@electrode

The first game yours truly remembers playing. I don't think this was the first game I ever played - I was well acquainted with a GameCube controller when I first remember playing this game - but it is the first one I recall playing. As a matter of fact, my earliest memory in life was waking up at four years old, popping this sucker in, and starting a new file. When I say I've been gaming as long as I can remember, I mean it, I was gaming since I was conscious.

@Vee

There's two I remember first, and it's between the SMB1/Duck Hunt combo cart or RC Pro-AM, but I usually think of RC Pro-AM first just to be different from a ton of other people who had an NES growing up.

The game was impossible after like six races, but the soundtrack stuck out to me a ton and was the most memorable aspect of it for me despite it being mostly jingles and short little tunes. Was kind of a sign, since the same person ended up composing the Donkey Kong Country soundtrack which was my most played SNES game during my super early years.

@curse

roberta williams' 'mixed up mother goose'

played it at the computer lab with those giant over-ear headphones and felt like I was in another world. don't think I understood what videogames even were at the time, but seeing these events unfold and solving them in a direct way was almost akin to magic. was hard to believe something like that even existed

second game was either streets of rage or chip's challenge, but they were much easier to wrap my head around

@cowboyjosh

Great list idea! Mine is Joust; I was with my dad in (I think) a pizza place back when all of them had a few cabinets and I remember him telling me that it was a game he liked, and how to play, and how the pterodactyl was super hard. He gave me a few quarters and I had a blast. I still think of Joust as a "quality game" because of it hahaha!

@Bojangles4th

Banjo-Kazooie or SM64, but I always loved the former far more.

@BlazingWaters
The furthest I can really go back to is Mario Tennis on N64. I know we had a couple of other games at the time, but I can vividly remember some of the animations, courts, and even splash screens due to leaving an immense impression on my already developing mind, and it helps it was one of the first games I remember playing with my family.

@sleepytitan

Hard to recall but it has to be Sonic Adventure 2 Battle or Super Mario 64, but I honestly remember SA2 way more than 64 as a child.
Played it on my purple GameCube and was blown away by how cool it was. Got pretty far in it untill the space levels where I had to get my dad to do them. My sister and I were crazy about raising chao though we never found out about the dark chao garden until a lot later. That, the multiplayer mode, the game’s music overall, the speed stages, and everything about Shadow always stood out to me, and made me a sonic fan for a long while until I dropped in high school and came back with Frontiers and Mania.

@gruel

the 1997 Frogger game on PC. i played the ever loving shit out of it and my dad says I was really good at it too. I don't know if I believe that because the game is nightmarishly hard.

@BeachEpisode

Spyro on da PS1. I recall making it as far as the Dream Weavers' world. It's funny for me to look back on, but as a kid I was scared to death of everything in the game. Levels would take hours because I would be reluctant to approach an enemy or the edge of a platform. My dad recently told me that when I first booted the game up I'd have to ask for his help to get me out of the pause screen.

@TransWitchSammy

The furthest I can remember is sitting around the TV playing Super Metroid with my stepdad. That intro was fuckin spellbinding to me especially as a child.
That game and Mortal Kombat 2 on SNES huddled around our little TV in a tiny bedroom we had in our house doing all the fatalities are very core first video game memories for me and I'll always cherish both of those games a lot for that.

@BigGnome

Pokémon Pearl. By this point, I had already known about Pokémon through the anime and the card games and during a trip to Delaware to watch a Nascar race, watching a family friend play his Pokémon Pearl cartridge and later being able to play on it when he let me blew my child mind. I remember being so proud of catching a Hoothoot (since owls were and still are my favorite animal) only for him to tell me he already had one. From that moment, I knew that when Christmas rolled around, I needed to ask for a DS and a copy of Diamond.

@fancyynancyy

Great list idea! My first ever console was the Game Boy Color, and I only had 4 games: Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge, Kirby's Dream Land, Pokemon Yellow, and Wario Land: Super Mario Land 3. If I had to guess which one I played first, my choice would probably be Pokemon Yellow since I loved the series as a kid. I played it from childhood up to late high school, so I got a lot of mileage out of that game. Until one day a rat entered my house, and we trapped it inside a cabinet where my Game Boy was with the Pokemon cartridge on... , and the rat took a piss all over it. Yup... that's my anecdote to go with it, lol.

