How young were you when you started gaming?

[Leemaster777]

So, for as long as I can remember, I've been a gamer. Even before I had a console of my own, I'd take every, EVERY, opportunity I could to find something to play.

I've always assumed that I started gaming when I was 3, since that's as far back as I can remember. However, recently, my mother revealed to me that I ACTUALLY started gaming when I was 18 months old, if not younger. Kinda blew my mind a bit.

How about the rest of you? What's the farthest back you can remember gaming?

 

[Bad Jim]

Somewhere around 5-6 years old I think. My cousins had a Commodore 64 we would play on when we visited. We eventually got one in our house. I also had a number of Nintendo Game N' Watch games, which looked a bit like the DS but they were LCD devices that only played one, very simple game.

 

[piinyouri]

Not sure how old I was at the time but my very earliest memory with video games was playing Centipede with a massive trackball controller that would pinch the hell out of your hand every chance it got.

 

[hazabaza1]

3 or 4 I think. It was pretty damn young, I remember that much.

 

[Altorin]

I was born into it basically.. but I suppose we got our NES when I was 1-2

 

[Lilith]

When I was about 4 years old we had a ZX spectrum in the house and it all stemmed from there. When I was 12 and Final Fantasy 7 was released in the UK that's when I really started playing games a lot.

 

[scorptatious]

I was about 5 or 6 when I started gaming. I was playing Crash Bandicoot 2 on the original Playstation.

Of course, according to my dad, my very first game was Duck Hunt for the NES. Although I can't remember that far.

 

[badgersprite]

My Dad started introducing me to computer games when I was about two or three.

 

[ShinyCharizard]

I was four years old and the game was Super Mario All Stars on the SNES.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

5, I was there when NES was released in North America. I also owned the harbinger of doom for Atari that was E.T.
I remember too my school was pretty ahead of the curve since they had C64's in the library, which I played with in Kindergarten.

 

[V da Mighty Taco]

Since I was at least three (I'm twenty-two at the time of this post). Grew up in a very poor neighborhood, but we had a community center nearby that my older brother would take my sister and I to. They had an original NES that I'd play quite a bit, and we eventually got a Sega Genesis of our own that I played the crap out of until it got stolen, though I think it got replaced. Anyways, I've been a gaming addict since.

Off Topic: Oddly enough, I never seemed to own the popular console outside of the PS2. Started with Sega Genesis, then at some point it was the Saturn, then the N64 (my favorite game is on there), followed by the PS2, then the PS3 thanks to backwards compatibility and being able to get ahold of my original one for unbelievably cheap around launch (it was a Japanese import that my brother's friend was selling. It died long ago however, due to my lack of internet knowledge getting me a virus through the browser. Didn't have internet until roughly early 2009). Now I've shifted more to PC gaming for a variety of reasons, but I still enjoy me consoles.

 

[Reaper195]

I'm not sure if I first played the PLayStation first or my fathers NES. We found the NES in the attic while he was searching for old business stuff, and my grandparents bought the PS1 when it was first released in New Zealand. I was about...four or five then.

 

[shrekfan246]

Probably as old as I was when I started walking and manipulating things with my hands.

I can vaguely remember getting absolutely nowhere in the Star Trek 25th Anniversary adventure game something like twenty years ago.

My first real memory of actual gaming was the first time I beat Desert Demolition Starring Road Runner and Wile E. Coyote on the Sega Genesis, a short while before my family's first move to a different home, which would've probably been 1994-1995, around the age of two or three.

 

[Abomination]

Atari ST. It was 1989, I was 4.

Always been a "PC" gamer. I think I had a PSX and then a PS2 but never touched Nintendo or Microsoft hardware.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I was 8 I think. My first game was Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time.

 

[King of Asgaard]

I was around 4 when I got my PS1 and thus my gamerdom began, with my first game being Spyro the Dragon.

 

[Benpasko]

Birth, basically. Dad played Mario and then Playstation with me when I was a kid, and I grew up with RE2 and Counter-Strike.

I was around 4 when I got my PS1 and thus my gamerdom began, with my first game being Spyro the Dragon.

Yes. I played through the first Spyro again recently, it has aged REALLY well. It's definitely on the level of Banjo or Mario 64, dealer's choice.

 

[xPixelatedx]

I was 5-6 years old and my first game was Super Mario on the NES and I think it was still fairly new at that point as well. The perfect age for the perfect time in gaming.

I wouldn't have had it any other way. I actually couldn't imagine a life where my first game was on a SNES or N64/PS1. That would have been too weird for me and I would have felt 'late to the game'. But from my perspective this all started when my life started... so, yeah, I feel this deep rooted connection with gaming, because I got to see it all actually unfold into what it is today.

 

[Joccaren]

Same as you. My mum was playing Civ I, and I wanted to know what it was, and ever since then I've been gaming. Yes, I started gaming at an age of 18 months or less, with the Civilization series. It was fun.