What generation gamer are you?

When I was younger, it seemed weird to me that someone's parents would play video games. Just so you know, my parents were born in 48 and 51. I was born in 1993 and my sister was born in 1987. I was definitely the first person with any genuine interest in video games.

My question is mainly three-fold. Who was the first person in your family to call themselves a "gamer"? What was the first game you beat, and how old were you? Do you think this could affect someone's innate ability to play video games?

The reason I wanted to post this thread is that I was thinking about the first game I ever beat and I want to say it was Super Monkey Ball 2 for the GameCube. that game is 30 minutes long. I've been gaming since I was five, but I rarely beat anything until I was ten or eleven.

I would really love to know where the GB community's personal gaming habits come from. How long did it take before you really stuck with gaming as a hobby? If I'm being honest, it took me a while, but for all I know, eleven may be very young for some of you.

I started on the Super Nintendo, Super Mario World.

My dad got me into games and he mostly played a lot of old sports games and RPGs. The earliest game I remember playing, and I think finishing was Dragon Warrior.

All of my earliest memories involve playing games so its all kind of a blur.

First game I played was River Raid, not really a thing that you can beat. I was 5 at the time I think? But the first game I think I finished might have been the original Prince of Persia? I think?

Anyway, I played games when I was a small kid, since my older brother played games.

Like you, I started when I was really young. My youngest uncle had an NES with a couple of games, so I'd play on that and on my neighbor's SNES , and never owned a console until Nintendo 64. I was born 1990, so this was all around 94-96. It didn't take me any time at all to realize I loved it, and I have fond memories of most things I played back then, even the bad stuff. Franchises like Mario or Sonic had cartoons on all the time, so I got interested in those settings outside of just playing the games early on. Me and my siblings would often play(as in, pretend to be) Mario characters, and I'd draw my own stickman-like Sonic comics, that kinda stuff. Besides consoles, we eventually got our own handhelds, which are a lifesaver when you're a bunch of kids in one house that don't always wanna play the same thing. I still mostly play on console and handhelds, with the PC being only used for games when I absolutely have to, and that's impacted the kinda genres I'm interested in - RTS, FPS, CRPGs, point & click adventure games, there's a lot of genres best played with a mouse and keyboard that I don't care about.

Additionally, I was keen on visiting shops that sold used magazines and comics and stuff, and there I found a local version of Nintendo Power that had stopped publication in like 1994 or 1995 maybe. It had comics and manga in it, and a lot of cool coverage of games I'd barely heard of, so it was exciting to read even if they were out of date by the time I got my hands on them. Later on Nintendo started publishing Club Nintendo Magazine here, and I subscribed to that for as long as it existed. I also joined their local forums and eventually became a moderator, was there for 6 years or something until Nintendo shut us down. That's probably why I'm using these forums here as much as I am.

My dad used to play games, too. He owned an Atari 7800 or whatever equivalent was over here in Europe(it had a big old keyboard and everything, looked real weird), and played games like Desert Falcon, Knightmare and Nemesis on it, which I also tried a little. He liked those arcade-style short games a lot, and bought those 50 games in one ROM controllers or whatchamacallits from time to time. You know, where you boot it up and it's a list of 1000 items with slightly different names, but in actuality there's about 50 games on there and after a page you're just getting stage 2 of the same game. He couldn't get into many things more modern than that, although he'd help out me and my siblings with translating the games we played for us as best he could. But he did get into Wii Sports Resort and played a lot of that.

Other than that, as far as I know I was the first family member to be interested in video games. For the record, the first game I played was Super Mario Bros./Duck Hunt on NES. The first game I beat was probably Street Fighter II: the World Warrior. As in, I made it through arcade mode with Chun-Li. I've basically been playing games for as long as I've been conscious, and haven't taken any long breaks from the hobby as a whole.

Do you think this could affect someone's innate ability to play video games?

I still suck at most games lol, so not in my case. I think it's more about how much you practice and how patient you are, how good you are at learning.

I've been gaming almost as long as I can remember. My parents don't play games so I guess I'm the 1st generation in my family to pick it up. I was introduced to it by my cousins who all had bootleg NES' (I was born in China). We also went to arcades pretty often.

