What Was Your First Gaming System?

[Russam5354]

Mine was the Nintendo GameCube. I was born in 1995, so I was alive for the N64 era, but I don't remember it. I was only six when the GameCube was released. My brother gave me his GCN when he got the PS2 and Xbox. The first game I ever played was Super Mario Sunshine. I have fond memories of playing the GCN with my brother and my friends.
★2001-2007★ Nintendo GameCube

[Nightstar699]

I got an original Game Boy when I was two, back in 1996, and Super Mario Land 2 is my earliest gaming memory. I absolutely adore that game to this day. But we also got a Dreamcast and N64 shortly afterwards, and around 2000 I got my NES... which lead me to playing random Japanese-exclusive games on emulator, and that's when I discovered true greatness.

[L___E___T]

Mine was a ZX Spectrum+2 - first game I played was "Oh Mummy"  google it, it's a good game, a Pac Man clone Of sorts.  I wasn't very good at it, I was 5.  My Dad ruled on it and I had a hard time understanding why he could play it so well.  

I played a lot of good games on that machine, it was pre-console era, the Master System wasn't even here and nobody I knew had played or seen an Atari 2600.  It seemed to skip England.  

A few years later my cousin got 'a new computer' - I asked how powerful it was in te only benchmark I knew - "how long does it take to load [games]"?  About 2 seconds, my cousin answered.  That blew my mind, then he turned it on and sure enough it loaded up in and had a game on screen in two seconds flat.  I was amazed, what sorcery was this?  How could a game load that fast?  My Spectrum games took about ten minutes to load by comparison.  Needless to say I was blown away.  That game was Double Dragon, the computer was a NES flown in from New York.  It looked like nothing else I had seen.  I suppose that was my first experience of what next gen looked like.  I've had that experience about 4 times since I guess.  PS3 and PS4 skipped it.  So, fast forward 25 years from that first encounter with Oh Mummy and now I play Famicom and have a hard time understanding why Nightstar plays it so well.

[P]

Mine was NES. My big sister had borrowed it from her friends and with a few games. I don't remember the first game I played but the one that left the biggest impact on me was certainly Super Mario Bros, I had never seen anything like it! At dinner all I could think of was trying that game again so I went up to the TV room as soon as I was allowed to go from the table and had washed my hands. I remember that I didn't understand why I couldn't shoot fire balls with the B-button after taking a mushroom, "it worked before" I thought. My sister later came and explained that I needed a flower after taking the mushroom in order to shoot fire.

Some time later we finally received our own NES (the version that comes with Ice Climber). Since almost every kid had a NES it was easy to borrow new games. A few years later the Gameboy came, and me and my brother used all of our savings to buy one each and a game each.

[mario3648]

In terms of being played, it was our old PlayStation 2, which we still have. I played Rayman 2 Revolution and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, among other games, and it was so much fun.

In terms of me owning one all to myself? N-E-S, and there's a little special history behind it. I went to a birthday party, which was where I got to play my first Mario game ever: Super Mario World. I had decided to stay the night, and I was pretty much left to stay in the house (saddening a bit, but I remember it being quite nice in there anyhow). The morning after, I had asked if I could have a Super Nintendo, if there was another one. I got a no, but I was instead given an NES, with Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt, and Super Mario Bros. 3, even with a clear blue plastic game case. I still have all of it today, planning to get a PowerPak soon, when possible.

There you go, I guess.

[nerdynebraskan]

I also started with the NES. I was probably four years old, because I think my family got our first one in late '88 or early '89. My first games were obviously Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt, as those were the standard bundle with the old Action Sets that were most popular. I think the only game we ever bought new was Super Mario Bros 3, but collecting started early for me as we were always buying up cheap games at garage sales.

It's kind of funny that LET mentioned load times. I remember being really put off to the PS1 the first few times I checked those out, when they were the hot new thing. I remember thinking "What the hell is this?!" at the loading screens. I'd been raised on console cartridges that fired up and ran immediately. It was hard to believe that the "advanced" new games ran so much slower.