@RoyalFury

My parents owned a Famicon since shortly before I was born, and when I was old enough to coordinate button pressing well enough they let me get a go at it, with supervision of course, I was probably around 3 or 4. It's a very warm memory, those days with that tiny tv and the sunlight coming through the window. They had a couple of games but my favorite and I'm pretty sure the first one I remember too was Antarctic Adventure, with Ice Climbers as a close second :)

@bitterbatterdog

I was in the Pokémon zeitgeist as a child and as a Christmas present got me a Gameboy Color. However he didn't actually get me Pokémon. Maybe he forgot or it was too expensive or he bought it cheap second hand. Didn't matter I was happy with the Gameboy. I got 3 games with it. Super Breakout, Super R.C Pro AM, and Metroid 2.
So I played Metroid 2. It was too hard for me at my age but it didn't matter because I was playing something. I replayed the beginning a lot of the day before trying out the other two. It was only a couple of days before I got a copy of Pokémon Red but Metroid 2 will always be the first game I played

@MrWarm

If I remember correctly, it was Super Smash Bros. Brawl, played it at my cousins' and had no idea who 90% of the characters were. I recall thinking Samus was Master Chief, and I playing her for a game, and when I got into the zero suit state (still don't remember how that works in Brawl, was it a button combo or like a percent thing?), my jaw dropped and I exclaimed, "Master Chief is a GIRL?" Needless to say I was still very unexposed to the medium.

@Coleybuddy

For me it was Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing 5 (i just found out what it's called). I couldn't have been older than 5. I don't think I used the oldass computer I played it on for anything else because the one point-and-click game that I couldn't even begin to search for stopped working. I played the Shark Attack, Bug Windshield, and Grocery games. They all kinda scared me. Partially because I was 5 and sucked at typing. All these stressful situations moving on faster than I could ever keep up with. The shark attack game was, as I remembered it, me peering through a small window as I watched a shark continuously ramming into the glass. Really it was just that you were swimming with goggles on. The other two I remembered pretty correctly. In the bug windshield one you were driving and dead bugs would obscure your vision until I think you crashed. And the grocery game would pan over to a broken jar of something of something on the floor if you fucked up enough. And you could see someone's foot tapping. The disapproval shown there really stuck with me.

Extra note: I think that incorrect memory of the shark game game me multiple nightmares about some kind of creature trying to break through my computer screen, and the computer not turning off. Or maybe those nightmares affected that memory?

@Ipslucasps

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, on the SNES. As a kid I really, really liked the Power Rangers, so it makes sense that was the first game my parents bought for me. Most of my first games were all based on movies and cartoons I enjoyed - like Lion King or Aladdin.

@Cadensia

Link's Awakening DX. I played it with my uncle around 3 or 4. I have vivid memories of the joyful, but slightly sad sorrowful atmosphere. The scene on the beach is forever inscribed in my memories and I felt something magical when I finally finished the game. It was strongest than any of the stories I had known at this point and I dreamt about this for weeks. Quite strangely, I waited a long moment before diving again in the Zelda series or other Nintendo games, instead turned to adventure computer games. But Link's Awakening touched me so strongly and even replaying it today, I just fall even more in love with it.

@DeemonAndGames

Realistically, the true answer for me would be one of those old as hell educational games for PC and even a dedicated console for them, however, they are all pretty much lost to time and I can't even recall most of them or even their names; however, the game I do have a vivid memory of playing is Wii Sports. Back when I was a kid I preferred watching my cousins and even my father play rather than I actually playing myself, but after finally trying Wii Sports at my uncle's house, I knew that I really wanted to play more myself moving forward, so in a way, it was that game alongside others like Smash Brawl that really kickstarted my love for the medium, and as such I'll always see it as a very special work...

@Lemonstrade

Probably a cookie cutter answer, but for me it was New Super Mario Bros. I don't really have a special connection to it these days, but I used to replay it again and again and somehow never got bored. Playing it on vacation is probably one of the first memories I have, so there's that. Also as others said, this is a really cool idea for a list!

@MegaTheRealOne

Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island, specifically the remake/port of it on the GBA. Not sure if it was the FIRST one, but it is the one I have the furthest memories of playing first. I just remember me fighting the final boss against Baby Bowser and getting upset whenever I lost. Good times.

