Asklemmy

Think Brave Fencer Musashi or Zelda Ocarina of Time.

Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country

Two great side-scrollers

D&D 3.5 got me into both kinds of gaming. I remember me and some of my friends wanting to play it, and I remember tracing characters from the dot hack manga for our character sheets and playing the starter set. Later on I found out my friend had an old computer in his house (I think it was an Apple II?) and one of the Gold Box D&D games, and that ended up being the first computer game I spent a ton of time playing. Before then I had played SNES and Genesis a bit but they weren't really a focus for me at that point, but then when I got Morrowind I was fully bought in to video games too.

Spyro the Dragon on PS1

It was called "Water Carrier". It was a simple labyrinth game that - because I had no way of saving it to a tape, disk, or similar - I had to type in line by line whenever I wanted to play it.

Yes, I'm a bit longer in the business than most of you.

flashgames if it counts

Grim Fandango. Downloaded from a demo site, and went out with my dad to buy the boxed game.

Xmen arcade game

Counter-Strike 1.3

Kingdom Hearts II

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

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.

Monkey Island 2

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

Sonic 2. I was like 3 at the time.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

Mario Bros 1-3

Age of Empires II

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.

Memory, Monkey Island, Diablo 1 and Street Fighter 2

Link to the past

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

Lemmings or Descent, I don’t remember.

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).

Half-Life. The first game I played was Mech Warrior 2 and I played a few others like Lemmings, Warcraft 2, and Falcon 3.0. In fact, Half-Life I played for about 10 minutes and put down. I hit the part right after the accident where you were supposed to go back to the lobby and go through the vent, but that wasn't obvious to me. So I got lost and didn't know what to do. I put it down for about a week until a friend came by and was like :o you have Half-Life?! That's a great game. I was like "I dunno, it doesn't seem great, I got stuck fairly early." They immediately went through the vent and I questioned why I didn't do that or see that at first. So I played the rest of the game and loved it.

BUT! It doesn't stop there because Half-Life had a huge modding scene and multiplayer. I remember playing and hosting a ton of different mods from my broadband internet. It was like I was a beacon for these mods where I'd just host the server as a listen server, play along with everyone, and moderate while playing. It was a very amazing time where I could really feel a community building up in games.

Super mario bros

Final Fantasy VII. I've been gaming since the late 80's but the compelling story of FFVII completely cemented me as a lifelong gamer.

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.

Dangerous Dave.

The Little Big Planet series.

Sonic the Hedgehog

Asteriods, Atari 2600

Pokémon FireRed

Carmageddon, it was the first 3d game I had played and I spent all my time at my grandparents house playing it. I still regard it as one of the best games ever made.

Word rescue by 3D Realms, and maths rescue. Can still get them on steam!

Super Mario Bros got me in. It was my older sister's game, so it was just something we had around the house for as long as I can remember. I think that's a great first game to get into, because it has wonderful art and music, and simple, straightforward challenges to overcome.

On the flip side, Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain got me out of gaming for the most part. I had never been more excited for something than by the story being painted by the trailers leading up to the game's release. I was already a big time MGS fan, and I'd say I still am. I even enjoyed MGS5 basically right up until the moment I beat it, and then I reflected on everything I just saw and felt utterly deceived. Empty open world, lots if time wasting interstitial moments, grind-based mechanics, and an unfinished story that didn't need to take as long as it did to tell (and was stupid, too).

First games i played were Pokémon and super Mario, but I think the first game that REALLY got me hooked was Banjo Kazooie.

Evercrack and Diablo 2 were my starter games

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