But like you, I don't remember beating games until quite a bit later. Does Street Fighter 2 count? I think I was 6 or 7. If not, it was probably Pokemon Red and I must've been 7 or 8? Either that or Kirby's Dream Land 2 or Wario Land when I was 8 I think.

I think with anything, getting in on something at a young age gives you a leg up but in my case, I don't think I actually have the talent for it so I'm average at best.

I was definitely the first person in my family that could or would call themselves a "gamer", but my dad did have a little more experience than me with the Sega Genesis that was my first console. But that didn't last long. By the time I moved on to a new console only my brother and I still played video games.

I don't actually remember the first game I beat. I want to say it was Shining Force, since that was one of the earliest memories of a game I played and remember finishing, but I also remember getting stuck on a particular stage for a long time, so I don't think it was actually the first thing I beat. Actually it was probably Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and The Hyperstone Heist. I definitely remember beating that when I was around 6 or 7 with my brother.

I don't think playing so young affected my aptitude for games so much as my interest level did. I enjoyed video games so much that I played them a lot, so I got lots and lots of practice.

My dad is big into owning (select) new technology, even if he doesn't really understand or enjoy it himself. But he also has some bad luck/bad choices (probably because he isn't passionate about it, and relies on others). And I'm weird, but but in varying ways.

So we had an Atari 5200, and I loved Super Breakout, but that was about it (probably the weakest Atari). And then we had an NES. Loved all of the Super Mario Bros., Tetris, Faxanadu, and the first Zelda. Terrible luck with that cartridge though - two copies "died" before we finished it on the 3rd copy. I think those we the only NES games we owned, never got another NES (or other) console. Didn't even have a pc (never had an Apple/Mac) until I was 17, no games other than some shareware I picked up on a college visit (Commander Keen and Crystal Caves!) Not a gamer at this point, went to college, got even further away from gaming. Dad bought an OG Xbox while I was in college; didn't get into it on breaks (I was/am terrible at Halo) and it never made an impact.

Dad bought me an PS One after college after I moved away when I mentioned it had good soccer games (I am into real life soccer). Don't remember how I knew that; marketing during real soccer matches? Bought a bunch of games; never played them.

Dad bought me a DSi (NO IDEA WHY!!) years later. Loved the Layton games. That was about it. BUT, Finally, through an anime podcast I got interested in rpgs, etc. Hauled out the old XBox, got Fable and Morrowind (and a few other games). Later got The World Ends With You on DS. Decided to build a low-end gaming PC in 2013. Been consumed by games ever since then. Bought a 3DS in 2015 and a PS4 last year. Own a couple of hundred games between the 3. Can't explain what it was that finally sparked the "gamer" in me when I was already over 35 (other than general geekery, and the love of a good story?), but here I am. :]

Also, I still suck at and dislike FPS, love rpgs, jrpgs, simulators (walking and other), action, adventure, and puzzle games. I have some cousins 20+ years younger than me that like COD, but that's about it in the family.

Lol, I'm 42, almost as old as OP's parents.

My grandfather bought an Atari when those things came out. It's still in my grandmother's house. I don't know how much of it he played, but he wasn't actively playing it when I was a kid. My uncle played it some. I have no idea if my mother ever touched it. He did pull it out and let me play it a few times, which I thought was fucking awesome even though at the time I was playing SNES and PS1 games. I'd love to have it, but sadly it is currently stuck in a closet somewhere and I don't think it's coming out.

My dad had some kind of shitty early 80's knockoff console. I have no idea what it was. It had like three games pre-installed. I don't think he messed with it all that much, but I'm not sure. I do think he visited arcades some and occasionally played games there, but he spent more time doing stuff with cars.

I was born in '91. I'm certainly the first person in my family to actively and consistently engage with video games. My dad brought a used Game Boy and a copy of Interstellar Assault home one day and I was completely absorbed from minute one. I was 4 years old, I think, almost five. He brought it home, he gave it to me, and I played it constantly. I distinctly remember waking up very early the morning after he gave it to me, sneaking into the living room, turning on a lamp, and playing more until my dad caught me and made me go back to bed. My parents bought me a Super Nintendo that Christmas. It was one of the late-model mini-SNES's and it came with the first Donkey Kong Country. The PS1 came out that year, I think, although I was so absorbed with the SNES that I didn't even realize there was something way more powerful out there until a little later. My dad told me much later that one of the reasons he spent money on the Super Nintendo was that he was spending way too much of his too-tiny paycheck on AA batteries for the Game Boy.

On the back of the Super Nintendo box, there was an ad for Super Metroid. I saw it and immediately latched on to it. I thought it looked freaking awesome, but my parents were a little more concerned - why is a five year old so absorbed with a game that looks kinda scary and dark? It took a year of begging for them to finally get it for me, but they did, and I loved it. Still one of my favorite games ever, if not my absolute favorite. I've finished it a zillion times.

I never actually finished Interstellar Assault, although I do still own the cartridge. I don't remember what the first video game I finished was, if I'm being honest. It might have been Donkey Kong Country. It wasn't Super Metroid - as much as I loved it, I didn't actually manage to finish it until a few years later.

Some of you might be doing some math and may have realized that a kid born in '91 would have started gaming during the PS1 era. I did get the SNES around the time the PS1 came out. I did eventually get a PS1, in like 1998 or 1999, I don't remember which. My memories of it aren't nearly as fond, though there are some PS1 games I love. Some time after I got the PS1, I got a copy of Crash Bash. It wouldn't take a code that I'd found for a hidden demo of Spyro 3, so I punched it and broke it. Brilliant me! I then spent the next few months playing Super Nintendo games. My dad eventually ordered a part to fix it and repaired it (I have no idea where he ordered it from or what was broken in it) and then grounded me from it for a long time. Eventually I got it back... and then it broke after a year or so, leaving me with only a Super Nintendo to fall back on. So through my own fault, I spent a lot of time during the late '90's and early 2000's playing Super Nintendo games, meaning I have a lot of nostalgia for a system that was current when I was too young to play video games. I did eventually get one of those tiny PS1's they released late in the console's life cycle. I took care of that thing and used it for a long time, but I no longer own it and cannot remember what happened to it. I also no longer own the SNES and also cannot remember what happened to it.

My brother keeps up with video games as much as I do and always has, although these days he sticks to PC even more than I do. I have some cousins that own game consoles and they do see use, but they're not hugely interested in games. That's about it. There are some other family members that have tried gaming once or twice but never done anything else with it.

I perhaps wrote a little too much about my video game beginnings.

Do you think this could affect someone's innate ability to play video games?

To some degree, yes, but as with anything, tenacity and work and effort will do a whole hell of a lot more than "I've been playing games since I was five". I am fairly good at video games, but certainly not great at them. This is because I spent most of my childhood life trying to find and play as many games as possible and wound up playing them on normal or even easy sometimes. I pretty much never went for hundred percent completion as a kid and these days, I usually burn out on a game before I come anywhere near 100% (I have been better about this, and have been getting better about choosing games that fit my interests as opposed to just trying to play anything I can get my hands on). As a result, I never actually got really good at one thing, just OK at a whole lot of them. I don't have it in me to dedicate myself to a single game enough to become great at playing it. Someone who started gaming on the 360 and has been playing almost nothing but multiplayer shooters, on the other hand, will probably kick my ass pretty much every time but will have no idea how to get into an RPG, a platformer, a Metroidvania, etc.

@yourbrain: My dad has 30 years on yo, bro. You're clearly being facetious, but I have cousins older than you. <3

@slaps2:

:] Yup. Actually I just had a (non-gaming) talk yesterday with my 69-yo dad where we agreed so closely he said I sounded as old as him.

He tried playing og Zelda recently on the NES Classic I bought. Couldn't get anywhere at all, which was a little sad (his vision and co-ordination are slipping) but I love that he still wanted to try!!

@yourbrain: It's interesting that our dads are the same age, but you have 17 years on me. To be honest, your dad and I have similar og Zelda skills.

The first person in my family to call themselves a gamer is my brother, at the age of 37, even though we got introduced to videogames when I was like 5 and he was 10. As for the first game I beat I can't really place them chronologically, but it was probably either Super Mario Bros or Quest for Glory. I dunno if the first game you beat has any significant impact on your ability to play games, but I can pretty safely say that both me and my brothers love for Quest for Glory was immensely formative in shaping what kinda games we enjoy the most.

@slaps2: I will consider myself lucky if I have any video game skills at all at the age of 69+ But it is interesting to consider the game/technology skills of kids with younger v. older parents and parents with tech/non-tech interests. Not a parent myself, but both of my non-gaming (and younger) siblings became parents in their mid-30's. I am actively encouraging my niece and nephew's technology (and future? gaming) interests...

The closest older person who I would consider a gamer was probably an uncle who is my father's younger brother. That was probably my first exposure to video games. It was the SNES, which eventually became my first game console. In retrospect it was probably during the later half of the SNES life cycle. I can't remember the year exactly; it is probably after 1992. Honestly tho I never really got into it, me being not really good at it and never have much patience for repeating level/stages over and over again which were the hotness back in the days. I was kind of into beat'em ups and scrolling shooters, what sort of kept me going was usually the drive to see what's next, like the art, background, stage gimmicks, etc. or things like trying out different characters and finding out how they differ.

Quite frankly I remained skeptical of video games at that time, even when the PS1 came out I wasn't really all that crazy about it. I was interested in what would came out of it, but didn't really felt like I have to get one...until Twisted Metal 2, then Metal Gear Solid some years later, and then Final Fantasy 7 years after it was released when I was in high school, which also coincide with me start dabbling with PC gaming. That's probably when I really started getting into gaming.

Born 1986.

My first console was the Atari 2600. My parents had it from before I was born. My first game was probably Atari Circus.

My favourite video game console is the SFC or Super Nintendo. The SNES blew me away in a way that the NES didn't, and the NES was the first Christmas present that excited me. I literally jumped around the house and yelled like the famous Nintendo 64 kids. But the SNES was far better and stuck with me far more.

I'm still obsessed with the SFC aesthetic to this day. The Super Nintendo is simply magical.

I'm disgusted with how old I am. Make me a kid again, please. So I'm less creepy and not knocking on death's door. The only thing still young about me is my personality, something went wrong.

I was born in '79 and me and my similarly aged cousin were the first in the family to play and have a gaming system at home. He got a Spectrum I had a Tatung Einstein (my Dad worked for Tatung, hence the free work hand-me-down) - he marvelled at the amazing disk loading speeds of my computer I marvelled at everything the Spectrum could do, it seemed so much cooler than my system. Eventually we got an Amiga and then my cousin visited a lot more than he used to, weird.

While I occasionally think of awesome it would be to grow up in the post-PS2 generations of systems, I realise the growing up and seeing the advances in tech has been amazing. If I could show 6 year old me something like Cuphead, Wreckfest or the Arkham games (I think they would have been the most appealing to younger me) I think I would have imploded. I think this is partly why I would be such a poor games journalist - that six year old is still always lurking in the back of my mind whispering "but it's all so awesome". Seriously, even if all I had to play was a day of release version of No Man's Sky, my brain would still be thinking I was the luckiest guy in the world.

Technically I think the first games I played were edutainment software on the PC when I was really small. Like math games and stuff, I would've been around 5 probably. But I was fascinated already by then.

The first major "gaming ass" game I played to death was Sonic 2 on the Genesis. I inherited the console and that one game from a cousin who was going abroad to study. She would perhaps have been the first gamer in our family, but she didn't keep it up after the genesis. So I suppose it's me. I think I got Sonic when i was 6-7 or so. It has remained the only Sonic game I've ever beaten and/or cared about. :P

I don't particularily believe in an innate ability to play games. It's just practice and exeperience for the most part, and it's also all about what you put into it and what you expect out of it. For most of the early years, pretty much childhood to graduating "college" I would play a variety of games. But primarily RPGs, story-based games and other low-intensity entertainment and I was also a heavy reader. The action games I played were mostly on easy and I just tried to get through them.