@moschidae

Pretty sure it was Webkinz. I remember playing it in my first house on the family computer. I never had any friends as a kid so i would always just play pretend with my stuffed animals, so a game that transferred your toy where you can interact with them digitally was insane to me. I had at least 60 of them... webkinz was cool.

@Apocynadeae

Technically speaking the first game I ever "played" was some racing game on the XBox, but that was before I had any sort of memory and the only evidence that it had ever happened was a picture and word of mouth. What I do remember instead was that my first proper game was Super Paper Mario, who they sold the XBox to afford. I remember bringing the Wii from my house to my grandma's to keep playing it since I spent more time at hers, and getting really stuck at the tree level but really enjoying it. Could have been something else because I've been playing games since I can last remember; I played Mega Man 2 on a cousin's phone, Mario 64 on my grandma's N64, and Super Smash Brothers on the computer lab's Nintendo 64 emulator (don't ask me why my school had them installed), but I do consider it my root.

@DJSCheddar

As far as I can tell, it was the first Commander Keen game. My dad brought the floppy home from work, he seemed to trade games and programs with his coworkers. Along with it was a dot matrix-printed page of tips and codes he must have pulled off a BBS somewhere. I got a lot of old PC shareware games like this, but I'm pretty sure this was the first.

@DeltaWDunn

Spyro the Dragon was my first game. I still really enjoy it. Looking back, it may be part of why I love 3D Platformers so much along with Mario. We didn't have a PS1 memory card so my brother and I had to try and beat it in one shot, which we never quite managed. When I was 15 I finally bought a PS1 memory card for myself and beat the game. I still have the original copy too.

@Moister

I remember Crash Bandicoot 1 on my PS1. Disc reader wasn't the best and often failed to boot up the game. It was a miracle to get to the title screen. Trick I used is to put the Playstation vertically and it worked for the most part. Music sometimes stops which means that the disc wasn't reading data, the solution was violence. Giving the console a light slap made it work wonderfully.
Have to be honest, that Crash default death animation was scary to me, the uncanny look in the eyes, ugh. I had the Crash Bandicoot Collection so I always skipped the first just for that reason and went directly for the second and third game. Really fun trilogy of games that oddly enough worked with the Dualshock controller.
The other one would probably be Tenchu 2, but I don't remember anything from that one in particular.
And the last one is Super Mario World, on a really old build of Snes9X on Windows XP. Computer wasn't mine to begin with and I remember vividly it bluescreen on me while playing. I thought the worst since I never knew what a bluescreen was.

@gomit

✨Rayman M for the PlayStation 2✨
All I can remember is never finishing the first level and I remember I had a lot of struggles performing two inputs at the same time - Pressing tha A and tilting the joystick forward was incomprehensible for me at my wee old age.
We take for granted how many internalized, over the years muscle memory we have build to play games

@Bells

Sonic Mega Collection for the GameCube
The Wii was my first console, and with it my mom got a copy of Sonic Mega Collection and a GameCube controller, since the Wii was backwards comparable and all that. I'm not exactly sure why she decided to do that, but man I'm so glad things turned out that way.
I remember the extras and menu music more than anything else, being able to look at the covers of the Archie comics enamored me so much. They were so strange and enamoring, but just out of reach for me, seeing as I never really got a chance to read them as a kid.
If you're curious at all, my favorite game on the collection was by far and away Sonic 2. I was never able to make it past Metropolis, but the other classic games were just too intimidating and difficult for five year old me.

@baribari2

I might have been three or four, but it was a SpongeBob game for the GBC. It was a family reunion at my cousin's home even though I don't remember anyone who was there. Someone must have left their Gameboy at one of the tables because I just grabbed it and started playing. I didn't know how to read well so I didn't quite understand the game, but I remember walking back and forth and controlling either SpongeBob or Patrick.

@RaftAnts

Mario Paint. I don't recall doing much painting or composing, but I was addicted to the flyswatter minigame for a short bit.

@nf6429

Final Fantasy, Dawn of Souls. My memories a bit fuzzy on it, may not even be my first game, (Pokémon Red's a contender) but it stuck out to me as a simple, yet engaging adventure I'd constantly come back to. Whenever I was in a car, at home, or even on the beach, I'd pop out my gba, make a new save, and relive the journey. It's reminiscent of a DnD campaign in a way, simple premise with a lot of ideas, now expected in RPGs, but because of its simplicity, is a comforting game to replay once in a while.

@FallenGrace

Lemmings on the ZX Spectrum. All levels were bright mono colours and I was terrible at it but I loved that little tape playing console.

@qbbyamiibo

My first game was Paper Mario for the N64! At least, first game I remember. I don't have any crazy stories about it, but it definitely helped shape my taste in games. I used to love sitting there on the file select with the whistle-y version of the title theme and hum along.

@NOWITSREYNTIME17

I must've been 5 or 6 but I remember seeing it in the ps1 section at a gamestop in our local mall. Me and my brother would always ask our dad for help whenever we were stumped. He wasnt much better than us lol

@C_F

Not sure why I was allowed to play M rated shit so young, but my first set of games was it plus def jam, mortal kombat, and silent hill 2

@bea

my earliest memory of playing a video game at all is me playing Smash Melee, but I was so young at the tinr that i didn't understand what I was supposed to be comprehending on screen. NSMB on the DS was the first game I remember playing with intent, though, pretty sure I remember crying when I had to play haunted house levels.

so yea i guess smash melee is my first game

@Corrugated_Fox

My first game was the original Super Mario Bros for the NES. My sister and I received an NES for Christmas when I was 6 or 7 years old, and the system came with Super Mario Bros, Duck Hunt, and the Zapper accessory. I didn't play much of Duck Hunt, but I remember playing SMB fair fairly often, though I never made it very far at that young age. My most fond memory of SMB was probably watching my uncle play it during a summer vacation. He showed me the location of the hidden warp pipes and some odd glitches/exploits (the only one I remember is him continuously jumping on a trapped turtle shell to max out on lives, something I never was able to replicate).

@GutterTrash

First time I ever touched a game was at like 4 years old, when my brother gave me his old Game Gear to fuck around with and it had Sonic 2 in it. Don't remember much of playing it, I mostly just remember not being able to get past the antlion boss, because it's Game Gear Sonic 2 and the antlion boss is impossible. Frankly a miracle that I didn't hate video games from that point on with that being my first experience. Prolly because I played Pokemon Red shortly after and enjoyed it much much much more.

@seymourflux

My dad bought me a GBA SP + this game in 2006. I remember fondly how I basically only used Blaziken and Rayquaza lol. Still up there for one of my favourite games nowadays. Hoenn's vibes and creatures will always have a strong place in my heart.

@LordDarias

Emperor's New Groove on my hand me down PS1. Its an okay spyro knockoff but I could never finish it cause I didnt have a memory card. So I was very familiar with the first few levels, including the weird stealth sequence and the mission where you race kronk by sliding on your turtle shell downhill. Also the panther chase "button mash" sequence that taught me from a young age that QTEs are bullshit. The soundtrack is great. I have gone back to beat it as an adult, its okay.

@Darnduf

Christmas 1998. I was 4 years old and didn't have much of an understanding of anything--let alone what video games were.

When I unwrapped a box labeled PlayStation (and my parents helped me sound out the word on the box), I didn't know what to expect. I had this mental image of a train station filled to the brim with various toys (I was a huge Thomas the Tank Engine fan). My parents only knew a little more about the 0% I knew about video games so they didn't buy any games with the console. It came with a demo desk and it took us hours to even get that going. What followed was a trip to the local Captain Video where I proceeded to grab a box that looked cool.

Since then I've loved that nasty little garbage marsupial man, tight but forgiving platformers, bright Saturday morning cartoon vibes, and all things too loud, vibrant, and joyful.

"Whoa!"
- Cash Banooka

@darklink20001

the original sonic the hedgehog is the first one i remember! whenever my mom would shop at kroger when i was like 4 she would drop us off at this day care place they had, and they had a genesis. i know they had a bunch of games, but the one that stuck out the most to me was sonic. i could never get past green hill zone at the time, but it left such an impression on me. little did i know the game would start sucking right after that zone! lol

@Drax

The first game I can remember ever playing was Kids Tetris back at a kindergarten friend's house. I'd like to think that I've grown past it since

@TheMightySpork

The first game I remember playing is the 2008 Kung Fu Panda game which I believe came out for PC, Playstation and Xbox.
There was a store we as a family used to frequent and past the checkout line there was a machine with the game on it . Me and my sisters would also play like 10-15 minutes chunks of it until my parents were done paying and we had to go home.
We begged to get the game (and a pc I suppose) at home because we loved it so much. So that's kinda where my journey as a gamer started. I still have the disc of it in my desk and I replayed it not too long ago just to feel the nostalgia again.

