I honestly don't remember because I was too young. However I do remember growing up on all the classics like Keen, Duke Nukem, Wolfenstein 3D, DOOM, Rise of the Triad, Test Drive (1 or 2? definitely 2), Street Rod 2. The list goes on

Am I really the oldest one here? Sigh.

Pong

Combat on the Atari 2600.

Specifically the 1v1 tank battles.

Pokémon Blue, you could say.

Also, RPG Maker. It's wholesome seeing what people make.

Super Mario Bros. A game that’s nearly as old as I am, that fully stands the test of time. From the very beginning of my gaming days, this and Duck Hunt got me into it. Dig Dug 2 was the first game I ever got angry enough to flip the tv the bird. Sonic and Tails probably was the second major influence on my life, from a video game perspective. After that I was a gamer and will never turn away from the cathode-ray light!

I once stumbled into my parent's computer room as a little 6 year old and saw my older brother playing Sim City 2000. That moment literally changed my life.

Before that, I had seen my parents on the computer, but they were always just emailing or faxing stuff. I thought computers were boring machines for adults to do paperwork on.

The day I saw my brother playing Sim City on the computer was the day I realized it could do something awesome.

That was well over 20 years ago, and I've been a PC gamer ever since.

MASS EFFECT!!!

I’d played games pretty casually since I was a kid, but Mass Effect is what turned me into a gamer. Before Mass Effecf, I hardly finished games and could never really master controls, let alone the concept of movement with one stick and viewing with the other.

The Mass Effect story pulled me in so deep that I put in the effort and learned to actually play the game. After, ME I started playing just about everything.

Now, I’m in the process of recording my ME playthroughs and editing them into a show just for fun. I used to be normal at some point…

We have a Home Movie of me at 3 years old playing Tetris on my cousin's Gameboy. I don't remember a time that video games weren't a part of my life.

The first game I remember realy clicking for me was Donkey Kong Country. I can still play that game off muscle memory alone.

Sonic Adventure and Rayman 2: The Great Escape on Dreamcast

Definitely has to be full throttle. Such great games by lucas arts back then

Been playing Nintendo since I could remember. That's like everyone else's story.

However, I took a break. 1st kid was born and I wanted to focus on them. 5 years, no gaming... But Factorio... You see, that's where the trouble began to grow. That factory. That damned factory.

edit: fellow engineers, check the FFF blog, they've released news of the expansion!

Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and Elite back in the mid-90s. Jagged Alliance 2 and Fallout 2 a few years later got me finally hooked.

Prince of Persia on our Family PC (Intel 486).

Surprised that I cant find it in the comments allready: Definitly Minecraft

Super Mario Bros on NES.. About 1991.

Can't remember if it was Baldur's Gate 1 or Morrowind when I was a kid.

My dads collection of pirated games :)

RuneScape, back in 2007, not that I hadn't gamed before but that was my first real game.

I just installed the game after 13 years last week with a level 3 skiller in osrs. Just hit level 30 fishing, aiming for my first ever 99!

Doom, played with my friends on the office computers via ipx networking.

Edit: totally forgot about my C64 and the shitload of games I played on it...

It's definitely not my first game, but the one who really gave me my love for games was Spyro the Dragon

Earliest game I remember playing was descent 2, which most people today have never even heard of.

flashgames if it counts

Sid Meier's Pirates and Minecraft

Runescape skill farming to get into tech stuff.

Probably doom/Wolfenstein 3D (the original DOS title, obv.)... That started the whole thing, but FF6 and 7 were also huge catalysts for it back in the day. I think FF6 on the SNES was the first game I was addicted to. I couldn't have been much older than 10 at the time.... I can't say that I really understood the plot, but I enjoyed it a lot.

FF7 and 8 were both fun too.

After FF 6, we got LTTP and that's also huge for me. I've fallen away from LOZ, because I don't want to pay the Nintendo tax....

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.

I just remember that first game I ever played was Lode Runner.

First game I started that I actually owned was Congo Bongo.

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.

Minecraft

The first game I have a memory of playing is Sonic 2 with the Knuckles cartridge you could piggyback it on, so I guess that, but I was young so it could have just been the most memorable. I remember playing Earthworm Jim around the same time but having no idea how to play it.

Mario Kart, I was a military brat my dad was kind of a jerk he played to beat me one day I got really good and kept beating him. He quit playing after that. Then he quit with everything else I beat him at.

Dark Souls.

I remember the first game I played was Super Mario World on the SNES at my cousins place.

That game enthralled me because I was not good at it, but each time I played through after losing all my lives, I had the chance to get a LITTLE further, to DISCOVER something which I had EARNED.

Most games I played after that on Playstation 1 and 2 or Xbox had a lot more hand holding. There was not such a sense of achievement, though I learned to appreciate stories in games much more then.

Then I played Dark Souls 1. My BF at the time told me about it, and good god did I struggle with it. But like SMW, I found such a large sense of achievement as I inched further into the game. The non-standard story telling in the game was also really interesting, learning about this ancient lore from items and weapons and armor that I would find in the most desolate and obscure places of this dying world.

The combination of what I loved from high difficulty early games on the SNES in conjunction with what I loved from the story of games on later consoles were both present in Dark Souls, and to this day it holds a very special place for me.

Since, I think while Dark Souls 1 and 3, and Elden Ring have some of my favorite gameplay, Bloodborne has my favorite story of all time.

In Fromsofts games the world building is incredible and the difficulty is treacherous, so the journey is worthwhile.

Mario 1, 2, & 3 on the NES

Also Bible Adventures on the NES

My mom worked for the church part-time and she'd park me and my brother in the youth group room with the NES. Someone had stolen all the games (except Bible Adventures) but not the console. Our grocery store would rent you a game for a three days for a dollar, and we rotated between the three Mario titles until we mastered them all.

Galaga. Amazon Trail really got me hooked though. Then Earthworm Jim and Mechwarrior 2 turned me into a full-blown addict.

Spyro the Dragon on PS1

It was called "Water Carrier". It was a simple labyrinth game that - because I had no way of saving it to a tape, disk, or similar - I had to type in line by line whenever I wanted to play it.

Yes, I'm a bit longer in the business than most of you.

Grim Fandango. Downloaded from a demo site, and went out with my dad to buy the boxed game.

Mario Bros 1-3

Link to the past

Crystal caves, doom, Duke nukem 1, commander keen.. the incredible machihe, legend of kyrandia. Those are the earliest games I can remember playing. Fuck crystal caves I spent way too much time trying to beat that game.

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.

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.

Pokémon FireRed

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.

Lemmings or Descent, I don’t remember.

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