Asklemmy

I honestly couldn't tell you exactly which game that hooked me for life. My first exposure was when I spent summers with my grandparents on their farm.

Grandpa and I would ride his trike out to the fields, and we'd... do stuff? To the plants? I don't really remember the work.

I do remember that work ended at noon, and we zipped into town on the trike. And we went to the pub. Grandpa would get me a root beer, and we'd split a poutine. Then he'd give me a roll of coins. I can go nuts on the arcade machines, he can have way too many beers, and WE DON'T TELL GRANDMA.

Anyway, a half century later I'm a recovering alcoholic. Good times!

Runescape skill farming to get into tech stuff.

Pac-Land. 10p per play in the cafe that my old girl used to go to in the mornings - she clocked that I wa I to that sort of thing and kindly got me an Atari 800 XE for a birthday or Christmas - I forget which.

It was all downhill from there.

Sid Meier's Pirates and Minecraft

Probably doom/Wolfenstein 3D (the original DOS title, obv.)... That started the whole thing, but FF6 and 7 were also huge catalysts for it back in the day. I think FF6 on the SNES was the first game I was addicted to. I couldn't have been much older than 10 at the time.... I can't say that I really understood the plot, but I enjoyed it a lot.

FF7 and 8 were both fun too.

After FF 6, we got LTTP and that's also huge for me. I've fallen away from LOZ, because I don't want to pay the Nintendo tax....

Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

Only because Sonic Mega Collection wouldn't work on the defective GameCube I had.

I wouldn't call it a hobby, just some entertainment to pass the time/hang out with friends.

It was Counter-Strike 1.6. I didn't leave the house the summer I discovered it as a kid.

For me it was more a system than an specific game. I got a second hand GameBoy when I was like 5 or 6 and have been gaming consistently since then. Probably the highlight of that period was Super Mario though.

The first game I ever really wanted to get good at was the arcade game spy hunter. The first time I got the speed boat was a dopamine high I've never recreated.

Memory, Monkey Island, Diablo 1 and Street Fighter 2

Age of Empires II

Super Mario Bros 3. Never beat it until the Allstars version on SNES, but it's the first video game I remember playing. Or maybe it was Gauntlet, but SMB3 was the funner one.

Counter-Strike 1.3

Dragon Ball Z Ultimate Battle 22 started it, Toy Story 2 for PSX detonated it.

Asteroids, the arcade game.

My dad bought us a multi game pong console, then an Atari 5200 years layer.

But we often went to arcades and got $20-$40 in quarters.

In later years I remember truly loving the Buck Rogers and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom arcade games.

First computer was an Apple II and I had about 500 floppies of pirated games by the end of its life.

Always always been a gamer. Also had a Merlin handheld game for car trips, which saw constant use.

I'd have to go all the way back to pinball, since I've always been fascinated with games.

But the very first video game that really sucked me in was Batman on the NES. I'm talking fully immersed; no awareness of my surroundings. Jacked in.

The music paired with the grim visuals was such a vibe. Just playing it made me feel cool. My parents had to drag me away from that birthday party haha.

I always clicked with it really hard as a kid, but my parents banned me from it, so I just wound up making friends so I could play OG Red Alert or Commander Keen or whatever. I also played Tabletop 40k from a pretty early age, which my parents were more permissive of. In tabletop I have a very good systemising mind, so I wind up being the rules person, but I'm not super obsessed about any one system (I am a little "obsessed" with how few people play something other than D&D systems).

Motocross Madness 2, baby. That's when I knew...

Mario Bros 1-3

Lemmings or Descent, I don’t remember.

Daggerfall was the first game that really got its hooks in me. It had everything I wanted, a huge open world, tons of different items, getting to dress up my character :)
I must have spend hours just visiting every single town, playing tourist and just ignoring the story. It was all about exploring and role playing for me.

Breakout, Sokoban, Prince of Persia, Command & Conquer, Tilt!, Space Invaders, Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis, Full Throttle, Fallout, Raptor: Call of the Shadows, Wolf3D.

This was in the '90s but some of those games were already quite old by that time.

Pokémon FireRed

Kingdom Hearts II

That game is the reason the X button stopped working on my PS2 controller when I was like 4 or 5

The early 90s Lucas Arts adventure games. Most notably Monkey Island 2.

Pokemon games and older 2D Zelda games. I really got into it when I found Halo

Monkey Island 2

Xmen arcade game

Sonic 2. I was like 3 at the time.

Myst.

Age of Empires 2 on my parent's crappy old laptop.

Couldn't give you the exact game that got me hooked, but I have been playing for pretty much my whole life. Earliest I can recall that could have gotten me hooked is either Yoshi's Story on n64 or some edutainment PC game where in one part you were moving pirate objects like a pyramid of cannon balls and other stuff away to clear a stone room.

Otherwise it could have been plenty of other games like some ps1 Egypt pharaoh themed game that was something like tetris or something similar.

first game I got into was Pokemon Blue, but Guild Wars is what turned me into a gamer

Watched my dad play kings quest 2 when I was a kid.

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time

Evercrack and Diablo 2 were my starter games

Super Mario Bros. from the famicom

Bubble Bobble on the C64 :)

Neverwinter Nights and Roller Coaster Tycoon when I was a little kid. I watched my dad play Neverwinter and had to indulge in my own tiny fantasy to play as a "dragon." Still at it.

Final Fantasy

Pokémon Gold, when I was 8, got it for Christmas. Technically my first game was Battleship, which I opened first, but I probably spent thousands of hours playing Pokémon Gold. :) I've played almost every Pokémon game since, up until Scarlet/Violet, which I haven't gotten yet, but maybe I will eventually.

Sid Meier's Civilization 1

The first game I regularly played may very well have been Chex Quest. Unless you count Math Blaster. Or maybe Chip's Challenge.