What is the absolutely first game you remember playing?

[MartGonzo]

That actually brings up a good idea for a followup question. What's the first game you remember playing that - later in life - you went back to and found was still actually quite fun?

For me that would be Adventure on the Atari 2600. About 10 years ago I tried Indenture - which is a faithful rewrite of the game to work on "modern" computers - and found it to be still an enjoyable game. and what do you know? I still had the three mazes memorized.

Good question,

I'm not familiar with Indenture, Elite 2 Frontier springs to mind, I still consider that to be a stunning game.

a bit more recent would be The Longest Journey, probably the best adventure games ever made in my opinion.

[sardaukar11]

i think it was afterburner in C64 i was 5 years old

[InterCity]

I'm not sure whether it was the original Worms or Commander Keen. Probably Keen.

Good old times when RPGs and jumping games were united

[StrandedonEarth]

Definitely Pong

[Plume & Akakak]

That actually brings up a good idea for a followup question. What's the first game you remember playing that - later in life - you went back to and found was still actually quite fun?

Coming to my mind,

on Atari 2600, and

and

on an Atari 130XE.

Stop, Pong IS fun.

[Superfluous J]

Stop, Pong IS fun.

It was okay at the time but I don't have any desire to play it. OTOH I loaded up Indenture and flew through a few rounds. Sadly, Fraps doesn't see it as a game otherwise I'd be recording it right now

[Accelerando]

Badda boom

[Cydonian Monk]

ET for the Atari. Probably wasn't the first I played, but it's the first I remember.

[razark]

That actually brings up a good idea for a followup question. What's the first game you remember playing that - later in life - you went back to and found was still actually quite fun?

I've had fun going back to some of the old Infocom text adventures.

And I also pull up Tetris on the NES emulator from time to time.

[MartGonzo]

ET for the Atari. Probably wasn't the first I played, but it's the first I remember.

Do you remember it for being unplayable?

it's something of a joke in gaming history now as the most broken game ever made

[SpacePi]

My family has a Windows 3 machine with about ~10 games on it. I started playing on it back in 2006, I remember this one game where you had to land on the moon when things shooting at you, also another one where you were a helicopter and you had to fend off against an alien invasion. The machine still works today, surprisingly, though we have it turned off and stored somewhere...

[Dispatcher]

The first real game I remember playing? Hide and Seek! Oh, you mean video game. It was Pong.

Relive the adventure:

Edited July 16, 2015 by Dispatcher

[JetJaguar]

Do you remember it for being unplayable?

it's something of a joke in gaming history now as the most broken game ever made

I also had E.T. for the 2600. While it wasn't a great game, at the time I didn't think it was the train wreck everyone else now makes it out to be.

- - - Updated - - -

That actually brings up a good idea for a followup question. What's the first game you remember playing that - later in life - you went back to and found was still actually quite fun?

For me, it would be Pitfall on the 2600. I still remember some of the short cuts near the start (head left, not right, then take this tunnel...). On the PC side, I would say it was the Ultima series, specifically Ultima III through V. I played them again later in life and still remembered a lot of the puzzle answers and information gleaned from talking with NPCs.

[Layereddiagram]

Some strange ancient computer game about rats... I seriously have no idea what it was. If you mean games that I actually truly remember playing, then I would have to be Duck Hunt/Super Mario Brothers on the NES. They both came on the same cartridge. The odd thing though is that those were the games I played even though I grew up in the mid 2000's.

[KerbMav]

That actually brings up a good idea for a followup question. What's the first game you remember playing that - later in life - you went back to and found was still actually quite fun?

Sim Life - but fun ... I always have been quite bad at establishing a surviving eco system in it, so the nostalgia did not last long.

But I played both old Interplay Star Trek adventures again when I got my hands on the versions with voice acting by the original actors.

[Frozen_Heart]

Hard to remember. Either the first combat flight simulator or Quake.

[Guest]

RollerCoasterTycoon3.

I played a small game on my fathers smartphone in these days, which was called "RollerCoasterSimulator" or so, where you had to steer a rollercoaster over a difficult track (a bit like hill climb racing). I wanted to play it on my PC, too, so we searched for RollerCoaster, bought the first game appearing, and when it arrived we discovered it was something else. I liked it nevertheless, and played for a year or so. Haven´t played a single smartphone game since then.

[Cydonian Monk]

Do you remember it for being unplayable?

it's something of a joke in gaming history now as the most broken game ever made

With ET it was a consistency thing. My copy of the game was perfectly playable, even beatable. (I finished the game at least once.) At the same time I knew kids with copies of it that would crash the Atari if they pressed the wrong button. Some cartridges wouldn't even work. There's a chance my mom returned it for a working copy before I played it, too. Very inconsistent quality with a high failure rate.

It wasn't a very good game for how much money they threw at it, but it's a decent game for how little time was allowed to make it. I still rank it as one of the three worst games I've played, but only because of the technical issues. As a casual iPhone game it'd be perfect.

[-insert name here-]

The first game I remember playing was Donkey Kong 64 back in 2005. I still have the original system and cartridge to this day and I play it sometimes just for nostalgia!

[11of10]

That actually brings up a good idea for a followup question. What's the first game you remember playing that - later in life - you went back to and found was still actually quite fun?

That would probably be Master of Orion then.

[RainDreamer]

Hmm...I think I used to have a nintendo light gun and play Duck hunt. Or watch my brother play it. Honestly can't tell. Memory is fuzzy back then.

[Dunbaratu]

To be pedantic, the way the question was phrased, it just said "first game", not "first computer game" or "first video game".

So I'm going to go with tic tac toe. I'm guess the very first game probably was peeka-boo, but it does explicitly say it has to be a game I actually *remember* playing.

[Alewx]

"Mr Shoe", somewhere around 1993, had no clue of English but the painting tasks were awesome.

[Superfluous J]

To be pedantic, the way the question was phrased, it just said "first game", not "first computer game" or "first video game".

True dat. Though I really don't have good memories that far back and by the time I remember anything, I remember several. "First game" is a bit too general. It's like asking "What's your first memory of sitting in a chair?"

[WinkAllKerb'']

This

Then videogaming related that: