GRcade

When did you start playing videogames?

It has suddenly hit me that it's almost forty years since I got my first gaming system. The mighty Commodore Vic-20 could display a whole twenty characters in the screen width and it had 3.5K of RAM. My parents bought it for me back in March 1984 and I loved it! We had a Binatone Pong system before this but the Vic was my first "proper" system.

So... what year did you own your first gaming system? And how old were you?

Please select the voting options that tie up with your history and then try and recall everything in the comments.

Yeah, the Vic was the first system that I had. I'd started using the BBC B micros at school but only well-off families could afford those and I was absolutely delighted with the Vic. Later in 1985 I sold the Vic and, after saving up my paper round money, I upgraded to the Commodore 64. Wow... now that felt incredible.

I was 12 when we got the Vic. As I mentioned, we did have a Binatone Pong TV machine and I'd played on a pal's Atari VCS/2600. Although youngsters today often start playing games as young as four or five, back then there weren't the systems around! Of course, there were electronic handheld and tabletop games that were popular in the early 80s - things like Astro Wars and Firefox - and I did enjoy a couple of those.

"When did you start playing video games" and "When did you own your first system" are two different questions, please clarify

Spindash wrote:"When did you start playing video games" and "When did you own your first system" are two different questions, please clarify

... . The questions are the lead; for the thread title I had to combine them into a single point!

My first memories are of the Amstrad CPC 464 which I probably would have started using late 80’s/early 90’s before I got my NES

My brothers had a spectrum and a nes. Probably either one of those.

First time playing any game was on a Sinclair QL, circa 1985, when I was four (ish).

First console that was mine and I actively used was the Master System in 1989, aged 8, first games were Hang-on and Safari Hunt, didn't get any more games until my 9th birthday when I got World Grand Prix (had a track editor which blew my mind ) and Transbot (title would imply an entirely different game nowadays).

The first game I remember playing is Beach head on my dad's Amstrad. At a guess I'd say I was maybe 5, so mid 80s.

ITSMILNER wrote:My first memories are of the Amstrad CPC 464 which I probably would have started using late 80’s/early 90’s before I got my NES

The CPC was a great machine :-). The graphics were chunky but very colorful; I played on the Amstrad quite a bit as my best pal had one.

Squinty wrote:My brothers had a spectrum and a nes. Probably either one of those.

The Speccy was a cool, quirky system with tons of games but the step up to the NES must have seemed amazing.

Victor Mildew wrote:The first game I remember playing is Beach head on my dad's Amstrad. At a guess I'd say I was maybe 5, so mid 80s.

Unite... Amstrad Crew! Beach Head was a classic and I recall enjoying the opening "work out the distances to missile the boats" part.

I was about 3 or so and I was playing on a Mr Men game while sat on my Dads Knee on a 48k Spectrum

This 48k Spectrum and an Atari VCS would be my first home micro and console, but both were hand me downs

My first new computer that was my own brand new was a Spectrum 128k +2.... My first console was a Megadrive (NES, Master System etc I got after the Megadrive and had only played at other peoples previously).

For me, it was Spectrum games sometime in the late 80's, then amiga games around 1990-92 (whilst still playing the likes of Formula Grand Prix (F1 manager) on the Speccy, before i then had my first games consoles in 1992/93.

Pong, Space Invaders (arcade), ZX81.

kerr9000 wrote:I was about 3 or so and I was playing on a Mr Men game while sat on my Dads Knee on a 48k Spectrum...

Great memories, kerr! Could it have been Mirrorsoft's First Steps with the Mr Men?

Vermilion wrote:For me, it was Spectrum games sometime in the late 80's, then amiga games around 1990-92 (whilst still playing the likes of Formula Grand Prix (F1 manager) on the Speccy, before i then had my first games consoles in 1992/93.

Ah! Another Speccy aficionado! F1 Manager was pretty well-regarded, I believe, Vermi.

still wrote:Pong, Space Invaders (arcade), ZX81.

The venerable ZX81! A pal of mine had one and I remember him setting it up and us then trying to work out how to use it. I never really got used to the ZX coding style of having commands assigned to keys!

Early 80s. I had an Atari 2600 which I believe was a hand-me-down from my cousin. I don't really remember. My first gaming system that was definitely bought for me was the Spectrum+ so around 1984-85-ish

Outrunner wrote:Early 80s. I had an Atari 2600 which I believe was a hand-me-down from my cousin. I don't really remember. My first gaming system that was definitely bought for me was the Spectrum+ so around 1984-85-ish

There sure has been plenty of Spectrum and Amstrad action for some GRcadians. I'm a little surprised; I'd anticipated more people being a little younger and having, say, Master Systems and NESs as their first machines. Lovely to see the microcomputer scene so well represented here!

jawa_ wrote:

still wrote:Pong, Space Invaders (arcade), ZX81.

The venerable ZX81! A pal of mine had one and I remember him setting it up and us then trying to work out how to use it. I never really got used to the ZX coding style of having commands assigned to keys!

I spent hundreds of hours programming the ZX81. Usually far into the early hours after a night in the pub. I did a Star Trek game that used up every single byte of the wobbly ram-pack and, I swear to god, an early type of Zelda game, On one cassette there was a 16k map you've moved about to find castles and towers and underground dungeons and then each castle/dungeon had/was going to have its own single cassette adventure. If that sounds far fetched then remember that D+D was pretty big back then. When the Spectrum came out I was out of my depth aka could no longer be bothered! Christ some people made serious money out of the things; as per usual I was just a lazy git!!