What You Grew Up Playing

[ASoulMan]

I grew up on a Nintendo 64, Gameboy Color, Playstation, and Playstation 2, the latter of which I had the most games on and the most memories of playing on.

I played the main games in Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper, and Jak and Daxter.

EDIT: I wish I had a Nintendo Gamecube back then.

 

[Reflux]

My very first console was a NES. One it broke shortly after I started playing the original Super Mario Bros, we got a Genesis and I mostly grew up on that and Sonic alongside a Sega Saturn, PS1, and all the Gameboys (Kirby's Dream Land 2 and Link's Awakening were also my jams). I also loved the Virgin Genesis games like Cool Spot and Aladdin.

When I was 15, I got a PS2 and only really played the Rayman and Sly Cooper games. I played other games in between like Kingdom Hearts and the PS2 Sonics but didn't really venture out further until I got a Wii for my 18th birthday.

 

[Jumpin Jenkins]

I played GameBoy all the time. That was pretty much it. I still have the old brick somewhere in the abyss that is my closet.

 

[Zim]

I played a lot of Doom/Doom 2 when I was a kid. I also played a lot of Metroid 2 on long car trips.

3rd place for most played game may be Tetris because it came with the Gamebrick back in the day. It's sort of strange because I have a psp I use on plane trips and my most played game on that is also Tetris.

 

[Ti-99/4A]

My preschool had tons of the old TI-94/A computers. When I was a young spergling I played the shit out of Parsec, Alpiner, TI Invaders, Star Trek, Munch Man, lots of stuff.

That was my family's first computer. I played all of those games to death. Then we got a Tandy 1000 in '86 and we all played the old Sierra Adventure games as a family.

 

[XYZpdq]

That was my family's first computer. I played all of those games to death. Then we got a Tandy 1000 in '86 and we all played the old Sierra Adventure games as a family.

With the speech synth, the huge library of edu-games, and the general sturdy-ness of them they're a hell of a good babby's first computer.

 

[Queen of Tarts]

Mortal Kombat, mostly. And Secret of Evermore, Street Fighter, the snes Final Fantasies, Phantasy Star series on Genesis. Those were the good ol' days.

I feel old.

 

[Megahertz]

I grew up playing Abe's Oddysee and Earthbound mostly, even if I was a couple years late. Both are still games I love to death to this day.

Oh and putt-putt, when I was really little. My dad worked at Humongous for some time so we got all the games free.

 

[Lucky Wildcard]

Most of my gaming memories were at the arcades playing games like The Simpsons, Turtles in Time (I played little of the original arcade beat 'em up when I was younger), and Alien vs. Predator.

As for systems I grew up with, they were the NES, SNES, Sega Genesis and Nintendo 64. So many memories of playing games like the Super Mario Bros. games, Sonic the Hedgehog series, Shinobi 3, Super Mario RPG, Goldeneye, SF2, Bionic Commando, the Contra games, Bump 'n Jump...

My mother also liked playing Pac Man/Ms. Pac Man, and especially loved the ones were you'd sit at a tabletop version of the game and play it. They don't exist in my arcade anymore though...

 

[LordDarkrai]

I grew up with playing N64, PS2, GBA, and Gamecube games. Yeah, I played the hell out of Nintendo games back in the day.

 

[Trans Fat 41g]

My first game was Donkey Kong on the SNES, I cannot remember which one though.

But then I was introduced to the PlayStation One, and boy did it change my life... I grew up on Mortal Kombat, Crash Bandicoot, Croc, Twisted Metal, 2Xtreme (shut up it's on appealingly ugly motherfucker), Jet Moto, Tony Hawk's Pro-Skater, Spyro The Dragon, and the bizarre Iron Man XO-Manowar In Heavy Metal. Halo and Jak and Daxter took most of my teenage years and even now...

 

[Pina Colada]

I have an old Gameboy SP and a pink Nintendo DS Lite that both still work. As for games, I played mostly "kiddy" stuff like Nintendogs, Hannah Montana, Hamtaro, and the like (I even had a Mario Kart game that I lost in school) probably up until I was 13 or so. From there, I moved on to Pokémon HeartGold (DS), New Super Mario Bros., Super Princess Peach, and DKC Returns (DS) that're probably buried somewhere in my closet. I still play them from time to time, depending on my mood.

One of my older cousins also let me play on his old Nintendo 64 and PS2 (he took them with him when he moved out during his second year of college; he sold the latter for a PS4). I believe the first two games we both played together (whenever I visited; he and his parents were about 20 minutes away from where my house is) was the first Crash Bandicoot and DK64 (in 2000, he was 9 and I was about 5). Heck, we even convinced our moms go for a few rounds of Mario Kart! On the same year, I got my own computer and a bunch of games to go with that, so yeah.

