What is your Gaming history?

[JParker]

I'm 35 and basically grew up in the seventies. I went to arcades and played the "classics" when they were new and a game machine was big as a Volkswagon. I had a Pong machine. For those of you who remember that technilogical masterpiece. Owned an Atari and thought Asteroids, Digdug, Pitfall, and that 2D 3 color Tank battle marvel, were the bomb. I fell off the gaming scene in junior high, early 80's and didn't play again until I bought a used PS1 at a pawn shop in 92. Got addicted to Zelda for a few months until I beat it. I played various games over the next few years, "Ridge Racer" was my favorite. I bought my first PC in 98 and gave my PS1 and Nintendo 64 Star Wars Episode I edition to my step son. He played it in the living room but now could have free rain in his room without my kicking him off so I could play. I currently have roughly 40 PC games, mostly 1st person shooters; from Quake III (my 1st) to Half Life 2 and Doom 3. I also played all of the Baldur's Gates series many, many, many times through.
My wife accused me of having an affair with my computer games, I spent so much time with the beloved PC.
I wound up here with my current addiction of Gran Turismo. I started playing GT3 in December of 04 and purchased GT4 the day it was released. I've barely touched my PC since. I've probably only missed 6 days of GT gameplay in the last 5 months. I would have to say my GT addiction is the worst by far. I get home in the evenings around 6PM or so, play with my son and talk with my wife for a few hours then off to the console 'til an average of 12PM and many times until 3AM. On the weekends I get in a good couple of hours during the day and start again around 11PM 'til sometimes 3AM again. I have actually fell asleep Bspecing endurances, and browsing my garage. I spend quite a bit of time during the day at work, browsing the GTP forums, like now.

So, what is your gaming history?

JParker

 

[TheCracker]

Also in my early 30's - so again began playing the first coin-ops, pac-man, space invaders etc etc. First console was the Philips G7000 (known as the Magnavox Odyssey 2 in the US) In 86 i progressed to the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48k tape-loading home computer (rubber keyboard, very compact) for which i had around 200+ games. Had a long gap without any gaming machine whilst the usual beer/women/cars distractions came about. Apple Mac in 93 - not many games around for this early on, until Doom arrived. PS1 about a year after it came out, bought around 15 games for it - GT1 & 2, Tomb Raider, Doom again!, Tenchu, Worms, Resident Evil & Soul Blade were probably the highlights. Bought an imac sometime after, mac games had become more popular - Simcity 3000 & Starcraft robbed me of a good chunk of my life! PS2 arrives - by this time high-pressure job, wife, dogs, house take up too much 'gaming time' so i've become precious with what little time i have spare to play - GT3, GTA3, GTA Vice City, GT4prologue, GTA San Andreas, GT4......... can you see a pattern here?

 

[CAMAROBOY69]

This thread is going to sound like an AA meeting by the time we are finished.

Hello everyone I am 28 and I am addicted to game systems.

My parents had and the original Atari 2600. I remember playing all the different games on that like , Asteroids, Pitfall, Keystone Keystone Keepers, and Pole Position(first introduction to car games).

I grew up very poor so when the Nintendo came out my parents said if I wanted it I had to save up to get it. I was 12 and all the other kids already had it. I saved up for 1 year and finally was able to buy it with my $10.00 a month allowance. Yes I know very sad. I remember playing and beating the original Mario Brothers soooo many times since it was the game that came with with the system. I eventually got a few more games like Mega Man 3 which was one of my favorite games and a few others.

I didnt buy another system until I was about 15 when I was able to afford a Genesis. It came with Sonic the Hedghog.

About a year after that I bought a Sega CD that screwed to the side of the Genesis. I bought it just so I could play Lethal Enforcers and Sewer Shark that had spiders and you had to remember to turn left up down or right. If you went the wrong way you died and it would play a real life person saying you screwd up. Great graphics for its time. I think this might have even been the first system to show real people.

I never bought another system until the PS2 came out when I was around 21. I orderd mine 6 months in advance to make sure I had one of the first ones. Ill never do that again. I had to send the first one to Sony right away since it didnt work at all. They shipped it back to me a few weeks later and it was still defective and started smoking after a few days. FINally they sent me another new one that worked quite well for a few years until the disk read errors appeared.

I ended up getting introduced to GT3 after getting the internet at work. I started making hybrids and fell in love with the game. Later I would I-link with my friends up to 4 people in GT3 and several other games.

A few years ago I met my awesome new girlfriend, had her move in. We played PS2 online together every single week. Sometimes every night. Now we play X-box all the time.

We have 2 Playstation 2 systems and 1 X-box. Our game room is capable of at least 4 PS2, 4 tvs, the computer and much more since we have a router. I have posted pics of it on this site a few times. We have had over 4 PS2 going all at the same time on multiple TV's with friends and its just incredible online.

Since I can back up any PS2 game, I have over 120-130 PS2 games and I have played them all at least once. Many I have beat.

I have a few PC games like Half Life 2 and Red Alert.

That pretty much sums up my gaming life in 1 long story. For those of you that read it, Thank you and hope you enjoyed.

 

[JParker]

A few years ago I met my awesome new girlfriend, had her move in. We played PS2 online together every single week. Sometimes every night. Now we play X-box all the time.

You have to be one of the luckiest men I've seen. LOL

Edit: Oops, messed up the quote somehow.

 

[CAMAROBOY69]

A few years ago I met my awesome new girlfriend, had her move in. We played PS2 online together every single week. Sometimes every night. Now we play X-box all the time.

You have to be one of the luckiest men I've seen. LOL

Thank you. There are a couple other members in here that are very lucky too. Believe me I am VERY thankful to have a really good looking girlfriend thats into cars as well as video games. I laugh online when guys say she is probably fat.

