How Did You Become a Gamer?

[Olas]

If you're a nerdy introvert with lots of free time you basically have the choice of videogames and/or books for spending it on. So I naturally gravitated towards videogames early on, not that being into videogames was abnormal even back in my day. I got a Supernintendo when I was 7 or 8 and basically got addicted to Super Mario Worlds 1 and 2 for a long time. That was basically the beginning.

 

[Altorin]

I watched my Dad play Myst for a few days, then one day when he was at work, I tried it myself and scared myself to death.

I was three.

<______>

Also, this post made me spray my drink from my nose.

Putting the second blue page in the book made me spray other fluids from my nose in a crying fit. It was bad. I'm surprised I continued to play other games after the pure trauma that was Myst.

If you were going to be traumatized by a game as a child, I kind of wish this story involved Phantasmagoria.

More stories need to involve phantasmagoria

 

[keniakittykat]

My grandfather had a Windows 95 and played lots of games. From simple DOS games like Lemmings, to Doom.
And I played all of them.
Don't think my grandpa and I had cute gaming family time, he was a grade A dick. I only got to play when he was so drunk he wouldn't be as grumpy anymore/yet or when he was in the hospital.

Weird to think that I'd never use a computer for gaming much afterward. A friend of my dad who owned a thrift store got me and my sisters a SNES and a master sega because my parents couldn't afford to buy us one, and I've been more of a console gamer ever since.

 

[Chester Rabbit]

The first game I owned was Donkey Kong. I came with the Super Nintendo my parents bought me when I was 6, but, I wouldn?t say the Super NES is what really pulled me into gaming. I certainly enjoyed games then, I had a great time with DK, Mario, Kirby, Castlevania, Mortal Kombat ect; but I wouldn?t say that?s what caused me to prefer gaming as my number 3 pass time.

I think that credit has to go to the PS1 and Resident Evil. Never before had I seen environments in games like that. Mangled dead bodies with forks in their backs splayed out in the foreground, blood spattered on the streets, destroyed cars and buildings. It was so chaotic, so grotesque, and oh how I loved the creatures in those games. I was absolutely fascinated by them. It just blew my little mind away at the time that something like William could exist because at the time all I knew was the more controlled, simple, symmetric character designs from cartoons, movies, and games.

RE was just so twisted and presented so many new ideas and possibilities to my imagination. And as a kid who loved drawing oh man my mind was having a field day with something like the Licker. I mean, a creature crawling around with no skin, its brain exposed, that killed people with its tongue? Man that was awesome! I loved it all and it?s what opened and warped my innocent Yoshi loving mind and compelled me to keep going and get deeper into gaming.

But then I started to waver you know becoming a teenager there are much more fascinating things to pursue. So around 2005 to 6 and beyond I kind of started to not care the only games I bothered with really were Fable Halo 2 and Halo 3 but the game that brought me back and has made me the gamer I am today(which is someone who is head over heels in love with this medium now) is Mass Effect and I am not going to explain the reasons again because well I?ve said it so many times on here and it keeps sounding more and more over dramatic.

So there you go (okay seriously I got to stop with this autobiographical crap)
Resident Evil broke the ice
Mass Effect is what had me jump into the water and continue swimming down.

 

[CannibalCorpses]

Hrmmm...first game i ever had was pong but that was a machine in itself. The game that made me want to play it over and over and that eventually lead me to becoming a gamer for real was Rockman on the vic 20. I used to play it at my brothers house when he looked after me and it was an amzing game.

But the reasons why i became a gamer are pretty dark. My father was a **** who enjoyed hitting me when things were bad in his life so staying in my bedroom out of his way was the only sensible thing i could do until i got old enough and strong enough to hit the stupid bastard back. I was the only child in the house (my brothers and sister were far older than me and had moved away) so i needed things i could do with myself. I had a rubber keyed Spectrum ZX81 bought for me when i was about 6 and pretty much became a gamer from then on. Since then i've had most of the consoles and a fair few computers aswell as having access through friends to what i haven't had myself. It wasn't until the 360 era and achievements being introduced that i became a hardcore gamer though...until then i was just a powergamer.