It wasn't until I was maybe 19-20 years old that I got HEAVY into multiplayer games and fast paced action. And now all I want is to play fighting games, Devil May Cry, Souls, MOBA's etc. And I'm pretty decent at them now even without having the experience formed in the childhood years. You invest the time and energy to experiment and get better, then you get better. That's all there is to it.

my older brother owned an atari computer and a commodore 64 growing up and he kept them long enough for me to play on when I was younger.

The first game I ever beat is though to remember. I think it might have been one of the Mario titles on the All Stars compilation for the SNES. I was born 1991 so the SNES was a little before my time growing up but my older sister had one.

My gaming habit probably started by playing DOS games on the family IBM computer when I was really young. But it didn’t become a real addiction until I owned my very own console which was the PS1. Then I was hooked. My sisters boyfriend had it hardmodded for me and gave me shit loads of burned discs to play. I was maybe 8 or something

I had a Sega Mega Drive in the early 90s and even as a child, hated it. Then I had a PS1, again, hated it.

I have very little appreciation for any games before the PS2 era. Even as a child I remember hating the limitations of the PS1 and other consoles before it.

I didn't truly get into gaming until I bought a PS2 in 2001 and an Xbox a few months later. So, even though I did play Sega and PS1 as a kid, I don't consider those consoles to be anything more than toys that I got bored of.

In answer to your questions - I was the first in my family to be a gamer and the first game I beat was Sonic 2.

The problem for me was that I have always gone for a very specific set of aesthetics in games, which meant that I limited myself a lot in the first decade of my gaming years. I liked 'realistic' military games and western fantasy RPGs, and that's basically it. To give you an idea of how this impacted my tastes and habits, two of my favourite PS2 games were Warriors of Might and Magic and Conflict Desert Storm...

I super disagree, I think thats the exact thing most gamejournalists miss. Unless having fun blinds you to every flaw.

My mother and brother were playing games before I was born (1990) and neither call themselves a "gamer". The first game I completed was probably either Toe Jam & Earl or Sonic the Hedgehog 2 since I played co-op with my brother. I was about 4 or 5. I enjoyed 8-16bit games (we owned an Amstrad before the Megadrive) but I didnt really dedicate a lot of time to games until we got an N64. I'm guessing that was a combination of me getting older and having a higher attension span and the games themselves being less difficult.

@lestephan: true, I should have said I would be an unemployable journalist, not necessarily a poor one.

I won the world cup in World Cup Italia 90 for the Mega Drive. It was part of a pack in (Mega Games I). That must have been in the Mid-90s.

54 years old here and I think I represent the first generation of video gamers. Even before the Atari 2600 there were these dedicated pong consoles I remember people buying in the early to mid 70's. I got to play them some but for whatever reason, my family never bought one.

My father ( born in 1935 ) seemed interested in video games. I remember him bringing home a newspaper article in the mid 70s about the invention of video games. It seemed to be a joke column more than realistic history, though. I think it was meant to poke fun at what was still a fad at the time, specifically Pong. Would love to dig that up, so if anybody knows what I'm talking about, post a link.

As a kid, I was very interested in video games, but I was the first person in my family to be. No one else had even passing knowledge of the medium. I didn't start playing super young, but as soon as I did, I was hooked. I don't know off the top of my head what the first game I beat was, but I know I started playing quite a while before I beat anything. I got my start with the PlayStation One and the Gameboy Color.

I was born in '92 and am a first generation gamer. My parents never play games, but my mom owned a video store for a short time in the mid 90s. Because of this, we had a SNES, and I had access to the entire rental library. I was only 5 or 6 at the time, but that's definitely when I got hooked.

Also, my parents never discouraged me from playing games. They would understandably put restrictions on my play time and on rated M games until I was a teenager, but I general never had any problems with me playing.

The first game I can remember beating 100% was Spyro 2: Riptos Rage. I played the heck out of that game getting every gem and secret. That was my main platformer, since I didn't have a N64.

