Your first "mature" game.

[OneCatch]

I remember that Splinter Cell Pandora Tomorrow (or might have been Chaos Theory) was kind of a watershed moment because it was when my parents basically said that I could get what I liked even if it was out of my legal age range (I was early/mid teens). They figured I could be discerning enough to not get hideously violent stuff, and mostly I did - I was more interested in other genres at the time.

I only got into properly violent games around COD 4/Bioshock era. I'd never really been into FPS's before then, and strategy games have a limited avenue for extremely graphic violence.
Yeah, I'd probably say Bioshock, or maybe Gears of War as the first properly 'adult audience' game that I regularly played.

That said, I played the 1999 AVP game when I was about 10 and scared the crap out of myself, so I wasn't always strictly sensible when it came to mature games!

 

[Bluestorm83]

Well, as far as games that would be rated mature, Mortal Kombat was probably one of the first. Also Time Killers. But whatever it was, I'm sure it was some arcade game that ramped up the gore. That said, I think there's a misnomer. See, people always say those games are mature... but the "Mature" label is actually saying that the game is intended for a Mature audience that won't be overly affected by the juvenile/offensive/sexual/violent content within it.

I can probably list the games I've played that showed actual maturity while counting on one hand.

But I won't try, because to do so I'm sure I would start an argument with someone who felt that I left out their favorite game that they think is SO mature, when in reality it's a juvenile power fantasy full of explosions and boobs. Hey, I'm an American Man here, Explosions and Boobs are great. But they're not proof of maturity.

That said, I just got through Planescape: Torment for the first time, and I have to say I'm rather impressed with the game's themes of suffering, regret, and consequence. Anyone who hasn't tried it, and who's looking for a mature experience (albeit one wrapped in archaic AD&D Pen and Paper rules and an old graphical skin) should consider it.

 

[Mr. Eff_v1legacy]

Violence? Doom or Wolfenstein at the tender age of three.

Sex and drugs? I was perhaps exposed to some playing Duke Nukem 3D, or definitely some watching my dad play adult mode. I was seven.

 

[Neonit]

umm, i guess you could count baldurs gate 2 as mature right? i played that when i was about 7-8. a lot of the stuff flew right above my head when it comes to story (and boy, am i embarrased to say that i had difficulties getting out of first dungeon) but i sure remember it as an experience that changed my "perception of world around me".

i actually think my parents were really cool about games. i was allowed to play games way above my "age limit", but only if my parents deemed i understand why and what is happening. sometimes they would play with me, sometimes they would do research before getting me a game. they werent big on fps (neither was to be honest) but the more "mature" story games were cool. i liked how they would watch what choices i made, and ask me why i did them.

ahhh.... and now i got nostalgic because of my childhood.

 

[JasonKaotic]

Mortal Kombat 3. I think I was either 3 or 4, and I didn't even realise there was anything supposedly unsuitable for me about it until my brother pointed it out. 'Cause my mum would let me play that but not Grand Theft Auto, which was kind of weird.
Not that we didn't play it anyway. Heheheheheh.

Edit: Wait wait wait, nonono, my first was Alien Trilogy. In fact it was the first game I remember ever playing. It's a horror FPS. I was 2 years old. Yeah... at the time I never managed to get past halfway through the first level before stopping out of fear. Freakin' awesome game, though.

 

[OldKingClancy]

San Andreas, I must have been about 10.

My parents didn't care much about what I was exposed to, and it's had no negative effects on me at fuckin all.

 

[Flaery]

Fable, when I was 9. I was mesmerized by it as first, completely enthralled. I thought it was the greatest game ever, I had a lot to learn. For nostalgia purposes only, it breaks my Top 30 games.

 

[BathorysGraveland2]

Well... most of the games I grew up with were mature. About the only "childish" games I ever played were Croc: Legend of the Gobos, and the first Spyro. Everything else pretty much consisted of the likes of Blood, Hexen, Sin and Shadowman. Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine was another, though not quite on the level of those other four. Those games stand out most among the early core of the games I first played.

 

[LimitedPunctuation]

Red Alert 2, Final Fantasy 7, Carmageddon, Resident Evil?
I don't rightfully know to be honest with you, my dad was a bit of a gamer when I was younger (PS1 era) and I mostly just slipped into playing the games I'd watched him play as I grew, the most childish of them was probably Crash Bandicoot

 

[Shoggoth2588]

For violence, would be Mortal Kombat in the the arcade, I really sucked so spent most the time watching older kids play it, they could do the stuff like Sub Zero ripping a guy's head off with the spine dangling. I didn't really make much of it, it was just a cool game with Ninjas and Raiden had a cool hat.

