Forbidden Forest on my dad's Commodore 128. I still have a MIDI of the title music on my phone.

Portal. I have terrible FPS skills but love puzzle games. Having a FPS where I could proceed at my own pace and wasn’t constantly letting down teammates let me develop the skills needed to actually play.

Dune 2, on our 386. Pretty sure my brother pirated the game from a BBS and at the time I didn't know piracy or BBS' were a thing.

Ultima online

Halo/a slew of freemium MMOs I'd play on my dinky laptop in the mid 00s

I played games before, but my first obsession was Pokemon Blue, Diablo and 2 got me stuck into RPGs, and Halo CE got me into shooters.

Initially it was Animal Crossing: Wild World. One of my parents' coworker's daughter was babysitting me before school when I was in 3rd grade and she had the game on her DS and I fell in love with it. Still have the copy I got to this day. However, I wouldn't say I fully got into the hobby until The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword and Twilight Princess (Wii). TP especially got me to fall in line with video games as a storytelling medium artistically and narratively.

Need for Speed Underground 2

Probably Commander Keen 4 and Prince of Persia in black and white on my dad's 286 pc.

Flash games. Like the ones on Newgrounds, Y8, coolmathgames…

super mario brothers 2 baybeeeeeeee

Sly Cooper.

Zillennials rise up.

Pong.

Probably space invaders on the Atari 2600

I didn't have an Atari new I believe it was already an old system when me and my sister got it.

Minecraft, and then Cuphead again

KOTOR It is still one of the best stories in a game.

Pokémon Blue on a used Gameboy color when I was like 8. All downhill from there.

COD:MW2, Halo 3 and Fallout 3

Bastion by Supergiant Games.

I'm actually not sure how precisely it happened, but a good decade ago as a teenager I somehow stumbled upon a torrent of the game. I didn't really know anything about the game, but I distinctly remember reading the description and looking at the art and being like "this is so cool", and then being like "this is even cooler" again when it turned out Rucks basically narrates the entire game with that deep hopeful voice.

And that was that; my early gaming continued with things like Hawken, Detective Grimoire and Machinarium, but Bastion definitely holds a special place in my heart.

More than a decade later, I've played (bought) and replayed basically all of Supergiant's games several times. Such a wonderful studio. Darren Korb is a fantastic composer as well, just doesn't miss a single vibe :)

I think Super Solvers - Gizmos and Gadgets was among the first games that really got me excited for gaming.

NFS 2SE

Freddy fish 🐠

Need For Speed Underground 2 and Burnout 3. Got it as a combo deal for Christmas as a kid.

gaming chooses you. you wake up one day and youre grinding something and u have a vague memory of games you played on these "old consoles"

Super Mario Bros. circa 1987. I’m getting old.

Minecraft

Does jump-start pre k count?

It wasn't the first game I played, nor the first I was really drawn in by but Ultima IV on the Master System just seemed like a miracle. There could be an entire world with a rich history, populated by diverse characters where I got to step into the role of the protagonist of a story like in a fantasy novel only I had the freedom to make my own choices about how to respond to the story, the gameplay rewarded careful thinking over twitchy reflexes and the game world was so big it expanded into real world artefacts. I had no idea of the potential of the medium until I encountered that game but it all unfolded before me once I had.

Probably a Lego Star Wars game for the game boy, I get nostalgic thinking about it

Ocarina of Time. There's, like, a whole world out there. I can walk around and see stuff. There are people to talk to. Hey, big owl. Scary monsters wtf. This shit's awesome.

Been chasing that feeling ever since :(

Frankly it's why I'm so into TTRPGs now. Video games can rarely give me a true sense of wonder, of exploring the unknown and unexpected anymore.

Monuments of Mars and later Command & Conquer were the two biggest.

First games I remember playing, at least on console, were Mario Kart 64 and Super Mario 64 on my cousins' Nintendo 64 (which later got passed down to me). I would frequently get Mario stuck in the castle moat and my cousins would have to get him out of it so I could keep playing, haha.

Gaming in general? First game was Duck Hunt and the game that got me into gaming was Super Mario Bros.

PC gaming? Leisure Suit Larry 6.