I don't think people have as much of an innate ability to play as much as playing as a kid makes you more comfortable with a controller and the "language" of games. I say language because just like how it's easier to learn a language as a child, it's easier to understand things like how a game naturally guides you in a direction or basic game quest structure. By the time I was a teenager, that type of stuff was second nature to me.

Born in '83, first generation. I actually don't know the first game I beat, but the first one I played was the Mario/Duck Hunt cart that came with the NES.

I think when someone started playing has a huge impact on their innate ability. Have you ever watched a non-gamer try to simply navigate a 3D space using the left stick to control the character and the right stick to control the camera? I have, and it is wild just how difficult this task is for someone who didn't grow up doing it.

I was born in 97, and my dad and uncle are definitely the first game players in my family. They both played a lot of PC RPGs and strategy games like XCOM: UFO Defense and the original Bard's Tale.

The first game I ever beat (I think) was the Gamecube remaster of Sonic Adventure, and to this day it's still interesting talking with my Dad about his disinterest in real-time games. When RTSs got big was probably when he was playing games the least, but ever since this console generation, turn-based tactics games like XCOM EU or Invisible Inc have been great to play together.

My dad was born in 63 and while I don't think his generation stops him from playing "fast games," the things he grew up playing definitely does. He's learned that games he likes are things you can step away from for a half hour, like a crossword puzzle. He's more about solving interesting problems when convenient than playing things that demand attention and adrenaline.

Atari 2600 was my first console. Something my parents got me as a gift as child in 1980/1981. After this, I actually skipped generations of consoles until the Playstation 2 (yes, that long of a gap). During that console-less gap period, I was heavy into PC gaming: from Apple II to Mac Classic to PC.

So much of my gaming history is actually Nintendo/Sega-less. It's interesting perspective, because I've never held any nostalgia of Nintendo or Sega. Though I appreciate the craft/artistry/etc. that Nintendo puts into all of their games, much like many Disney animated movies, I'm very much "Meh" to Nintendo. I still respect them and see them as *the* leader in gaming, but never been interested in any of their titles.

Many of the Apple II/Mac/PC titles hold a lot of nostalgia for me. Games like:

Lode Runner (Apple II version is the best)

Miner 2049er

Zork/Infocom Text adventure Series

Castle Wolfenstein and Beyond Castle Wolfenstein (The Apple II Original)

Dark Castle (Almost broke a mouse over this damn game)

Karateka

Bard's Tale

Ultima Series

Marathon (if you can find an emulator, play this game, especially if you're a Halo fan)

Wolfenstein 3D

Doom

Quake

Unreal

Deus Ex

Diablo (all of them)

Those are my nostalgia classics of my PC era of gaming.

As an only child born in 1990, its probably no surprise I was the first of my family to be interested in games. Though, my mom did get OBSESSED with Tetris for a good year or so.

I started with Super Mario World on SNES, but my dark secret with my early years was that I was not very good at games. In SMW, I couldn't find the other exit out of Chocolate Island (3, I think...?). Internet might as well have been Shenron the dragon for all the opportunities I had to use it. So, when I beat SMW years later at high school age, I was so mad at how close I'd been.

The first game I remember beating was Super Smash Bros. I think I got it for Christmas along with the Donkey Kong 64 (a game I've NEVER beaten) Console pack, so I would have been nine. I distinctly recall being confused at all the "strange" (read: Japanese) names I was seeing for the first time in my life. I say "remember" because I honestly don't know if SSB beat out Hey, You Pikachu! which I got for my birthday the following year (coincidentally it released ON my birthday, November 6). I find it hard to believe that even my gamer punk-ass couldn't beat Smash for a whole year, plus my memory says Smash was first, so I'm going with that.

Man, I don't even like Smash anymore. Why couldn't my first have been Ocarina or RE2?

In my family I was the first gamer. And up until my nephew I was the only one in my family. I grew up around the NES era (I'm in my 30's) and the first game I beat that I can remember was Pokemon Blue. I might have beaten something else before hand but honestly I can't remember. I did have limited access to games in general until the gb era when I started to save up money and buy those carts on my own.

I'm from the generation that could pretty much get away with doing little else besides gaming for 20 years and now can't find the time... or when I do, I'm too fucking tired.