That's me as well. I sucked at the game but my uncle was good playing as Sub-Zero and showed me some of the fatalities.

As for a game that I personally owned and, played I can't really think of anything other than GTA III. The GTA trilogy on the PS2 in general is absolutely not for children but I could argue that I'd rather a kid play GTA3 than San Andreas or even 3 instead of Vice City because at least in 3 nobody knows 4-letter swears (according to my memory anyway).

...

Maybe I shouldn't have played Road Rash as an 8 year old now that I think about it...

 

[TheMigrantSoldier]

Halo: Combat Evolved at age 12.

The first time I stepped on the halo, I was enthralled by the locale. Man, I miss that.

The actual violence of the game wasn't too shocking until I got to the flood.

 

[Frybird]

Doom, i think....the Game and myself were already to old to be truly shocked/disturbed by it.

Most notable however is probably Thill Kill, of which a friend of mine had a bootleg.
For those who don't know, Thill Kill is a 4 player Beat em Up for the Playstation 1 that was never actually released (it was finished but cancelled) due to it's excessive violence and sexual references (but at least it's engine was reused for several PS1 brawlers). But the nearly finished code leaked on the internet and my friend had a "chipped" PS1, so yeah, being young teenagers we of course had to play it.
Being somewhere between 12 to 14 at the time (i don't really remember), it was mostly hilarious for us (even to us stupid kids it seemed somewhat infantile most of the time).

 

[sc1arr1]

My first mature game was either Doom 2 or Duke Nukem 3D. I think I was five or six at the time. I wouldn't say I was traumatized by either of them though.

 

[FFKonoko]

leisure suit larry, I was like...10 to 12? My mum played them just because she enjoyed text parser/point and click games, (I was introduced to day of the tentacle at the same time.)
I didn't play the game alone, it was more like a group thing, especially joining in on the "prove you're an adult" quiz at the start of....I think it was number 5?
Either way, good fun.

 

[jdogtwodolla]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "mature" in quotes.

I guess if you mean the first game with graphic content deemed too inappropriate for da chirrins, then it would be Conkers Bad Fur Day. I honestly thought I was going to say Earthworm Jim 3D with that cow beheading-axe gun sequence but apparently it's an E.

 

[Something Amyss]

I guess it was Mortal Kombat. I thought doom came out first for some reason. I don't think I'd ever played anything hyperviolent before that point, but I played both when they came out.

And overall? Meh. I don't think it impacted me much, since I'd already seen hyperviolent media (basic TV, for example). I'd already been exposed to anime (by my dad, no less), the evil rap music, heavy metal (to an extent), and so on.

I didn't care enough to seek out the shit, either. MK and Doom were both hot items so I tried them. Just like I gave DDR a try once in an arcade.

 

[Raikas]

It depends what's meant by "mature", but I suppose for me it was Rise of the Dragon. It was in the house because it came in one of those Sierra box sets that they sold in the early 90s, and my father had bought it for the flight simulation game that was in it (Red Barron, I think) and I actually played it specifically because the box specifically described it as being for mature audiences (this was pre-game ratings, so I'd never seen something like that before) and I was curious to see what that meant.

 

[thejackyl]

The first mature game I played was probably Wolfenstein 3D, I played it when it first released when I was 5. My dad was friends with the owner of the store, so I ended up getting to play some of the upcoming games before they got released.

I couldn't figure out how to get through the first door and a guard came and killed me. I cried... I was 5 and didn't like violent anything at that point in my life.

 

[TheColdHeart]

Can't remember exactly but it was either Duke Nukem Time to Kill or Die Hard Trilogy on the original Playstation. Both had mature themes not exactly suitable for an 8 year old kid.

 

[alik44]

Hmm the longest i remember was GTA 3 around i was either 12 or 13. i had a ps1 and nintendo 64 long before the ps2 but their games were quite regular around e-t i think. any who i got gta 3 when i was 12 or 13 but weirdly enough kids my age were still quite normal even when we played it together we were still like kids and some of the parents who bought it did sit around some of us when we played the GTA or any other game.