My dad created a little dos menu for me with games on it, so i guess he was the ambassador. Eventhough he didn't play games himself, he got this PC through a digitalization project through his work and a collegue of him put something together for his kid & then gave my dad the floppy to also help me out.
But if you only ask about videogames in the console kind of way, then it was my neighbor that introduced me to the playstation & Gameboy after which i bought a PS2 myself.
We had a Famicom in the house all of a sudden one day. I'm thinking it was probably my dad who got it. After that though, every system except for the PS1 was purchased by me.
My father was an electrical engineer in the mid-1970s. He had a friend Ron who was into early DIY computers and pong games. I played my first TV pong game in 1976 at Ron's house during a very late night visit. My dad had another friend Biff, who was into early computers too, they both worked a Raytheon.
So, in a way, my dad and his friends were the ambassadors when I was five or six. Then in 1979 I got my Atari 2600 for Christmas. I had ONLY asked for a Radio Shack Pong w/ Light Gun unit that cost $99, but my parents spent the $275 for the Atari. My dad introduced me to that stuff, but he was never really into it - he just knew I would like video games. In the mid-1970s, I loved tv games, electro-mechanical games, and video arcade games.
Definitely my Dad. He had an Atari and Sega Master System that I loved to fool around with. Lotta Breakout and Combat. We weren't a wealthy family so most of my other gaming was done at friends down the block who had EVERYTHING. One day my dad came home with one of the smaller cheaper Sega Genesis units. I got this 6 pack cartridge of games for christmas that had Sonic 1, Golden Axe, Streets of Rage, Revenge of Shinobi, Super Hang On, and Columns. My Dad and I stayed up late one night playing all the way through Streets of Rage. We never gamed much after that and all he plays is golf games now but that is easily one of my favorite gaming memories.
In 1975, my dad read aloud to the family a newspaper article about video games and how they were going to revolutionize home entertainment. I have to hand it to my father, he was always into the latest technological gadgets and it doesn't surprise me the article caught his eye and he was so eager to share by reading the article aloud. Sadly, he died a year later and wasn't alive to see me to play on an Atari 2600 a few years later.
My dad would play games like Apeiron on Mac and even got into EA’s AR experiment Majestic for several months. He also made the legendary decision to take me to Toys R Us to buy a SNES while my mom was away at a work conference after being rebuffed for months that video games were absolutely not a good idea for me. He reasoned that all I talked about from pre-school was the hour of nap time that I never took and instead was secreted away to the office to get in 45 minutes or so of Freddie Fish and Putt Putt. Cool guy back then.
Maybe she was right, but here I am all these years later happily posting on a video game forum, so…whatever! As Squall would say.
Its funny that most say dad. Maybe it's telling of the age range of people, but the stats on gamers tells us woman play just as much as men, yet most dads in the past presented gaming to their children. These days I wonder if its different with so many woman streamers taking up a good portion of gaming and the interest they have in gaming. Maybe its why games in the past were so male centric and frowned on today for pushing sexy ladies etc lol.
My mom introduced me to her Atari 5200 when I was 4 in 94. And looking at the communities that I've associated myself with over the years, I think it's safe to say that it's been all downhill from there.
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