I can't tell you ages really, but i started on the BBC Micro as a child, asking my parents to install games for me, my father was an engineer for British Aerospace (now BAE Systems) and had access to new and expensive computers for work, as such my next platform was a military style laptop the size of a large gun case, it was super heavy and i played Duke Nukem on it like a badass... i don't know... 7/8 year old.
My uncle had a home computer before we did and i played on that whenever we were visiting, then we got our own with Windows 95 and my world expanded with full colour versions of the DOS games i was already playing and demo discs, after that i don't know which came first, i got a Game Boy for my birthday, a Mega Drive at some point, a Master System after that (backwards i know, it didn't matter), a Snes randomly appeared...
It's all a bit of a mess really but i enjoyed all games on all platforms equally, i can't really say what "generation" i am because my playing hasn't slowed down all the way up to age 29, however the last one and a half console generations have seen me focus almost entirely on PC.
I guess i'll measure it like this, if my favourite games are a measure of my "generation", then i am 1998-2008.

I'm the first in my family to be a gamer. Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on Gamecube was the first game I ever beat after salivating over my cousin's copy when I saw him play. I think I was 7 or so?

Like you, I never really beat games until I was older, either because I lost interest or didn't understand the ending requirements for the game (Sonic Heroes needing me to beat each campaign and get all the Chaos Emeralds, Metroid Prime not being a demo just because the Prime 2 disc in the box was ?). However, gaming has always been a hobby of mine ever since I got the Gamecube and Game Boy Advance. It helped that I was surrounded by friends and cousins that gamed.

In my immediate family? I was and remain the only person who plays video games as a hobby. As for my extended family, my great-uncle got my uncles into playing video games, who in turn got me into the hobby when I was not even 5 years old. I suppose that would make me the third generation. Although, I completely lost interest in video games a few times throughout the years. It was not until the last console generation that I engaged with the medium more regularly. And the first game I've beaten was the TMNT game on the Sega Mega Drive. I must've been 6 when I did so.

I have no idea if my parents ever played any video games before I was born (Mid-80s), but I doubt it. I'm pretty sure I began playing on a computer of some sort, which my parents did also use, but probably more for solitaire and such. I suppose those are still games. My mom did play some of the same games that I did later on, but stopped in the early 2000s.

My memories of my childhood are very shoddy (at least when talking about video games), so I don't know what it was that sparked my interest. Could've been my parents who just randomly decided to buy me a Megadrive around 1992 or so, can't really be sure without asking from them. Or maybe it was the fact that my friend had a NES before I got my console, thus leading me to asking something from my parents.

I have no memory of what game I beat first...if I ever even beat any 'till years later. Possibly the first Sonic, if I had to guess. I would've been around 6-7 then. I'm fairly certain that I continued playing games from the moment I got my Megadrive and never slowed down to this day.

I started with my mom's Atari 5200 back in 94. So me playing games since I was 4-years-old is all her fault.

I’m an 87. Grew up with a NES and then skipped a generation straight to a ps1. Before dual shock. But before that even, my dad bought a CDI when he was working in Germany, probably thinking it’s pretty much the same thing lol.

Speaking of my dad, I’ve only see him play video games once. And it might have been a dream I conjured up over time but I’m pretty sure it’s real. One night when I was a little kid I got up in the middle of sleeping, probably had to go to the bathroom and saw my dad playing TMNT on the NES having gotten further than I ever did in that terribly hard game. So plopped down right next to him and watched in facination.

That’s it.

I was born in '86, started with the family computer (386) super early, around '91. I wasn't the first in the family to play games, but certainly the only "gamer". Didn't actually get a console until the N64 (and even then, nowhere near release), unless you count the Game Boy and a couple of other handhelds, so I was strictly PC as far as that went, and that's where most of my nostalgia lies save for occasional visits to console-owning friends.

First game I beat? I honestly couldn't say. Probably an edutainment game or something. First I *remember* beating was the shareware version of Wolfenstein 3D, thanks to my grandmother having no idea what she was buying for me, haha. Funny enough, that game lead to an early interest in WW2 history, and I'd ace any Social Studies classes discussing it because I'd be reading those chapters in my free time, all thanks to this silly, violent shooter I had no business playing.