@unaderon

Spyro No Ryu as well. I was a wee lad of 4-5 when my parents brought in a PSX, mostly to play Road Rash 3D and Syphon Filter, but had a 4-in-1 disc for me as well. It had that Hugo game, Asterix (I never figured out how to play it, it was turn based tactics?), Gex 3 and Spyro, whom I chose first because I thought he was a bat, my favorite animal at the time. A formative memory I can conjure up in my brain 25 years on, probably the reason I get nauseous whenever I see 3D graphic glitches, I think I perceive a virtual space same as the real one.

@chandler

my memory bleeds together with what my parents have told me, but i think that any way i slice, it the answer's gotta be tony hawk's pro skater. apparently my dad would always hand me an unplugged controller whenever he played it and i'd think it was me doing all the cool shit (a useful trick that i used on my cousins later in life when i wanted to hog our grandma's nes)

anyway, while i'm sure the first thps i played was 1 or 2, the one i actually remember playing first - and the one i've always played and liked the most - is thps3. it's one of the few games i'd consider genuinely perfect. it's infinitely replayable, the skill ceiling is nonexistent and i'm sure it played more than a small role in forming my music tastes - that and the old skate tape, transworld's modus operandi, which i watched and rewatched so many times i'm surprised my vhs copy is still in one piece

@FastBlueApple

My first game has gotta be the the the old Dune game. Literally the only reason why I remember it is because of the game's buildings because I was a 3 year old who didn't speak English back then.

@T0M196

Pac-Man World for me. My Mum and Dad split up when I was young and I didn't get to see my Mum as much for a while. I have fond memories playing it with her on the rare occasion when I got to see her. To be honest, it isn't just my first memory of playing video games. It is one of the earliest things I can remember in my life. It was a confusing time in my life and playing Pac-Man World provided an escape from it all. It might not be a masterpiece, but it will always be a favourite because of this.

@ToasterNinja

Surprised no one has mentioned Mario 64.

I'm old enough to remember when that game came out and I would play it at the demo station in Zellers all the time before my family got an N64 with that game in 1997.

@Seth

Kinda foggy on my early years as a whole but the earliest gaming memory I can place is running around the hub area in Lego Indiana Jones lol.

@The_Gaming_Dog12

My first gaming experiences were on my iPad and iPod Touch around 2010-2012, with the main games I remember playing being Angry Birds, Jetpack Joyride, and especially Asphalt 6: Adrenaline (which would be my pick). I used to play on my iPod Touch against my dad who'd play on his iPhone 4. The first console games I played wouldn't come until late 2012 with Forza Motorsport 2 and Skylanders Giants

@PitSolitayrh

Over the Hedge... like, the DS version. Not a port btw. I assume I was in the same boat as a lot of people, it's a christmas knight, you get your first console and your family looks at you indulging in this new kind of media. I don't even remember my 2nd game, so I couldn't tell you anything other than a mass-produced licensed game.

@trinity

maybe not the absolute first as the handful of Game Boy games all blend together - and on PC it was Age of Empires II campaigns since I saw it on the desktop and didn't know how to get on the internet - but I remember trying to play Pokémon Blue with a broken battery lol. I was only allowed to play on our handhelds and the save file reset every time so I could never get past the first gym. was I conditioned to like permadeath mechanics (roguelikes) at an early age?!?

@theia

i think the first video game i ever saw was monopoly on the snes cuz that's what my dad was playing for some fucked up reason, but the first game that i know i for sure played (and actually know the name of, i played a bunch of like educational games on some shitty windows 95 desktop before that but i wouldnt be able to tell you wtf they were called) was mario paint cuz i was too afraid to play real games until like, my brother let me play his copy of pokemon blue when i was 7. i mostly just colored and drew comics and made music -- the fly swatter game terrified me lol