How did you get into video gaming?

[Jedi]

When I was a wee tike at the age of 3. I watched my Mom play video games [my Dad is also into games but the more RPG and strat vareity with shooters and racing] One day when she was playing Sonic the Hedgehog 2 I picked up the 2nd controller and played as Tails and I learned how to play from her. She and I would play many other games in my youth, Mario 3, Contra [we kick ass at it too! :P], World of Illusion and countless others. We played many many games, and its her I have to thank for it.

My Dad and I love playing RPG's through together among other things, Ogre Battle 64 ranks among my top favorite games ever not from just playing it and I love it to death but also because its a game that my Dad and I still go back to and play through over and over.

There are countless memories I could share spent playing games with my parents and family but I felt it would pretty much swamp an entire page so i'll stop here. Now I'm curious what about the rest of you?

Edited March 13, 2013 by Jedi

[Ein]

I played Super Mario World when I was 3 years old and I suuuuuuuuucked. Then my uncle showed me how to play and I wrecked that game. Wrecked it good.

It's because of him that I liked gaming so much but now not so much since I'm just tired of most games.

[Icon of Sin]

I started with math games when I was about two or three. My family also had an Atari 2600 and we later owned a NES after my aunt bought my older cousins a SNES. My father would often play Super Mario Bros. and I'd tell him where to go accurately (especially in those castles where you had to select the right way to get to Bowser), but I wouldn't actually play myself. Then one time my mother tried it, couldn't really stand it with me around and just gave me the controller and left. Little did she know that she created a three year old monster. Pretty early in my gaming career I even managed to beat Super Mario Bros. twice before my father made it once.

Edited March 13, 2013 by Doga Blockovich

[Ice Sage]

3 Years old playing Donkey kong country. The memories~ My brother and I would go though that game all the time.

Street fighter was another game I remember playing. maaaaan it was fun. Mashing buttons trying to get the hadoken lol

[eclipse]

My first gaming memories revolve around Tetris (all daddy's fault). My dad's also a fan of games, albeit the FPS kind. My mom likes watching me play video games (my fondest memory of this was both of us up at 4 AM watching the ending of Baten Kaitos). One day, I'll get her to play DDR again~!

[MacLovin]

Jumpstart, Math Blaster, Reading Rabbit.

I was using Windows 3.1 in diapers.

Oh and tetris when I was in diapers.

[MercuryHg34]

Started on my computer when I was like 4 with "Orly's Draw-a-Story". That game was sooooo good back then.

But with actual gaming I started with handhelds like SML2 and Pokemon Yellow. Then I moved on to Mario Kart 64, Mario Party, SM64, and Zelda: OoT.

[Peppy]

I picked up an N64 Controller when i was around 3 and played various N64 games. I sucked at first but watching my brother play made me a bit better and i eventually did quite decently. Apparently, I'd do better than my brothers friends when i would play against them when i was still pretty young.

Safe to say that the N64 got me started with gaming.

[PKL]

My first game was Super Mario World (the one with Yoshi and the cape) at like, the age of 4. My second one was a Link to the past. After those 2, I got hooked

[Fruity Insanity]

I played the original Gameboy when I was four. Of course, I sucked. -_-' I was four.

The computer at... three?

I got a Gameboy Advance at five (for my birthday), and started playing more... heavily since then.

So yeah, it's been a long time. Not as long as some of you, (Or a lot of you.)

But long, nonetheless. 13-14 years now... Wow...

[Knight]

I was in grade 1 or 2 and my dad got me and my brother a GBA with 3 games, Mario Kart: Super Circuit, Duel Masters, and Pokemon Ruby, the latter being my favourite. It wasn't long until I also got a GameCube with Pokemon Coliseum, Pokemon XD, and Super Smash Bros. Melee, which introduced me to all the Nintendo franchises.

[Gone2Ground]

I lived in Germany for the first seven years of my life with enough speech problems to not English very well, never mind German. My parents had a SNES and a Mega Drive (Genesis as you lot call them) and they sucked up most of my time. My first ever video game was this stupidly hard arcade platform for the Mega Drive called Galahad.

I never could beat that game..

A few years later, I got into PC gaming by watching my dad play Starcraft. He got stuck on the Zerg campaign. I took over once, and beat it. From then on, strategy games have been a favorite although I've never been good at the multiplayer.

[Crimson Red]

I played it as a kid and it was fun. I don't think I played it when I was 3 (I feel like it's unrealistic for them to have any real understanding of what's going on--even as a 5-6 year old I'm pretty sure I didn't) but yeah, I do things that are fun.... and I tried it at some point, and it was fun... that's about it lol.

[Gorgar]

I first got into gaming with I was probably 3-4, I think...? Maybe a few years older than that. But my dad had bought a SNES, I don't remember from where, though.

But we had Super Mario All Stars and quite a few other games and my dad and I would play the original Mario, Mario 3, and Super Mario, all the time.

We never actually beat any of them, though. And to this day I still haven't beaten the original Mario. (after all these years that I've been playing it, that's pretty sad.)

[Rehab]

Some cousins of mine, who've remained way too generous, gave me their Sega Genesis when I was like 4 or 5. Spent as much time on that, and later the N64 after I discovered I was a generation behind my cousin in Canada, as I could.

I'm jealous of you guys who got into gaming from your parents, or just any family who were around more often than once every few months: my parents either hated or were indifferent to games (with the exception of my dad and Tetris, he was the person who showed me it was a game that was possible to "beat"), and my half-siblings were both out of the house. I partially played to get away from the former, and I assumed everyone else (aside from select friends) either hated games or held them in as much contempt as my parents did.

