The game that got you into gaming

[Rooster893]

As a child, whatever my father played I'd usually jump on the chance to play them myself.

Metal Gear Solid was one of the first games I ever played (and it also happens to still be one of my personal favorites today), along with Quake 3 and the first Half Life. Probably explains my love of action games/first person shooters.

Another couple of games I remember playing very early was the first Crash Bandicoot and Jet Moto. I remember going to my friend's house and having a blast playing those games with him.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I'd played Final Fantasy and Pokemon before, but for me it was Star Wars Battlefront. Through that game I learned to use the WASD-control setup properly and got into this business.

 

[Lovely Mixture]

I saw Mario for the gameboy and I got intrigued, but Zelda DX was what really hooked me. Then I learned about Sonic and the like.

 

[0_Insomnis_0]

Halo CE, as it was for many new gamers in the early-mid 00's.

 

[Frezzato]

I went through several phases of love/ennui for games, but these are the games that pulled me back in after I kept losing interest:

Spoiler: nostalgia

Raid on Bungeling Bay [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZudVNf7hN0]
Aliens for C64 [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKq1b9CzToE]
Rescue: The Embassy Mission [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzATD1D6yyQ] for NES. That was freaking cool. It was basically an FPS--ON THE ORIGINAL NINTENDO!

Marathon
The original Spyro
Burnout 3
Halo: Combat Evolved
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

OVERALL I would have to say the first game that really made me want to play more games was A-10 Attack! [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00LuVgeHkRg]

So imagine it's the mid 90's and Doom was still fresh on everyone's minds. And then I get to play A-10 Attack! on my roommate's Mac. So I'm flying the A-10 around and I see some dots going crazy on the horizon. I switch the camera to the action and there are two F-16 Falcons against two enemy Mig-29 fighters. I decide to forget my mission and get involved in the dogfight somehow. The A-10 is so slow that everything is already over by the time I get there.

Off to my right, I see a giant loop of smoke. I start circling the loop horizontally so that the resulting vapor trails looked like electrons around a nucleus. Eventually our paths cross and I see it's a Mig-29; one of the engines is out, there was no cockpit canopy.

The pilot had ejected.

All of this extraneous action was happening in the background while I was off flying my little bombing missions. This was at a time when Doom was still an ultra popular game. Doom, where you get less detail the closer you get to something. A-10 Attack! had an insane level of detail, both graphically and programmatically that I could easily have missed. It kind of scared me.

 

[Racecarlock]

There were 3.

X-wing, the game I first played before I even watched the movies.

Raiden, a top down shoot em up.

And cruisn' USA, a cross country race consisting of some of the coolest cars of the 90s. Also sometimes a school bus.

 

[Tropicaz]

I remember playing some PC games as a very young child, and at about 6 I got a ps1 with James Bond Tomorrow never dies, Formula 1 '99 and most importantly, the original Worms. That was the single, most fun I think I ever had on a game.

 

[evenest]

If you discount the fact that I grew up in the era of Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, etc., and that I played steadily with my friends on their Atari 2600s, the game that brought me into the present state where I spend a majority of my spare time playing video games would be Fallout 3.

I had started this generation with Twilight Princess, but it was Fallout 3 and that fantastic exit from the vault that captured my imagination. First time as an "adult" where I spent multiple nights playing through until the dawn.

 

[Rylee Fox]

Mine was quite simple, the first video game I ever saw: Super Mario Bros. I'm not even sure I knew what videogames were before I ended up at someones house who had an NES. Played this game and it all went from there.

 

[Poindexter]

Morrowind. The greatest Elder Scrolls game. Ever.

 

[Aedwynn]

The Dizzy series on the ZX Spectrum. (The one with the egg with boxing gloves - yeah, most games back then were a little... well, acid-trippy for lack of a better term.)

I lost the cassette tapes and my ZX Spectrum +3 a long, long time ago, but I played through that whole series. Just basically simple platform and adventure games, jumping and timing puzzles, object puzzles and the occasional fetch-quest but to me as a kid, they were beyond epic. They had a sense of humour, too. Although thinking about it, it would be hard to take the subject matter of a sentient, humanoid egg wearing boxing gloves and red wellington boots entirely seriously.