You didn’t really “beat” arcade or most Atari games...maybe Haunted House? I think that game had an ending.

I was the oldest and first to get into games. I don’t remember an age without games. My parents didn’t play.

I think my grandfather had a Coleco in his rec room with this one golf game he’d play. He was a WWII vet. This would have been the early-to-mid 1980s.

The original gamer in the family was my father, which makes sense because my father was 19 at the time and I was born in 1982. He was obsessed with Asteroids in the arcade and, now that he can actually afford one, he even owns a working asteroids deluxe machine.

As for my introduction to video games, I remember in 87' my dad took us on a drive across the border to visit a Target in Bellingham, Washington. I was excited because he bought me a Ninja Turtles figure, but was completely unaware of what the actual purpose of the trip was for. We got home, I go and play with Donatello (don't remember if it was specifically him, but he was my favourite so that had to be the one I picked up) and I hear my Dad tell me to check out this new thing he purchased. It was an NES with a copy of Super Mario Brothers (the first game I beat) and the rest is history.

I was born in 1989. Growing up, my closest cousin, who's nearly three years older and who's lived very close to me my whole life, was ahead of our household in terms of games. They got an N64 first, and he got a Dreamcast - we never had more than one different console until we were late teenagers. I don't know if he played as many PC games as my sister and I did, but I'm pretty sure he'd be the first person in the family who was a "gamer". Neither of my parents or aunts and uncles have a clue.

My first console was the Sega Mega Drive, but I cannot say for sure that I ever actually "beat" a single game on that thing. We had several games - Sonic games, the Aladdin game, some sports games, maybe 10 in total - and maybe I finished a Sonic game. We also had PC games like Dizzy and Keen4E, no idea if I beat any of those. But the first game I can really remember beating was Lylat Wars on N64, which you can beat in less than an hour. I was probably seven. I didn't sit still for very long as a kid - I enjoyed running around outside and kicking a football as much as I enjoyed playing games, if not more. I would later be diagnosed with autism and ADHD, so I was never going to have the patience to complete a game of any real length until I got older. My sister was the only person in our family who could beat Ocarina of Time without a guide, or without throwing the N64 controller in rage. She also beat FF7 and maybe FF8, so she was the complete opposite to me. The first JRPG I beat was Eternal Sonata; I was probably 19 years old.

Playing games wasn't something that became more obsessive until I became a teenager, and stopped being so active. Then in my late teens I became a "hardcore gamer" - I discovered GameSpot in about '06, and that led to me becoming a part of the "culture", I guess. TESIV Oblivion was a game that changed my life, I bought an Xbox 360 in '07, and a PS4 and a gaming PC in 2010, all of which were landmark moments in my gaming life - suddenly I had a Steam library with hundreds of games, whereas I had no idea what Steam was when I installed Half-Life 2 on my mum's old desktop computer in 2004 (still one of my favourite games, top five probably). By this point, I was playing and beating tons of games, and most of the games that I'd count as my all-time favourites are from this period, so I guess it was my golden age. Compared to a lot of people, it seems like I had my golden age very late, but I still have many treasured memories of N64 and GameCube games, and even of Mega Drive games even though I was very young.

born in 86, my first games were on msDOS games like Commander Keen and Moraff's World, and Sega Master System games like Alex Kidd in Miracle World. also had old an old colecovision and intellivision.

I'm 29. So,I guess the original PlayStation was my prime time. I mean I had a sega genesis before the PlayStation came out but I didn't consider myself a gamer until the dawn of 3D.

I think games journalist (or more precisely editorialists) get a bad wrap. I'm sure Jeff and the crew have fun playing games they give a lukewarm review to, but they are writing to inform a consumer base. They are helping their readers answer the question, "should I buy this?" Because of that, game reviews are almost always inherently negative. They are critiques.

If you are at all familiar with RedLetterMedia, I was watching two gamers introduce a third to Outlast. It was somewhat a shit show and that is exactly what inspired me to make this thread.