How did your gaming evolve?

[Zakk]

Sweet jesus that was it!  I kept looking for TANK.   Released in '77.  Hmm, we had (and still do have) one of the early early heavy woodgrain vcs's and I'm sure we got it in 77 before they started making the cheap chinee version.  I should check the label on it.  So that means we broke the combat game so quickly that good ole dad went out and got us a vcs.  I remember we had a jar of parts for the 2600 controllers...we found a place that sold the plastic inserts for the sticks and we bought like 10 of them. Ahhhh memories. 

[pointdablame]

My first memories of gaming were of an Atari 5200 and a Sega Master System (at the same time) that my father had bought "for me" even though I was only 2 or 3 at the time.

My grandfather had a Colecovision for me as well.. but again... I was very young and the system itself was already a few years old before I was born.

First system I remember getting was an NES when I was 5 or so.. and it had been out for a while already.

Then Genesis
Super Nintendo
GameBoy

From that point on, I've had a great number of systems.... 

[MaximRecoil]

My first run-in with a video game was in 1980 (I was 5 years old) and I convinced my mother to let me play Pac-Man at the mall. I had heard of Pac-Man and eating ghosts so I thought that was the object of the game, to eat ghosts, and I didn't know anything about the "power pellets". The game was over quickly; I thought I'd "won" and my mother thought it was a waste of a quarter.

In '81 the neighbor kids got an Atari 2600, but they were older than me, one was the age of my older brother (4 years older than me) and the other was the age of my older sister (6 years older than me) and they never let me come except for one or two times. That's when I saw Combat, and even played it a little.

In '82 some new neighbors moved in to the house across the driveway that had been vacant since about '79. One of them had a Pong machine and brought it over for a while. 

In '83 I stand in front of a Pole Position machine at the laundromat, spinning the steering wheel and pressing the gas pedal, wishing someone would give me a quarter.

In '84 Karate Champ showed up and by that time, my sister had her first job and it was working at that very laundromat. She gave me quarters and I got pretty good at the game.

Also in '84, Punch-Out!! showed up there. I loved that game.

In '85 I had been saving up for a while for an Atari and my brother showed me a K-mart flyer with Atari 2600's on sale for $35 ("Darth Vader" model, one joystick, no pack-in cartridge); the height of the so-called video game crash you know). I had $40 saved up and this bought me the Atari plus five 99 cent games out of a bin near the register (my parents sprung for the sales tax). Defender, Asteroids, Star Raiders (ugh; should have picked Yars Revenge instead), Space Attack and Armor Ambush. The neighbor kids that'd had the Atari in the early 80's had sold it around '83 but they still had one game for it, Missile Command, which they gave to me for free.

In '86 my cousin is one of the first people to get an NES and that thing was simply amazing, quite a step up from his old ColecoVision. We had a blast with Super Mario Bros. figuring everything out, this being back before everyone knew everything there was to know about the game.

In '87 I get both an Atari 7800 and a used, but perfectly working NES.

Also in '87 I spend a small fortune's worth of quarters on Super Punch-Out!! which showed up at Fossa's General Store.

Pretty much a dry spell until '91 when I discovered Street Fighter II in the arcade next to where I worked at the time.

In '92 I bought an SNES specifically for the SFII cartridge. I was impressed, it being the most accurate arcade-to-console port I had seen at the time.

That's the extent of it for the most part. I bought a PlayStation in 2000 to play Syphon Filter and Syphon Filter 2, but other than those two games, I never cared much for modern games. I discovered Mame in late 2001 after buying a couple of the arcade classics discs for the PlayStation and now I could play the games I really wanted to play, i.e. Punch-Out!! and Super Punch-Out!!.

A little while ago I finally got my hands on a real Super Punch-Out!! machine and that is all completed other than the fact that I still need a flyback for the lower monitor.

[Bones]

Mine went something like this.

Atari 2600
TI99/4A
Commodore 64
TI99/4A
486SX25 - Doom machine
486DX100- Doom2 machine
TI994/A
Several more pc's... There was some Unreal and quake in there somewhere.
Xbox.
Pentium 4/3Ghz - Doom 3 machine.
Ohh yeah, and now I play with the TI emulators cause I can't get parts anymore even though Chad has like 20 of them he doesn't use.

[AC.]

Generally the standards: 2600, Odyssey2, NES, Playstation.  Various others at friends houses.  Mostly it was computer games since about 1981. Apple//e up to now with multiple PC's.

