with the wrapping up of Generation 7, I've now lived through three generations of consoles. What about you? How many of you have been there since the very beginning?

I was born in the 2600 era and started with one.

My first console was from on era when no one talked about generations, having four colors on the screen was considered revolutionary, and cartridges had the size of books. So I guess my answer is "all of them" - but I only ever owned that first console, and a bit later an Atari 2600. After that I switched to computers.

I had a box with 2 slides and a knob. No joke. I've been here from the very beginning.

Our first console was a Coleco Telstar. One of those things that just played Pong-type games and instead of controllers it featured knobs on either side of the console.

"Lived" through? All of them - I was a kid when Pong hit the shelves. Owned? Not counting the aforementioned Pong (and the Mattel handhelds shortly after) I've had a Sega Genesis, PS1, GameBoy... I think that's it. Genesis and GameBoy (console-lite) were about the same time period, right? That would make it two generations owned.

All of them, and owned them.

I had a Magnavox Odyssey, so I've been part of the hobby as long as it has existed. I've owned or worked with virtually all of the first home computers as well. And programmed on time-sharing mainframes.

So I come from the age before consumer computers. My DNA is pure, and will be the only thing that saves us when the machines turn on humanity.

I stopped counting after NES.

I had a 2600 right before the NES came out and could barely play it, so I started there.

All of them. I had a pong-clone console.

I always had a computer (starting with VIC-20) rather than a console until NES... then I got a PS-one shortly after I got married :)

I always went to my friends' places to play Atari, Intellivision or Coleco.

Not sure if I should count Timex Challenger game watch...

NES was my first console. I also had a Sega Master System. But after those, my next console was Xbox 360. And I'm probably stopping there.

All orf them. From the original console (Pong) to now. Best years of consoles was in the 90's: Sega Dreamcast, 3DO, Atari Jaguar, Playstation, Nintendo 64, NeoGeo. There were a lot of consoles, and they offered a little bit of everything.

So when did the first console generation start? End of 70s or early 80s I presume, back when they were not called "console games" but either "TV games" or "video games"? I think people started calling them "console games" when the Japanese took over, from NES onwards or so?

I guess I have lived through all console generations then. The first console I had myself was a Playstation though, mainly because before that I was more of a computer gamer than "video gamer".

At the moment I am not looking forward to buy a console, mainly because nowadays they seem to share the same genres as PCs. It was more interesting still in Playstation and PS2 times when PCs and consoles still had distinctive styles in games, complementing each other. I guess the western XBox changed that.

EDIT: Apparently the first generation started from 1972 then:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console#First_generation

All 8. IMO the greatest generation of gaming was the 6th. In terms of graphics and complexity for games, the newer systems shattered what had been done before on previous consoles for each company (except in Microsofts case, which they just entered the market). Console makers started focusing on making consoles more PC like (adding netwrok and online abilities, hard drives and large memory cards, and early multimedia features like DVD playback in 5.1 surround) and the great arms race saw one console maker leave the market (The Dreamcast may have failed but it had a ton of innovative titles that even had unique peripherals. If you think about it, the Wii took that to the next level). Everyone and their cousin had a PS2 and the Xbox would change the way consoles are designed forever (the xbox was the most powerful system in the group. Out of all the consoles only it was deemed worthy enough to run Doom 3 at the time, a technical marvel in of itself).