Asklemmy

I honestly couldn't tell you exactly which game that hooked me for life. My first exposure was when I spent summers with my grandparents on their farm.

Grandpa and I would ride his trike out to the fields, and we'd... do stuff? To the plants? I don't really remember the work.

I do remember that work ended at noon, and we zipped into town on the trike. And we went to the pub. Grandpa would get me a root beer, and we'd split a poutine. Then he'd give me a roll of coins. I can go nuts on the arcade machines, he can have way too many beers, and WE DON'T TELL GRANDMA.

Anyway, a half century later I'm a recovering alcoholic. Good times!

I was kinda born into it? My earliest memories are of some Tom Sawyer game on an Apple IIe sitting on my mom's lap while she taught me how to play it. My parents had an intellivision with a good collection of games, the most notable I can remember being Microsurgeon. One of my aunt's had an Atari 2600. She even had E.T. I was born earlier the same year the NES released in the US, and when I was 4, I think, we got one but I had played Nintendo before at other kids' houses. I always loved Balloon Fight. I kinda latched on immediately and never let go.

Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

Only because Sonic Mega Collection wouldn't work on the defective GameCube I had.

Honestly? This hole in the wall food store in my home town managed to pick up a pretty early release of the arcade game Robotron. I was instantly enthralled, visiting arcades any time I could. From there, I played on friends' Atari 2600s and Commodores until I managed to get my own C64, and I've never stopped since. From there, I migrated through their products and stayed a diehard fan till the mid-90's - C128, Amiga 1000, Amiga 500, and Amiga 2000.

I played a few early x86 games on demo machines in stores, but I didn't finally relent and build my own x86 rig until the release of the Descent 1 demo, which single-handedly destroyed all of my remaining resolve. I already considered myself a pretty consistent gamer, but that was the nail in the coffin. The rest, as they say, is history. It was only 4 years later that EverQuest came out, too, and that swallowed me whole.

Pretty sure it was Rick Dangerous on C64.

Probably Mario on the first NES system. Then I got a Genesis, and I was constantly playing a little-known number called Ranger-X. THAT game was Dark Souls-hard.

D&D 3.5 got me into both kinds of gaming. I remember me and some of my friends wanting to play it, and I remember tracing characters from the dot hack manga for our character sheets and playing the starter set. Later on I found out my friend had an old computer in his house (I think it was an Apple II?) and one of the Gold Box D&D games, and that ended up being the first computer game I spent a ton of time playing. Before then I had played SNES and Genesis a bit but they weren't really a focus for me at that point, but then when I got Morrowind I was fully bought in to video games too.

Memory, Monkey Island, Diablo 1 and Street Fighter 2

I wouldn't call it a hobby, just some entertainment to pass the time/hang out with friends.

It was Counter-Strike 1.6. I didn't leave the house the summer I discovered it as a kid.

For me it was more a system than an specific game. I got a second hand GameBoy when I was like 5 or 6 and have been gaming consistently since then. Probably the highlight of that period was Super Mario though.

Xmen arcade game

Mario Bros 1-3

The first game I ever really wanted to get good at was the arcade game spy hunter. The first time I got the speed boat was a dopamine high I've never recreated.

The early 90s Lucas Arts adventure games. Most notably Monkey Island 2.

Sonic 2. I was like 3 at the time.

Counter-Strike 1.3

Breakout, Sokoban, Prince of Persia, Command & Conquer, Tilt!, Space Invaders, Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis, Full Throttle, Fallout, Raptor: Call of the Shadows, Wolf3D.

This was in the '90s but some of those games were already quite old by that time.

Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Battle 22 started it, Toy Story 2 for PSX detonated it.

I'd have to go all the way back to pinball, since I've always been fascinated with games.

But the very first video game that really sucked me in was Batman on the NES. I'm talking fully immersed; no awareness of my surroundings. Jacked in.

The music paired with the grim visuals was such a vibe. Just playing it made me feel cool. My parents had to drag me away from that birthday party haha.

Age of Empires II

Lemmings or Descent, I don’t remember.

Motocross Madness 2, baby. That's when I knew...

I always clicked with it really hard as a kid, but my parents banned me from it, so I just wound up making friends so I could play OG Red Alert or Commander Keen or whatever. I also played Tabletop 40k from a pretty early age, which my parents were more permissive of. In tabletop I have a very good systemising mind, so I wind up being the rules person, but I'm not super obsessed about any one system (I am a little "obsessed" with how few people play something other than D&D systems).

Pokémon FireRed

Kingdom Hearts II

That game is the reason the X button stopped working on my PS2 controller when I was like 4 or 5

Link to the past

Pokemon games and older 2D Zelda games. I really got into it when I found Halo

Monkey Island 2

Asteroids, the arcade game.

My dad bought us a multi game pong console, then an Atari 5200 years layer.

But we often went to arcades and got $20-$40 in quarters.

In later years I remember truly loving the Buck Rogers and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom arcade games.

First computer was an Apple II and I had about 500 floppies of pirated games by the end of its life.

Always always been a gamer. Also had a Merlin handheld game for car trips, which saw constant use.

Super Mario Bros 3. Never beat it until the Allstars version on SNES, but it's the first video game I remember playing. Or maybe it was Gauntlet, but SMB3 was the funner one.

Daggerfall was the first game that really got its hooks in me. It had everything I wanted, a huge open world, tons of different items, getting to dress up my character :)
I must have spend hours just visiting every single town, playing tourist and just ignoring the story. It was all about exploring and role playing for me.

Myst.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Evercrack and Diablo 2 were my starter games

Doom II was probably the first game I ever saw and it made me ask for a computer. Got a hand-me-down pretty much the next day.

Watched my dad play kings quest 2 when I was a kid.

Age of Empires 2 on my parent's crappy old laptop.

Pokémon Gold, when I was 8, got it for Christmas. Technically my first game was Battleship, which I opened first, but I probably spent thousands of hours playing Pokémon Gold. :) I've played almost every Pokémon game since, up until Scarlet/Violet, which I haven't gotten yet, but maybe I will eventually.

The First Metroid. We had a shop nearby with a NES and the multi cartridge switcher. There was Zelda, Super Mario and all the rest. But Metroid always caught my attention. To this day I think metroidvanias are my fav genre.

Neverwinter Nights and Roller Coaster Tycoon when I was a little kid. I watched my dad play Neverwinter and had to indulge in my own tiny fantasy to play as a "dragon." Still at it.

Bubble Bobble on the C64 :)

Pokémon then was reinvigorated but Minecraft.

Sid Meier's Civilization 1

First games i played were Pokémon and super Mario, but I think the first game that REALLY got me hooked was Banjo Kazooie.

The first game I regularly played may very well have been Chex Quest. Unless you count Math Blaster. Or maybe Chip's Challenge.

Couldn't give you the exact game that got me hooked, but I have been playing for pretty much my whole life. Earliest I can recall that could have gotten me hooked is either Yoshi's Story on n64 or some edutainment PC game where in one part you were moving pirate objects like a pyramid of cannon balls and other stuff away to clear a stone room.

Otherwise it could have been plenty of other games like some ps1 Egypt pharaoh themed game that was something like tetris or something similar.