 

[jimihemmy]

Well I guess I should put my .02 here.....

I have a wonderful wife and 2 kids who understand my gaming habits and history (I just gotta have it on release day!)......

I also started with coin-op machines. Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Galaga, Dig Dug, etc. I progressed to the Commodore 64 and Mule. I had a family friend who has an original Apple II but there wasn't much to play on it though......

From that, I ventured into Colecovision and Intellivision. Back in the day, those were great! Eventually I got a Genesis (Coach K Basketball...BEST GAME EVER!) I eventually moved to the original Playstation. I have to add that my mom is also cool...she purchased all of these for me. I now have a PS2, a computer that I use for music and downloading, not games. My kids have a PSOne and a Gamecube that we traded in their N64 for. My wife and both kids EACH have their own Gameboys. I want an Xbox but only for Forza....

on top of all that, my mom (because she understands) bought me a PSP on release day (and I'm 33!)

As you can see I've always been into electronic gizmos.

aah....the Golden Days of sprites and pixels!

wow, I'm really dating myself now

 

[T5-R]

I've been playing games for pretty much as long as I can remember. The earliest was probably Battle Chess for the PC (on a 286 which back then was a good machine...) at my dads old workplace (he incidently also worked in one of the first IBM computer shops in the early 80s which went bust ) and I was probably about 4 or 5 at the time. Been playing games ever since and as a family we own a Vectrex, 2 Ataris (although I don't think either work), a Colecovision with atari game adapter thing, atleast one spectrum, an ancient Mac (with lemmings in black and white!). We've had those consoles for atleast 15 years.

However the PSX was actually the first console I bought. I was playing Doom when I was 9, back in 1993, which was also the first game I became hopelessly addicted too. I remember playing games like Street Rod, 4D Sports Driving, Chicago 90, Sim City 1 etc... in the very early 90s. And I've been playing ever since Although computers have never replaced my interest in cars, merely complemented it

 

[WorksAccess]

a brief history of my addiction..

I got into the games at an early age, i remember playing Atari Console and Coleco Vision at a relatives house when i was about 7 years old. Even tho we didnt have a console, i remember some of the games from those hallowed days.

wizard of wor, q-bert, pitfall, rocky boxing, atlantis, dig dug, donky kong.

When i was about 13 years old i got my first computer it was a Commodore Vic-20, with a base memory of 8k! i remember saving up for ages to get a 16k expansion pack and lot of ROM games too. I Suppose this was my first actual owned gaming console. cant remember many games apart from cosmic cruncher and Omega race.

I kept my Vic-20 for about 2 years and saved up for a Commodore 64, the next newest thing back then. When these came out the audio cassette was still the main form of loading. I saved up for a 5' 3/4 floppy diskdrive and an action replay cartridge to allow me to copy my tape games to disk. Loading times still sucked compared to now but then it seemed like discovering the warp drive! games i recall were : thing on spring, monty mole, sacred armour of antiriad, green beret, commando, rambo, pitstop, racing destruction set, raid over mosco and zork adventures.

My first proper racing car game was Geoff Cramonds Revs and Revs + which you need an analogue joystick to play or u had to use the keyboard.

I soon progressed onto the next best thing. A Commodore Amiga A500. offering a windows style environment ????? I was lucky enough to buy a hard drive to save the woes of the 26 disk set for Escape from Monky Island! Many hours of fun were had on this system. Gaming wise i remember dungeon master, Castle Master, Predator, Pinball wizard. The main racing game was Lotus Elise Challenge which supported 4 players over a very simplistic parallel port with split screen.

After the Amiga, i never really got into PC gaming, mainly due to the expensive nature of the systems. I eventually got given a lcd laptop 133mhz with 32mb ram. I remember playing games like Elite Frontiers, Dune, Dune 2 and command and conquer.

My first main stream PC was a 1.2 ghz pentium 3 with 256mb of ram. This got me into FPS games with the likes of Quake, Doom, Unreal etc. This lasted me a few years until i moved onto a 2.4ghz PC Pentium 4 1gb ram that was much more expandable. I still have that PC now as my main gaming rig.

So where did the Playstation fit into it?

I was one of the few that bought the PSone when it first came out, i remember paying over £379 for the console, 2 controllers and 2 games. I prepayed a deposit and queued a the sony center for an hour to collect mine. Battle arena toshinden, wipeout and tekken were amoungst the first few games i bought. First racing games i had were RidgeRacer and Rage Racer, which soon led to the onset of GT1 and GT2 + a few of the formula one games and not forgetting destruction derby!

When the PS2 came out i bought it immediately for £299. Waited for GT3 to come out and that was 4 years ago.

I still find that im addicted to gaming and dont see that its a major problem, its part of my life and a major interest.

 

[Mike Rotch]

Ahh, the memories.

First up : Atari console with that "tennis/ping pong" game that everybody seems to be fairly acquianted with

Second up: Reggies Entertainment System. Basically an 8bit consol with games like Dig-Dug, Mario Bros, Super Mario, Bomber-man, Bumper-cars and Tank.

Co-second: Yays, my friends 386! There we had much fun on Bubble-Bobble, Cats, Kings quest, Space quest and Test Drive! And who could forget the immortal Grand Prix, complete with engine blow outs 👍

Third: Sega Genesis/Megadrive. Ah yes, Sonic the Hedgehog, Battle toads, Streetfighter, Streets of Rage, Toejam and Earl. Gosh. Some good memories there. That lasted me till the...

PSX and shortly after that, the PS2. Not bad progress in 13 years