We still have our weekends where I'd go to his apartment to visit and zip through his collection for a good chunk of time. To this day, though, he keeps teasing me about how I always die halfway through every 2 levels of Mega Man X4 and X7. But on the upside, I've beaten him more times in the Street Fighter series than he beats his friends in the same game.

/story time

 

[fishercat]

I used to play Burnout and Ape Escape on my old Playstation 2. I'd always go over to a friend's house whenever I wanted to play on their GameCube. I also played a lot of PC games, like SimCity, Zoombinis, and Runescape.

Wow, I am really feeling nostalgic right now.

 

[Andy27]

Super Mario World for SNES. I still play it on my computer, plenty of fan-made levels.

 

[Whiskey Foxtrot]

I was born just before the PS1 era, but I was lucky enough that my parents still had their SNES and Sega MegaDrive that I could play the original Mario and Sanic games on. After that, it was Spyro, Crash Bandicoot, and Rayman alllll the way, baby. Pretty much everything I played as a kid was a platformer. There was also Oddworld (but I never finished it), and a hugely underrated game called MediEvil. If anyone else played that and loved it as much as I did, HIT ME UP.

I went through a Pokemon phase at about the same time, just like nearly every late '90s/early '00s kid, so my GameBoy took a hammering with Pokemon Red. After that, I played a lot of simulator/strategy/tycoon games on PC, like The Sims (the original!), Rollercoaster Tycoon, Dungeon Keeper 2 and Pharaoh.

I can't remember what I played when the PS2 came out, apart from Ape Escape, Ty the Tasmanian Tiger and a game called Drakan, which was like a primitive Skyrim but better because you could ride a dragon.

I'm glad that the Kiwis in this thread so far all seemed to have played mostly the same games.

 

[Jaimas]

The very first game I ever played was Dig Dug on Atari 2600. It was my brother's console. I used to love watching he and his friends play vidya. I got to watch them play through Adventure and Raiders of the Lost Ark, and I often watched them play competitive games like trying to outdo one another in Demon Attack or Combat. My favorite Atari games were ones I got when I bought a 2600 of my own in the 90s: Armor Ambush, a ridiculously fun tank warfare game that was like Combat only much deeper with actual strategy involved, or Kung Fu Master, an outstanding arcade port that fans of the NES would know better as Kung Fu on NES.

Throughout my childhood, I had almost every console at some point, mostly through swap meets, garage sales, and trading. I got my first personally-owned console in 1989 when my Grandma gave me an NES, but I eventually got a Gameboy, Master System, Genesis, SNES, Turbografix-16 and the CD add-on therefore. The fact that I got a lot of them on-the-cheap gave me a real appreciation for both old and new games at the same time - a keen appreciation for where we came from and where we were going, and how close we came to almost fucking everything up in 1983. For the next gen, I owned both a PSX and later, an N64. I was the first one in my town to have a PS2 when they were still rarer than fucking hen's teeth, and I got a Gamecube within a year of release. I eventually wound up getting both a Wii and 360 at later points in my life. One thing I learned was to never buy a console when it first comes out. Give it at least a year, if not two. Ten fucking Xboxes I've been on-the-hook for repairs for and my PS2 and Gamecube both failing due to construction issues within the year have been harsh lessons.

I wound up giving my NES to my friend Mark last year when I moved. Said friend hooked this console up in his son's room, and said son is now playing Contra as we speak. He passes on the old ways. A lot of parents from our generation are doing this now, and that's awesome. It's teaching kids appreciation for the artform that is video games, and to recognize that the old shit can still be fun as hell. And as an autistic kid on my bus once so eloquently put it:

"There's nothing cooler to a kid that loves video games than an adult who also loves video games."

 

[Guzzlord]

First consoles i played were SNES and PS1. When Pokemon came out i also got a Gameboy Color.

Games i remember quite well from my childhood... first Crash Bandicoot Games, Mario Paint, Pokemon Red and the nintendo rpgs

 

[Abethedemon]

I grew up on flash games. My first real console was the Gamecube (yup I'm pretty young) and the first game I bought for that was Sonic Adventure (Must have been the autism) I really liked it.

 

[Da Pickle Monsta]

I wish there was a rating for when somebody makes you feel old. I was an undergrad in college when the Gamecube came out, for Chrissakes.

The very first system I had was an NES, and I pretty much grew up with Super Mario Bros. and Super Mario Bros. 3. I never did get an SNES due to my parents falling on hard economic times, so I really didn't play games that much between 1992-1996, when I was one of the first kids in my town to get an N64. Then I was ripping up Super Mario 64, Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, and Goldeneye.

 

[Inquisitor_BadAss]

I used to grind the hell out of Bomber Man on SNES and Pokemon Yellow on Gameboy. When I was 10 I spent an entire night with my SNES plugged in with the Super Game Boy levelling up my party because I kept on getting beat by lance in the Pokemon Leauge. By morning my entire party was level 70 and I wrecked the Leauge.