It's my birthright.

It started out with a NES my brother bought with his paper route money. My Dad thought video games were the cause of all stupidity in the world and never let us play it. Then the parents got us a computer. For whatever reason, computer games were ok. Maybe because it came with Encyclopedia Britannica? Then, my uncle bought us Myst. Between that, Street fighter and King's Quest, my brother and I were doomed. Oh yeah, and doom :)

Always been a big Indiana Jones fan. First video game I played was Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis - my fate was sealed. ;-)

My father.

He used to play a lot of Starcraft: Brood War, Diablo 1/2, and Unreal Tournament back in the days when he was off from the work.

I only played Unreal Tournament because I was in that phase where I want to pew pew everything in sight. I strictly only played against AI because I don't know about online play.

I have been always PC gamer ever since.

Radio Shack Color Computer with Dungeons of Daggorath. I bought a C64 shortly after that, and that was all she wrote.

Was a gamer as a kid (just had some games around for me and my brother)
Went to college, didn't play games
Introduced to console gaming afterwards and haven't stopped gaming since!

Anything electronic has been the gee-whiz awesome-sauce since I was a kid

(borrowing from an old post)
I remember playing my first electronic games on:

-a simple hand-crafted computer with a tape drive in middle school. I count this because the inane little game was pre-recorded on the cassette

-displays of new games at Kmart (Pitfall!)

-the first arcades (including Pong, Donkey Kong, Qbert...)

- my Merlin (used a few white lights) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merlin_%28game%29

- a step-uncle's handheld "football game" - which was also just lights

- Simon (the color/sound matching toy.) Although my family didn't own one until one of our kids got one for Christmas, I had numerous opportunities to play with it most everywhere as a older kid/teen.

My step- grandparents had an Atari console that I could play when I visited, but I didn't own one an actual game console myself until the NES (unless you count Merlin.) Then we had the SNES, Sega GameGear, Nintendo Gameboy, Gameboy Color, Playstation 1, N64. Nintendo Gamecube, Gameboy SP, Nintendo DS Lite, Playstation 2, (original) Wii, and the kids own a single PlayStation 3 that they share with us for Netflix. Other than that, we used computers for our gaming as well as practical stuff. We still have all our consoles but the NES that we passed on to a friend in the early 90's. We regretted letting it go almost immediately, so never got rid of the others. Haven't bought many consoles games in some years now, but at least we still have all the old ones!

I still remember a wonky "TV computer" thing that didn't really work that was briefly passed on to me as a teen. I couldn't make it do much of anything beyond "error" noises- though I did fine with the Apple IIes at school. I am thinking that it was one of those overly ambitious early "consoles."

As for what hooked me into gaming for life, well, I was just as entranced by the blinking lights toys and early arcade titles as most people were back then, but it was the Interactive Fiction games from Infocom that solidly immersed me in a digital game-verse for the first time. I had access to them on the high school's Apple computers. Whenever I wasn't studying back then, I was playing Zork or Hitchhiker's Guide or something equally wonderful.

My mother got me into PC gaming through adventure games. First one I remember is Space Quest III, first one I remember finishing all by myself is King's Quest V. I did play some NES and SNES around the same time, mostly with friends, but I would say my mom and I playing adventure games together on the PC is what really got me into it.

Bonus second answer: I stopped gaming completely during my "party days" at around 22 years old. Didn't game at all for like three years. The game that got me back into it? Doom 3 of all things.

In primary when I see other kids have a game boy to play, it pique my interest and lead to a gamer birth. However I don't know if now I can be called a gamer.


How do you define a gamer?

Someone who play games most of the time?

Someone who buy a lot of games?

I buys a lot of games but hardly played 10% of them. It is ironic that your ability to buy games is inversely proportional to the time to play them.

As you spend more time at work, overtime, learn / polish new programming language or whatever skill set to improve your work performance thus you are more appreciated leading to a bigger wallet and can buy more games with it. However it will also mean less time spend on gaming.

I find myself many a time just leering at my virtual shelf imagining of all the fun I can have by playing it, and then...... that is just it as I am too tired, too little time to actually take one and play. I will just do some reading and retire to sleep.

It all started with NES :) One day my parents just bought it (even though I never asked them, not even sure I was aware of video games existence at that age :D) Was playing it till mid school probably when it broke. At the same time was playing PS at a friend and sometimes PC at another friend. And then some years later parents bought me my own PC.

I was born with an Atari 2600 in my house, so it all started there.

Strange way to be born. Much respect to your mother though!

If I remember right, both her and dad liked to game here and there.

I encountered the 2600 via various friends and family, but my first system was actually the Colecovision, which I got for Christmas 1982, along with it I received the Expansion Pack 1 (i.e. the 2600 expansion) and the 2600 game, Sky Jinks, not to mention the Colecovision pack-in, Donkey Kong. I eventually collected a lot of games for the Coleco.

Next was a C64, then NES (though I sold it after only a few months), then Amiga (500 then 600) and an SNES (though, with one exception, Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster Busts Out, I only rented games for it). Then came a PC, and another and another, and another, and another. After a 16 year break, finally bought another console, a PS3, and of course, if you want to be technical, I also play games on my android phone and tablet.

I still own a working Amiga 600 (if you can really call it that considering half of my games don't play because of its kickstarter version, not that I've checked recently, I imagine most of my disks have rotted) and the SNES.