Edited March 14, 2013 by Rehab

[sunshineYON]

When I was four in 1993, my dad went on a business trip to Prague and got me a Game and Watch-esque game where you control a robot and you had to catch asteroids or something. That was my first "video game".

When I was six in Japan, my dad got me the brick Gameboy with Wario Land and Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru. That was the real start of something awesome. I sucked at both and had to get help from my parents. Wario Land required dexterity and I didn't have any at the time, and Kaeru was a really intricate RPG, for a six year old, and I didn't know what the fuck I was doing. Also the text had a lot of kanji in it so I my mom helped me beat it. To this day, they are some of my favorite games.

[Emeraldfox]

My older sister tossed me the controller because she couldn't beat Robotnik in Green Hill Zone in Sonic 1. Now, I didn't beat him either, but I fell in love with gaming then ughughugh. My mom and dad also helped, we would play some games together. I remember one game on the Genisis we had, it was a fighting game but the name escapes me. We would play that, and I hated it because my dad's character threw my guy into a fan. I was a kid then, but eh. It was also how Tails became my favorite character ever, but that's a different story.

These days, I'm the only one who plays video games. My sisters don't like them much anymore, neither do my parents. I often wonder why my mom bought a 360 when she barely uses it.

[Ike-Mike]

Super Mario Bros. at age 4.

It didn't really take off for me until Pokémon Red at age 9 though.

[peener weener]

super mario world, megaman x, kirby superstar

[Jedi]

Really loving to hear all your stories. Alot of you started around the same age I did and thats pretty cool.

[Shin]

Started playing Doom with my dad at the age of 5 or so. I was absolutely terrible and it scared me. I used to play a Frogger rip-off with my mother too, so I guess it went from there. Me and my siblings always played games together, there were enough of us for a decent sized team.

[Randoman]

My earliest memory of gaming was playing Sky Destroyer on the Famicom at 1-2 years of age back when I lived in the Philippines. You could imagine how badly I sucked.

Anyways, I had a Famicom and SNES when I moved from the Philippines. The games I remember starting off with (that sounds really weird, but you get the point) was a 190 in 1 Multicart and Mickey Mouse for the Famicom (it included Super Mario Bros., Mario Bros, Wrecking Crew, Ice Climber, Balloon Fighter, Urban Champion, Clu Clu Land, Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Jr., Donkey Kong 3, Battle City, both Nintendo and Tengen Tetris, The Adventures of Dino Riki, Adventure Island, Popeye... you know, I'll just stop there before I list all 190) and Super Mario World and Final Fantasy II for the SNES (actually IV, since America never got the NES version of II or III).

Mario was (and still is) my most favourite among the games I had, even though I was quite bad. I didn't really know about the saving system in Super Mario World and in Super Mario Bros. I was always stuck at World 8-1 (I guess it serves me right for using the two warp zones in a row without gaining the necessary skill to conquer World 8-1), but I eventually defeated Super Mario World at 9 years of age (cheating through Star World after I found it from the Forest Fortress) and Super Mario Bros. at age 11 (I guess that isn't so bad, though it's not as pro as these two guys at university I hung out with that defeated it at ages 3 and 2 1/2, which I believe based on their insane Smash Bros. and general gaming skills).

Final Fantasy II for the SNES took me a while to learn how to play it (it was my very first RPG, and seeing how there were save files before Rubicant, in the final dungeon, and in the underworld, that made things only more confusing and hard especially since I just chose those files since New Game took too long to get to the action and I didn't know how to save). I eventually learned how to save and was able to complete an entire playthrough of the game (though I first defeated the game from the underworld file). I'll never forget all the dumb stuff I did, like using Elixirs on enemies because it looked like the Demolish spell but sparkly, turning Cecil into a pig before changing into a Paladin because I thought I'd face a pig instead of a dark knight making that battle winnable, going through the game badly underlevelled, not realizing that Behemoths solely counterattacked and that they didn't have crazy high agility (and that them using Storm was completely avoidable), using Cure4 on the final boss because he looked like he was undead (he got healed and counterattacked me afterwards). Though at the same, I'll never forget how epic the story was the first time I played through it (I still think it's epic): Cecil completely abandoning his country to do the right thing, Cecil's journey of redemption, the courage he gave Rydia and Edward, the friendships and allies he made with all the different people and cities Cecil encountered, the life giving sacrifices that his allies made, the whole world practically helping Cecil fight the Giant of Babil and praying for him as he faces Zeromus, the discovery that Golbez wasn't truly evil and how Golbez even tries to redeem himself by defeating Zemus.

Wow, this is getting a bit long, so I guess I'll just leave it to the first games I had for the first two systems I owned (without going through all 190 games for the Multicart as well).

[Aizenberg]

watching my older brothers play games

the first game i played was either donkey kong country or nba jam

[Constable Reggie]

My parents had an old NES that we kept hooked up (4-ish is probably the earliest I can remember playing it), and we had some pretty awesome games on like Super Mario Bros+Duck Hunt, Super Mario Bros 3, some sort of racing game, and some sort of Volleyball game (this was the shit). And then we had Metal Gear. Fuck that game.

[cyron]

I started liking the concept watching my dad play d&d computer games (some may have been online he was really active on nwn but i cant really remember i might ask latter though)and listening in on the story parts of his d&D sessions with his friends, i really liked the story aspect, though at that point i was too young like 3-6 at some point around that time or a bit latter i got a pokemon game (blue)(from my mom) and i really enjoyed that but i really didn't play obsessively until i got around to getting fe 7 and the final fantasy's that were on the gba, soon after i started playing my dads old d&D games on the computer and tried to get together a d&d group still not successful, but someday i hope i will be