This handheld was awesome:

[erictrumpet]

My gaming history, in order:
- Arcades (early eighties) : faves = Galaga, MsPacMan, Robotron, Defender
- Atari2600 (mid-80s): faves = Empire Strikes Back, River Raid, Pitfall
- AppleII+(mid-late 80s): faves = Lode Runner, Captain Goodnight, many others
- Computers (the dark years, 1990-present): everything from block Tetris on my IBM PC-XT to Quake3 on this PC. Wish this PC could play Q4, but alas it's too slow. I'd rather play Robotron anyway.
- MAME (2002-forever!!!): Gaming has come full-circle. The originals, and always the best.

Eric.

[97thruhiker]

1) Arcades (1980 - 1989)
2) Intellivision (1981 - 1983)
3) Atari 2600 (1982 - 1983)
4) Apple II+ (1982 - 1985)
5) Nintendo NES (1987 - 1989)
6) Dark Ages (1990 - 1998)
7) Sony Playstation (1998 - 2001)
PC (1999 - Present)
9) Sony Playstation 2 (2002 - 2004)
10) Gameboy Advance (2002 - 2004)
11) Emulation (2003 - Present)

[MinerAl]

In the 70s we had a deluxe pong of some kind edit: Unisonic Tournament 2000 it had slider controls with silver knobs and the controllers were removable from the console on curly little wires...
In 77 grandpa got a TRS-80 model 1
Then we got a TRS-80 Color Computer that my dad spent an additional $400 quadrupling the memory to 64K and puting a non-chicklet keyboard into.
Friends had Atari 400s and 800s in the early 80s and of course 2600s were everywhere.
My neighbor had a Bally home arcade system that was sweet.
School had Apple ][s
Then dad got a Tandy 1000EX in 87 or so.  Man that was sweet.  8 colors at once!
After that it becomes a blur.  I have owned literally dozens of computers since then, and except for emulators (and mostly of the 79-83 era games) I don't game much at all.

[Felsir]

Next to my fond memories of visiting the local arcade (it had a hydraulic Space Harrier deLuxe cab with my drool on it):

- A pong clone (early "direct-to-TV" console, where pong was named "tennis")
- Commodore PET
- Philips P2000T
- Commodore 64
- Commodore Amiga 500 -> 2000 -> 1200
- ATC/Apricot PC

[Dexter]

Atari VCS "woodie"
Atari 800xl
Commodore 64
Atari 130xe
Atari 520st
Amiga 500
Atari 520stfm
Amiga 1200
Pentium 60
Playstation
Saturn
Dreamcast
Mamed 2 Jamma cabs
PS2
Xbox
Mamed showcase cab

Good times!

[ChadTower]

Mine basically evolved with whatever I could get in some manner other than theft.  A lot of it involves older relatives having stuff I could see but not touch.

First game memories are of the Xmas my stepmother got my father a 2600.  I wasn't allowed to touch it but man was that thing sweet.  It went into a closet shortly thereafter and I never saw it again.  This is probably 1979-80.

At some point not too long after, my aunt got an Odyssey 2, but that was in her bedroom, so was off limits to me.  Then I saw my stepmother's parents also got one, but also in their bedroom, and also off limits.  Guess is 1981 or so.  A couple years later same aunt is dating this guy who decides to buy several brand new cabs for her and put them in a spare room.  I remember Pac Man and an Asteroids cocktail and there were about 3 more cabs.  This was early to mid 80s... again, when we visited, not allowed to play them because my mother wanted me to go outside.  Same house also had the whole lineup of Coleco tabletops, sometimes I got to play those.

At some point when 2600 was totally clearing out, maybe 85, I get a 2600 and some games to play on my 13" b/w TV.  Man that was heaven.  Bowling, Pigs in Space, Star Raiders was brilliant.  My little brother and I used to play Activision Boxing and I would corner him and just pound his nose until he threw a snot tossing tantrum on the floor.

Christmas, probably 1988, my mother tells me I can get an NES if I can come up with half.  I manage to convince neighbors that they need a lot of odd jobs done and come up with the $45 so I do get one.  SMB all day and night.  I tell my stepmother all I want for Xmas is an NES game and she gets me DK Jr, man was that a huge disappointment.  All those awesome new games and she gets me one I had for the 2600.  At some point in the next year my mother asks me if she can throw the 2600 away since I have the NES now.  For some reason I tell her yes.

