Your first "mature" game.

[ace_of_something]

What was it like the first time you played a "mature" game, by which I mean a game that was made NOT for children.

I grew up on a ranch and so we had people living in houses on our property that worked for us. (ranch hands and their families) one time when my dad dragged me and my brothers along to visit with them the three 20-something single guys sharing the house said we could play games on their computer while the grown-ups talked. While I'm sure they intended us to play the freshly released wing commander. My older brothers (about 12 and 14) at the time found the hidden MS-DOS command to pull up one of the early Leisure Suit Larry games.

Thus at the tender age of 10 I saw my first pair of pixelated breasts. It was weird, maybe cuz my brothers were there hooting and laughing. I still hate it when a game is overly sexual and some games (such as soul caliber) I have avoided because I think i'd be too embarrassed if someone saw me playing them.

As far as violence goes that would be The original Mortal Kombat at the Arcade or my oldest brother's copy of Wolfenstein 3D, I'm not sure which I played first (I think they were released around the same time) but I was oblivious to the levels of violence I was really witnessing. I was about 13 or so.

Though Wolfstein did make me very motion sick.

Were you traumatized by the experience or video game sexuality or violence?

 

[ace_of_something]

I just realized that I actually played the 'police quest' games by Seirra before that but my 2nd oldest brother would watch me play them and stop me before the 'scary' parts. So I don't think that counted.

 

[porous_shield]

I just realized that I actually played the 'police quest' games by Seirra before that but my 2nd oldest brother would watch me play them and stop me before the 'scary' parts. So I don't think that counted.

What a coincidence. I was about to say the Police Quest games too. I was 3 or 4 years old when I first started "playing" them along with other Sierra adventure games but I was too young to understand what was going on so I was a little older than that before I really played them as anything actually resembling playing a game. I didn't get stuck that often either because I had hint books.

Those weren't traumatic times for me at all and I fondly remember the first time I was able to get one of those games running all by myself with the MS DOS commands.

Thoes games certainly had their moments but are very tame compared to something like Heavy Rain (finger part among others) or the Walking Dead and a certain incident with an axe (again among others). I say those two because they are games my father would have likely been interested in-I played those Sierra games on his computer and he loved adventure games- and I might have played them if I were a child now.

 

[nogitsune]

For violence, would be Mortal Kombat in the the arcade, I really sucked so spent most the time watching older kids play it, they could do the stuff like Sub Zero ripping a guy's head off with the spine dangling. I didn't really make much of it, it was just a cool game with Ninjas and Raiden had a cool hat.

For sex, it would be Daggerfall. I had a female character and took off the armor and realized that they didn't have default armor but were actually naked.

 

[TehCookie]

When I was 4 or 5 and played Duke Nukem 3D. I didn't get any of the sex stuff, but I just had fun killing things with an over the top action hero guy. Still love that game today, and laugh at my innocence when I first played it.

 

[Sarah Kerrigan]

One of the first games I learned how to play was on the original Playstation. My uncles (I lived with my parents in my grandparents house) taught me how to play Twisted Metal and the Original Grand Theft Auto, my first real 'mature' game. I remember I laughed when I hit people...

 

[Hero of Lime]

The first God of War, I was 14 I believe, and it was the first M rated game I had ever played. I guess I got the best of both "mature" worlds, lots of violence and nudity.

 

[Miss G.]

Persona 3 FES. Glad I had my driver's license at the time or I might not have gotten into ATLUS titles and missed out on my all time favorite games, next to Pokemon.

 

[The]

GTA: San Andreas across a few friend's houses. The violence and open-endedness blew me away. I wasn't able to buy it for myself until about 6 years later.

 

[Gergar12_v1legacy]

Grand theft auto 3 I believe.....still a great game.

 

[Xan Krieger]

Doom, watched my dad play it then I played it myself and it was horrifying. First mature game I actually got into was Quake 2. I was an id fan before puberty.

 

[scorptatious]

I remember playing a demo of the very first Silent Hill when I was very young.

I remember being kinda scared because I heard a dog barking in that game and I thought one was chasing me.

Little did I realize there are things far worse than a dog in that place.

But I think the first mature game I played that wasn't a demo was probably Halo 2 when I was either 12 or 13.

 

[Headsprouter]

I played DOOM at an early age...along with a tiny bit of Quake and Chasm: The Rift. It didn't affect me as badly as my older brother. He was scared of the Lost Souls, and Chasm's first boss, that big dude you have to run away from then suck into the fan. It's pretty exhilarating.

 

[Juan Regular]

Leisure Suit Larry at age 10 was probably the first 'mature' video game experience for me as well, but I was lucky enough to play part 7 (I think? The one on the cruise ship) so the boobs were a little less pixelated (and awesome). First violent game was Resident Evil 2 a year later, which was on the index in Germany by the way, and that scared the pants off me. I had to close my eyes every time I died and those blood splatters hit the screen. I should've waited a little longer I guess.

I can't say any of them traumatized me really though. Except for a couple of zombie filled nightmares and a few early attempts at masturbation neither had much of an effect on me.

 

[Shaun Chang-Time]

id have to say wolfenstein 3d when i was 5 on the old DOS

 

[Chaosian]

For violence, my brother got Goldeneye for N64 when I was about seven, and my mom took it away, saying it was too violent. About three years later I watched him play through Halo CE, and maybe one or two after that I beat it myself.
I can't really think of too many games I play now, or before that have sex as a theme (I guess Fallout and Metro count). Though I guess I first noticed it playing Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin for the DS.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Doom. The original Doom that is. I was at my cousin's place and he let me play it. My Mom just about had a conniption fit as I was only about 9 at the time.

 

[Alfredo Jones]

The original Resident Evil. Granted I didn't play it myself but it was the first mature game I saw. I was just a little kid and my brother and his friends were playing it. I walked in just as they found that first zombie. That cutscene of the zombie eating someone then turning to face you scared the shit out of me. I spent the next few years swearing never to look at a M rated game again. I blame that experience for my hatred of zombie games and Resident Evil in general.

 

[SonOfMethuselah]

Hmm... Interesting question.
I suppose it could technically be answered in a couple of ways.

As far as games intended for an "older audience," my first game, like a few people have already mentioned, would have been Police Quest II. It wouldn't be until I played it again when I was about thirteen or so that I realized that there was actually a lot of rather mature subject matter in there, but because of the way it was presented, it wasn't something that I, at five or six, would have picked up on, and it wasn't something that my parents, or my aunt and uncle (because it was their computer I played it on), would have wanted to keep me away from.

The first game that I can remember playing that was overtly violent (there were a few almost surprisingly violent sections in Police Quest, but they weren't what I would deem "overt") was the first Mortal Kombat on the Sega Genesis. I can remember putting hours upon hours into that game while playing at my friend's house (it was him who owned it), trying to accidentally perform fatalities, and complete the random requirements that Reptile would present from time to time. I don't think we ever succeeded at the latter, but we managed to perform a Sub-Zero and a Scorpion fatality by accident a couple of times. Looking up the button commands on the internet has never been half so rewarding.

The first "mature" game I ever actually owned - and I only call it "mature" because it was rated as such, was Turok: Dinosaur Hunter on the Nintendo 64. That and Ocarina of Time were the first two games I had for my N64, and as such, they saw a lot of play time. I eventually got Seeds of Evil, Shadows of Oblivion and Rage Wars, but Dinosaur Hunter is still my favourite of the bunch. It was actually only very recently that I learned they were based on a comic series, which explains the jump between DH, which was very light on the narrative, and SoE and SoO, which are, comparatively, quite story heavy.

 

[The_Echo]

My first game "made NOT for children?" Not just a game rated M?

Tekken 3, I'm pretty sure. First M-rated game was Oblivion (which was originally T, I believe). T3 came out when I was four. And I seem to remember getting it when it was fairly new.

I played Oblivion for the first time at a friend's. Before the PS3 version came out. So I was 13 or 14 when that happened.

Either way... I don't really remember feeling any specific way about the contents of those games. Only thing I remember is enjoying them. Especially Tekken 3, which I completed (without ever knowing how to unlock things).