[UglyJoe]

My first console was definitely an Atari console, although I'm not sure if it was a 2600 or a 7800. 

I vividly recall certain parts of 2600 games:  two-player games of planes in Combat; the weird kool-aid man thing in Journey Escape, the awesome sound effects in the "waterfall" areas of Swordquest: Earthworld; being utterly confused by Raiders of the Lost Ark because it was single player and required both controllers.

Because I remember all of these 2600 games, I figured it was a 2600 that we had.  When I acquired another 2600 years later at a flea market, my older brother insisted that it wasn't what we had -- the graphics for some of the games simply weren't up to par with some of the games he remembered playing.  So, I thought for a while about the games I remember playing and there are two memories that don't square up with the 2600. 

First, I love Xevious.  I had to have played this growing up.  However, we never had this at an arcade near us and we never had the NES version.  The only thing that fits is that we had an Atari version.  The only official (non-prototype) Atari release that fits the timeline is the one for the 7800. 

Second, I remember my aunt saying the only video game she was good at was Ms. Pac-Man, so we would play that when she'd babysit.  I know for a fact that this wasn't the much maligned 2600 version -- we had that version too and even as kids knew that it was a bad port!  Again, there's a 7800 port of Ms Pac-Man that's not kusoge, so we must have had that.

Still, though, I seem to remember the tactile switches of the 2600.  Memory is strange that way, so maybe I'm making that part up.  Maybe we had both.  Not sure I'll ever actually know

[Sarahconner]

Great topic.

My family's first console was the Atari 5200.
I really enjoyed Pitfall!, Defender & H.E.R.O. ...for some reason I recall those games being somewhat more sophisticated.

My dad is a cowboy, and one of the first of his many oppositions to technology was inspired by this console. 
One night in my early life, a nightmare about the crocodiles in Frogger sent me crying to my parent's room. 
The next day, my gaming time was limited and the Atari games were contraband. 
That's my strongest memory of the console, that and buying E.T. from a shoebox on a gas station countertop.   

[P]

While not being my first, the oldest system I had was a home pong clone that my uncle had as a kid and gave to me. It was called TV GAME or something like that, it seemed to have swappable cartridges but we only had a single cartridge with around 9 (maybe less) pong variants on that you could choose by pushing the buttons on the console. The pong variants was designed after various sports like tennis, ping pong, badminton, volley ball and so on. There was also a button that changes the size of the ball. There was two small hard-wired button-less analogue joysticks with very short cables (much shorter than Famicom controller cables).

I thought about trying to identify it someday but someone at home threw it away without my knowledge (it had stopped working).

[wholesalewatch648]

atomic purple game boy color
bought at the toys r us in los angeles in 1999 for $79.99
i never played it and then some one got rid of it sometimes i wonder where it ended up

[senseiman]

Commodore Vic-20. 

My dad got one when I was a little kid in about 1982.  I totally loved that thing, had a ton of games on it like Gorf and Omega Race which I played for hours.  I think it is still in storage at my parent`s place, I`ll have to dig it out someday.

[TanookiSuitSam]

The good ol' NES.

First game I ever played was Mario 1. I also watched my dad play Ultima.

[ventrra]

A Coleco Telstar Pong unit that I got in...1977, I think.
There wasn't anything special about it, it was just a basic pong system with "tennis", "handball", "hockey" and "practice" on it.

I don't think I actually got an Atari VCS until 1980 or so.

[Sajun]

<()>

My first was a Sega Genesis, third model, with the Genesis 6 Pak. I believe I picked up Desert Strike as well. Funny thing is, it was like 1995, and the PS1 was coming out soon. I was like 7 or 8 at this time and my brother and I wanted a PS1 for xmas and I was worried that my father wouldn't get us one since I had gotten the Genesis, so I convinced him to let me take it back to the store like a week later and return it. *facepalm*. We got a PS1 though for xmas so that was fun. Tons of great memories.

[NintendoKing]

NES! It was used, My parents got it when I was 4 in 1991. So I got to experience 3 years of NES still being a new console. (1994 was the year the last NES games were released.)