warrior and Half-life.

As such I have a sort of fondness for 90's Dos Games.

 

[Steve Butts]

The console of awesomeness was the Atari 2600. Ahhhh....many late nights on that thing much to my parents distain..

Yeah, I was scared to see that the "all my life" answer only goes back to the NES.

 

[binvjoh]

Started playing adventure games and old shooters with my dad at 'round the age of 2.

Been gaming ever since.

 

[rossable]

i refuse to participate in this poll. i started on intellivision and the Apple 2E. Ef your nintendo! the only good thing they ever did was Zelda 1-3.

 

[Madara XIII]

Me and my cousin started out with Super Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog.

The rest was history

 

[Iwata]

Since the ZX Spectrum.

Fuck, I feel old...

 

[spoonkick]

I literally cannot remember a time without video games in my life. My older sister had a SNES and I have vague memories of us losing Baby Mario on purpose in Yoshi's Island because our mom hated how he cried.

After that we had a PlayStation and the first game I ever beat by myself was probably Spyro the Dragon. I got really into RPGs(mostly Final Fantasy) because I hated reading books at the time and my mom liked how much text I had to read through to play them. It was educational!

After that I got good at Tekken to prove to all of my guy-friends that girls could play video games too. and I haven't really ever put down the controller since all that.

 

[Ken Sapp]

Your poll does not take into account that games have been around far longer than the NES. Personally I started on the Intellivision and arcade machines.

 

[TokenRupee]

Pretty much since I was a toddler. My parents told me that they would have to hold me up to play arcade machines and my dad owned an old atari. Though I didn't have any games of my own until the SNES.

 

[Railgun88]

For me, I started gaming during the PS1/N64 generation. When I was five, my parents bought me a PS1. Which introduced me to video games altogether. My first two games included Crash Bandicoot 2 and 2Extreme. Over the time I had it, I bought more games, and they were all fun. But, the one game that truly got me into gaming was Spyro the Dragon. This particular game I fell in love with. I could not stop playing it. Everything about it was fantastic to me, the protaganist, the enemies, the worlds, the dragons, EVERYTHING.

One day, I've finally made it to the end of this game. It was here I discovered it actually had credits like movies do. To me, seeing those credits filled me with a sense of accomplishment, and from then on, my path as a gamer truly began.

Same here for the first games. In fact I still play Spyro time to time on an emulator. Greatest game evah!