My very first video game was likely "Alley Cats" - a platformer before the word platformer existed. There are really only three options - Alley Cats, Castle or Bouncing Babies - I know it was one of those but it's impossible to say which was first. Bouncing Babies was the simplest (it was basically a port of a similar game on the Atari), alley cats was absolutely punishing (or at least it was when I was 3) and castle was utterly impossible (an action/adventure game where graphics were produced through the various ASCII character sets and all non movement commands were a series of undocument commands. There was no margin for error. In one instance, the command "wave wand" would wave a magic wand (if the player had it) and remove a mirror from your path.)
Of course, those games don't really count as I probably wasn't playing them so much as I was pressing buttons while the game did . . . whatever. The first game we had for the NES was Golf (it was years later that I learned how to actually use a driver properly, and I can't imagine how long it took me to play 18 holes using only the putter). Super Mario Brothers was probably my first proper game that I actually knew how to play.
Still, even those games don't matter in the grand scheme of things as they never really ensnared me. It was probably "Captain Skyhawk) (NES game, 1990) that turned me into a gamer. At the time, the Gulf War (round 1) was going on, so I guess the fact that I was "flying" a plane while the same thing happened half the world away seemed kinda magical. From there I got games like Cabal and Megaman. By the time I got to Alien 3 on the SNES, I was pretty much doomed to being a gamer. There may have been some hope until 1995 rolled around and Mechwarrior 2 launched. Damn you activision, you've ruined me!
Of course, those games don't really count as I probably wasn't playing them so much as I was pressing buttons while the game did . . . whatever. The first game we had for the NES was Golf (it was years later that I learned how to actually use a driver properly, and I can't imagine how long it took me to play 18 holes using only the putter). Super Mario Brothers was probably my first proper game that I actually knew how to play.
Still, even those games don't matter in the grand scheme of things as they never really ensnared me. It was probably "Captain Skyhawk) (NES game, 1990) that turned me into a gamer. At the time, the Gulf War (round 1) was going on, so I guess the fact that I was "flying" a plane while the same thing happened half the world away seemed kinda magical. From there I got games like Cabal and Megaman. By the time I got to Alien 3 on the SNES, I was pretty much doomed to being a gamer. There may have been some hope until 1995 rolled around and Mechwarrior 2 launched. Damn you activision, you've ruined me!