 

[IronMit]

Tetris, Mortal Kombat, sonic and road rash when I was 6 at cousins house

Forced my parents to get me a sega megadrive at 7 years of age. Got hooked on streets of rage, colomns and shinobi straight away

Hitman and max payne were a massive turning point at the age of 15

Oh yeah and everyone enjoyed goldeneye and mario kart lol

Then at 24 I played mass effect 1...and I was like what is this RPG stuff..and what have I been missing for so long..this is incredible!

 

[Frezzato]

If you discount the fact that I grew up in the era of Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, etc., and that I played steadily with my friends on their Atari 2600s, the game that brought me into the present state where I spend a majority of my spare time playing video games would be Fallout 3.

I had started this generation with Twilight Princess, but it was Fallout 3 and that fantastic exit from the vault that captured my imagination. First time as an "adult" where I spent multiple nights playing through until the dawn.

Did you get the Anchorage expansion mission? Man, stealth suit, plus the dart gun, you're invisible. Jesus, the stealth was the only reason I didn't mind "taking the subway". I imagine I probably wouldn't have bothered finishing the game without it.

 

[Yopaz]

The original Super Mario for NES. I can't remember how old I was though.

Now the SNES era was the period of gaming I enjoyed the most. Old enough to become skilled, young and naive enough for my experiences to be pure.

 

[lordmardok]

When I was kid it was the Heroes of Might and Magic series as well as Might and Magic (the rpg) that got me into gaming. The Heroes games were a classic fantasy adventure with great strategy elements and pretty revolutionary concepts for the time. The Might and Magic rpg's were the first games, in my opinion, to really encourage the organic world-roaming adventure. When I played Might and Magic VI & VII I really felt like a wandering adventurer. It wasn't just going from locale to locale, fulfulling random quests for NPC du jour, there were places you would NEVER find if you didn't go out and look for them yourself. Skyrim and Oblivion can boast all they want about their huge explorable worlds, but they're doing all that boasting from the shoulders of giants that nobody ever seems to remember anymore.

 

[Wolf In A Bear Suit]

Hey everyone, a new, wet behind the ears second-time poster here!

Look back and find the game that made you realize you truly wanted more of the medium. You may have played other games before, but this was the first one to draw you in and keep you there. I arrived fairly late to the party (mid-2000s). I'd played some Age of Mythology, Total War, Halo, and Battlefront 2, but only in passing. This changed when I was at a friends house and he was wandering the green forests of Cyrodill (Oblivion). He handed me the controller, when I asked what I had to do he said "Anything" for whatever reason, that was such a powerful moment for me and I was hooked. The rest, as they say, is personal history.

OT: The game that brought you into the madhouse...

Very similar to me. I love Age of Mythology (got me into classics strangely) and Oblivion was huge for me. It was so big, I could go anywhere, and do anything. Its why I bought my xbox. I'd seen my cousin play Halo, and that was far as my shooters went.
My first games were the Crash Bandicoot's, I was afraid to lose when I was younger. Star Wars Battlefront was the nearest thing to multipplayer I had for years as a young lad. Ooh almost forgot dodgy pokemon blue on floppy disks.

 

[RedDeadFred]

It was either some platformer where you play as a Pizza guy (can't remember the name of the game) or Duke Nukem 3D at a friends house.

 

[Calibanbutcher]

Mine would have to be Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time.
A friend of mine had an N64 and we played through the game more times than I care to count...

 

[Adeptus Aspartem]

Started with Monkey Island and Zak McKrakken at the age of 4-5 and then continued with all the LucasArts Games and the SNES accompanied by occasionally playing the Amiga 2000.

 

[evenest]

Did you get the Anchorage expansion mission? Man, stealth suit, plus the dart gun, you're invisible. Jesus, the stealth was the only reason I didn't mind "taking the subway". I imagine I probably wouldn't have bothered finishing the game without it.

I did, ultimately, get the expansions when they released the game-of-the-year edition. It is also the game that taught me to never get a PS3 edition of a Bethesda game. I say this as a fan of Bethseda's (so no intention to start a flamewar). To your point, that stealth suit was fun to use, especially with the other four expansions. I don't know if I would have made it off the Mothership without being near invisible.

I had't realized that bit about the dart gun...I'll have to try that with my pc character. It was also coming off the Mothership that taught me my lesson about Bethesda and the PS3...the game locked up about fifteen steps upon my return and will not let me reload without immediately locking.