BETT 2023 GIVEAWAY - What is your earliest gaming memory?

[Jawloms]

Killer Gorilla on the BBC Model B, which I didn't find out until about 20 years later (well in to the 00's) was a clone of Donkey Kong! I don't know how, but I completely missed Donkey Kong existed until it became "retro".

[DeGrimmy]

I think one of my earliest gaming memories is watching my Dad play Sonic The Hedgehog 2, Outrun and Ecco the Dolphin on his Game Gear - But if we're talking games that I played myself, there are a couple! We had a Packard Bell Windows 98 computer and I remember playing, among other things, Microsoft Combat Flight Simulator and Total Annihilation on it. I still occasionally play Total Annihilation to this day (thanks GOG). Another very early and fond gaming memory would be playing Pokémon Blue on my Game Boy Colour.

[Bompalompalomp]

I would like to say it's when I got Black & White on the PC, but in reality it's being about 5 years old and terrified of this level of the Rugrats PS1 game!

 

After that it's playing Pokemon Yellow on the GBC.

[pugrick_31]

I think the first time I ever played a game was The Man with the Golden Gun on the Playstation 1. Throughly enjoyed playing on the PS1, Crash Bandicoot, Medal of Honour (can't remember the specific game!) to name a few and then stuck with it until my parent's bought me the original Xbox. All of this on an old chunky CRT, can't get any better.

[Scifigirl]

Programming the spectrum to play Beverly hills cop (crazy frog to all the young Heathens), playing text adventures like seabase delta, where the English had to be just right (many arguments,). Nifty Lifty.

 

climbing to the attic to play lemmings with my dad on the commodore.... and blowing them all up.

 

Computer monitor at school and getting one hell of a static charge off the micro..... ahh those were the days...

[atcoates]

Many happy hours were spent copying lines and lines of code from computer magazines just to watch a small dot move across a screen. Also playing track and field with a friend doing the 110 meters hurdles with him doing the sprinting and me pressing the space bar for the hurdles.

 

[bigstan48]

I think it was called Pong on the Atari console - late 70s

[Koldov]

Obviously memories have faded because it was a very, very long time ago, but the earliest...? I seem to remember having these 2 beauties at some point in my childhood!

 

 

 

I also have an early memory of being bundled off to Gt. Yarmouth when I was young to stay with my Aunt & Uncle for a Bank Holiday weekend, being given about £20 for the weekend and blowing it all in the arcades on the first day...

 

Then what seems to be a common theme...

 

Commadore64 - apart from the painful loading times of the cassette tapes, there was the ability to write your own 'games' in BASIC from a magazine called INPUT iirc. After typing in what seemed like 1000 lines of code, you'd get a 'SYNTAX ERROR LINE 796' and next month you'd find out it was a printing error, so it should have been a : instead of a ; Anyway retype the whole thing to get a square 'ball' bouncing around the screen... I think this is what put me off coding for the rest of my life...

 

Amiga

 

Playstation 1

 

Then I got a PC... found Counterstrike (played up to about 1.6 - don't talk to me about any versions after this) Half-Life mod (over a 56k modem - as someone mentioned kids today not knowing the pain of early gaming).

Got in a clan, played some tournaments... that took up at least the next 6 years of my life. Anyway, I'd quickly found my 'TIME' computer with AMD Duron CPU, onboard ATi GFX and 64 MB (yes MB) RAM wasn't cutting it (but as it cost me around £1500 I wasn't going to buy a new one)... No AGP slot so after some PCI (not 'express' kids just PCI) GFX cards, I ended up going full motherboard replacement, shiny new ATi 9800pro, new AMD Athlon CPU, new GEIL RAM and this started my tinkering with computers and I.T. in general which lead me to my current glittering career changing toners and turning it off and on again...

 

[plumyeti]

My earliest memory was properly when my parents bought a Wii when it first came out (yes I am that young!). Playing Wii sports for hours as it came with the console.