Thing is, afer 28 years of being a gamer i don't feel much interest in it anymore. The industry has changed so much that what lured me into gaming in the first place is no longer present in the new stuff. I find myself at the brink of considering if i am actually still a gamer or just someone who habitually plays games without enjoying them.

 

[Anderson37]

I was not a big fan of video games and always wanted to play outdoor sports but about 10 years I had a very bad accident and I had to spend few months on my bed. In that time I use to play video games that became an addiction and now I can't live withtout playing video games

 

[Johnny Impact]

When I was little, my parents (by which I mean my Dad) brought home an Atari 2600 with Pac-Man and Combat. That black box was the gateway to a misspent youth. It called to me.

The first game I ever owned......what came with the Master System? Probably some throwaway title I don't even remember now. I remember Shinobi, Alex Kidd in Miracle World, and Phantasy Star.

I've owned six consoles including PS3. Gaming PCs are harder to keep track of but I've done enough parts swapping that everything but the case has changed five or six times.

 

[Saika Renegade]

My uncle first introduced me to...a collection of games I honestly can't recall the name of, back when PC gaming was green and black and everything had blocky sides about a centimeter per edge. Some sort of primitive racing game, some sort of primitive adventure game. Being told that I was controlling my very own virtual car leaves quite the impact on a 3-year-old.

 

[marioruggerio]

When I was in Kindergarten I had surgery and had to miss like 2 weeks of school. My dad brought his NES out of the basement, hooked it up and taught me how to play Super Mario Bros and The Legend of Zelda. It definitely cheered me up, and my love of games began right there.

 

[nariette]

My brother got into gaming when "lego star wars" on x-box came out. He was a huge fan of lego and star wars, so he got himself a console. I was a really lonely child, and just watched my brother play games usually instead of going out and making friends. As I got older, I thought "hmm, I do want to watch him play games, but my brother isn't playing anything I like to watch right now. Maybe I should start playing games myself". I started with real casual gaming (I still adore the lego games, guilty pleasure), but got more interested in rpg's later on.

My first game I owned was Fable: The lost chapters. The Fable saga is gradually becoming worse in my opinion, beacuse they focus more on the details of the game than the story and combat. Though all the quests are creative and fun, the combat is bad. It will always be one of my favourite game series though. I simply can't hate it.

 

[littlealicewhite]

My mother and her friends were gamers, mostly pen & paper games, but one of them had an Xbox and a couple games. One day they let me join them in playing Halo. That friend died when I was 10, and in his will he left his Xbox and game collection to me. That collection included Halo, the Sims and Morrowind.

 

[Stinovitch]

The first game I played, has to be Duck Hunt if I recall correctly. My Dad used to play that and Mario with me on the NES when I was like 3-4 years old or something. Since then my interest in video games became only bigger when I became older.

 

[the_great_cessation]

The first game I ever owned was Ocarina of Time (It was not the first game I played though as I had played a plethora of different NES, SNES and Genesis titles at friend's houses over the years). Although it would go on to become my favorite game of all time, I originally didn't play it much because I found it very obtuse and quite frightening (I was about 7 at the time). As a result, I grew up mainly on games like Yoshi's Story, Super Smash Bros., Mario Party, Donkey Kong 64 and Kirby and the Crystal Shards. Despite this, gaming was always just a distraction for me or something I did when friends were over. However like most people in my age range, the video game that really changed how I interacted with video games was Pokemon (Yellow version to be specific). I remember getting it on Christmas '99 and just losing my mind over it. I spend literally days playing it and recess at school was always dominated by trading, battling and general Pokemon talk. As a result, the following year or two would be mainly focused on the Game Boy games and it's spin-offs (Snap, Stadium, etc).

As I got older, I ended up returning to Ocarina of Time and Marjoa's Mask (which I also owned but never played much) and I absolutely fell in love. From there on, Zelda became my next big obsession and became a defining part of my childhood. It was from here that I would really branch off and start experimenting with different types of gaming experiences.