From then on, through middle school and high school, it's all watching Genesis at my friend's house, but not playing much as he was always into RPGs.  We would also have huge Baseball Stars (NES) tournaments until no one could come up with an NES that wouldn't blink so much it erased the cart memory all the time.

I was out of games until Sophomore year in college my roommate's gf's little brother gave me an old TG16... I found the TurboList, found a clearance Duo, and was hooked.  I was all TG16 until release day for the Saturn when I dropped way too much on a Saturn and the 3 free games it came with... played that a long time, then got an N64... played that a lot, sold it while it was still worth a bit in about 96 or 97.  Was out of games again until I got my son an N64 for Easter in 2002... that was it, I got into console collecting bigtime for a couple of years.  In 2003 I picked up a POW cabinet at a yard sale, that was the beginning of the end of consoles for me and the start of an even worse addiction, cabs.  In 2004 I pick up a nonworking pin at a yard sale... pins are 10x worse than cabs. 

So, here I am now, thinning out the console collection, refining the cab/pin collection... though still in the "most don't work" stage.

Man that post was longer than intended.

[gavkiwi]

alright, my turn

[Ed_McCarron]

God... Where to start.

'76 ish... My older sisters had an Oddessy.  Color overlays and all.
'78 - Atari 2600.
'82 - VIC-20 - Sometime around here, I found a Donkey Kong CP in the trash of a arcade op...    Promptly wired it to work with the 2600.
'85 - Apple //c
'88 - Nintendo
'90 - IBM PS/2.  2400 bd modem.  BBS heaven.  20M hard drive.  I was in geek heaven.
'91 - Super Nintendo.  Sega Genesis.
'92 - The invasion of the clones.  Started building my own PCs.  Stopped keeping track of which revision I was on.  I just remember my first 4M of ram costing like $100.
'97 - PS I (I wait till they go on sale...)
'99 - Gauntlet cab on Ebay.  Paid $800 for it and still had to replace the power supply, joysticks, and t-molding.  OK, didn't -really- have to replace the t-molding.  Starts to go downhill from here.
'02 - PS II
'04 - mame Cab
'05 - Still working on mame cab.

Projected:

'19 - Still working on mame cab.

[Zero_Hour]

Great Thread....

I started with an Atari Stunt Cycle home game (And hey, It looked and played EXACTLY like the arcade version - pretty cool for 1976

Lots of neighborhood friends had PONG machines, so I avoided getting one.

First Console was an Atari VCS, and about a month later a good friend got an Intellivision - we had a lot of fun arguing which was better and playing them both constantly.

My first Handheld Console was the Milton Bradley Microvision, which I always say I'm gonna try to find on eBay, and never do. I also had a couple of handheld including the exact racer Randy T. posted, Mattel Football, a Space Invaders Clone, and some game from Badai that involved two space characters dueling if I recall correctly.

Eventually my parents bought me a sweet C-64 setup, with the 1541 drive, and a Smith Corona Daisy Wheel Printer (The noisiest printer I have ever used). When that finally gave up the ghost I picked up an Amiga 500, and finally moved onto the PC platform when I got a P100 system in '95

I've had an NES, Genesis, PS1 and PS2, but usually only played a handfull of games on any of them.

Through all of that time I've always enjoyed Arcade machines, primarilly Vids, but when I was in College I really started playing Pins a lot more heavily. I'm actually happy about discovering BYOAC because the money I save not buying Videogames can be put towards Pinball Machines


P.S. I don't think that my gaming eveolved so much as it was created by an Intelligent designer. I blame Ed Logg and Larry DeMar as the most likely candidates.

[GGKoul]

Let's see..

- Pong (Redish one - I think it was Sears)
- Handhelds (Matell Football, Hockey - Racing Game picd above
- Arcades (Godfather ran an Arcade - remember Galaga cocktail & various Chicago Coin Games)
- Atari 2600 for Christmas (Brother actually opened it early and played with it for a day then re-wrapped it)
- NES with Robot
- C64 with disk drive and Monitor
- Sega Genesis
- Sega 32x
- Sega CD
- Playstation
- Dreamcast
- Saturn
- PS2
- Xbox

Computers
- Cousins IBM-AT
- 1st PC - Packard Bell from Price Club 486sx25 with 180HD
- P1 - 166mmx
- P2 266
- AMD 1gig (In Mame Cab now)
- AMD 1.8
- AMD64 3.2

Below is a pic of my favourite handheld football game!