[Tjclark12]

My earliest gaming memory was playing Mario kart on my DS lite when I was 5. The memory that has stuck with me the most was when I first played Modern Warfare 3 on my PS3 as it launched me into the world of fps games.

[TechMonkey]

 

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I had forgotten about those!! Yes, had one of those, they were fantastic!

[DalekSec]

My earliest memory was properly when my parents bought a Wii when it first came out (yes I am that young!). Playing Wii sports for hours as it came with the console.

 

* Collective noise of all Edugeekers going 'euurrggg' to realise how old they have become *

 

I still think anyone born in 2000 is about 10 now... not 23!

[TIOAOA]

Daley Thompsons Decathlon on the c64. How many joysticks I went through I can't however recall.

[DaveJ2717uk]

Pong on an Atari 2600 connected to the TV. first computer game I ever played...

[mrbios]

I can't remember which memory is my earliest, but it's either:

1. Playing Knightlore on a ZX Spectrum+

2. Playing Nicky Boom on an Amiga 500

 

Can't remember which one came first, i think it was knightlore though. However i do still own both the ZX Spectrum+ and the Amiga 500!

[Stevecee]

pong, but fond memories of Chuckie Egg on the BBC Micro!

[Mrpower]

One of my earliest gaming memories, would be playing one of those Pong clones that offered 20 different games, but were in fact 20 different versions of Pong.

[timbo343]

Leeds have a place called Arcade Club (https://www.arcadeclub.co.uk/leeds/) which is home to all things Gaming machines from the early 80s to the present. I was there on Friday night for a good 5 hours and ended up getting told to leave as they wanted to close up at midnight!

 

It brought back a lot of found memories and was very nostalgic.

[Cazab]

Earliest gaming memory was probably 2001-ish when I was 8 years old playing Asteroids on my dad's computer, had a 21-inch CRT monitor at the time, with both the monitor & desktop in matching beige!

[CHiLL]

I think mine would be in the mid-90s playing Desert Strike on my Sega Megadrive. It was the first time I was allowed a TV/console in my bedroom and it was also the first time I accidentally swore in earshot of my mum, out of frustration to the game. Needless to say the TV and console weren't in my room for a while after that. Edited March 21, 2023 by CHiLL

[bald_pig]

Earliest that I recall is probably Quake, Doom, Duke Nukem 3d, Fade to Black and Carmageddon on the family PC way back when. Also memories of going to a computer fair and buying a Voodoo 3DFX card and I think 16mb(!) of RAM to max out our Pentium MMX PC!

[Brax]

For me my earliest memory is playing Gran Turismo 2 and Driver on the PS1 in the early 2000's. There's a great photo of me with a giddy look on my very young face with controller in hand and Gran Turismo in the background. I was hooked, the sounds and graphics and smoothness of the controls at the time blew my mind. Being able to drive around 4 different cities in Driver as well meant I sunk many hours into both games (as much time as I was allowed by parents! ).

[EssentialRug]

Playing Alex Kidd on my brothers Sega Master-System. Just watched back a YouTube video of someone playing it...gave me major nostalgia! Edited March 21, 2023 by EssentialRug

[LeMarchand]

My first gaming experience would probably have been Pong or Space Invaders in the pub, but my first "home" type one would have been when one of the lads in school brought in his ZX81 and a portable telly to show us a Pong clone he'd "programmed" (typed out the code from a mag for). I eventually saved enough for a Spectrum 48k, which I still have somewhere. I used to watch Airwolf on Saturday morning and then fire up Tomahawk which I'd cobbled together a two joystick rig to control. Was still rubbish at it!

[Brax]

My second earliest memory was playing runescape (Still going today as Old School Runescape!) in my late primary school years on my parents old HP, which was a tank of a PC running windows XP. It was a great way to play and chat with friends outside of school. My favourite moments were completing quests especially Dragon Slayer! Beating Elvarg and wearing that rune platebody for the first time was very satisfying and gave you bragging rights!