Game(s) That Got You Into Gaming

Well, Pokémon Gold was the first game I really played iirc and after that I just always played, from GBC to PS2 to NDS and eventually to PC.
I definitely played way more when I was a kid, but nowadays I play a lot more games. What got me into PC gaming was Sleeping Dogs and by now I think I have a much better idea of what games actually exist. I probably had like 10 games over the course of my childhood.

I don't have many memories of when I was 3 years old, but I do remember my uncle playing Pitfall, and I was truly amazed of what I was seeing on the TV.
Then my parents bought me a Family Game, which was like something like the NES but with far less good games.

View attached image.

Pitfall and Frogger on the Intellivision, and probably Simcity on the C64.

There were several games that I played on Atari and some home computers previously, but Zelda (I+II) and Mario Bros settled it. I've been a gamer ever since.

First Super Mario and Zelda 😍
And first mmorpg was Dark Age of Camelot 💖

Commodore 64. I'll never forget the first game that I saw on that machine:

Impossible Mission

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivHFP3dJAkM

I play many games before (coleco and such), and there's others games who make me love video games after, but the very first was in arcades:
TMNT (the 4 players cabinet) and Street Fighter II.

Btw: at this exact moment my 8 year old daughter is playing N64's Smash Bros (emulated) :D

Tempest (arcade) - I could play that for hours and hours. At home, probably Super Mario Bros, then Goldeneye and Age of Empires.

fallout 4 ❤️️

I've ALWAYS loved gaming, but it was Tomb Raider 2013 that made me fanatical about action-adventures. It really broadened my horizons.

Penetrator. The people at the shopping mall demoing the computer probably hated that kid that waited around always waiting to play that thing.

Yep, I'm old.

The first real games that cemented that I'd be a gamer forever was the original Sierra series ... King's Quest, Space Quest, Police Quest ...

I've been playing games since I was little, but I'd say that I kind of was a casual untill some point during my early teens. The thing is that I didn't really became more involved after playing some game in particular, it was after I started reading about games on the internet.

I spent waaaaaaaaay too much money in arcades, lets put it that way. :P

Believe it or not, Little Fighter 2.

Zelda Link's Awakening on the Game Boy. A friend brought it to school and I was so impressed I kept annoying my mom to buy it. I got it a few months later, the games started to pile up, I got a SNES after that, then other consoles. I got into PC gaming around 2006 thanks to a friend who showed me Civilization 4 (before that I only played emulators and free indie games on my PC).

Uhhhh... Probably Final Fantasy Mystic Quest and Final Fantasy 2 (at the time, it was known as 2 but now known as 4). The two first games I ever played the moment I was able to, and I haven't stopped gaming since.

Famicom Era:

Battle City
Super Mario Brothers
Tag Team Match: Muscle

PS1 Era:

Crash Team Racing
Monster Rancher 2
Crash Bandicoot Trilogy
Brigandine

We hat an Atari 2600 when I was a kid. My dad was into computers, so I got a hand-me-down TRS-80 and a bunch of games. I later go an NES and then SNES, but just casually played. I came back to PC gaming when I got his old 386 DX 25MHz. I was really into simulators like Microsoft Flight Sim, Falcon 3.0, and RPGs like the AD&D Gold Box games (Pool of Radiance) and Eye of the Beholder. I've been hooked on PC gaming, and I haven't owned a console since.

I'd say it would have to be RollerCoaster Tycoon. I've played so much of it from a disk copy my aunt sent us when I was, like... 5 years old maybe? Well, "played". My sister played it and we (younger siblings) watched at first, until I got old enough to actually understand how to play.

Before that though, I already played hours of some HP racing game demo or something that was pre-installed on my dad's computer. I don't remember the actual name of the game and I can't find it online in any case.

What really got my started into PC gaming though, was when I installed Steam to play the JC2 demo. Then I bought it, and then I played it, and then I was introduced to Steam sales, and well... you know how it goes. One thing leads to another and suddenly you own 500+ games and not sure how or when that happened.

The reason I got "serious" into gaming so late is simple - I did not own my own computer until pretty late into teenage-hood. That, and my dad didn't approve of spending time inside playing video games (or on the computer). Buuuut although he tried his best to drive me away from gaming, in the end it was just what I really loved and he eventually accepted it.

1. Old stuff (probably shareware) on our primitive PC. Joust, Paganitzu, etc.

2. My dad went to a computer show and brought home an accordion bundle display of various game/software CDs for our new CD-ROM drive. King's Quest V was in there. We couldn't beat it, and online walkthroughs were not a thing back then (at least that I knew of). Sometime later, my older sister had a party at our house, and her friend showed us through almost the entire game, instead of hanging out with her group. Ha ha. I loved the series -- but have still never played more than an hour or less of KQ 8. Sad, but true. The Odd Gentlemen's revival was a great trip down memory lane.

3. Sim City 2000. I played it at a friend's house, and had to get it. It went on my birthday wishlist, and my grandmother got it for me. Then it wouldn't run on our PC until my dad bought a gaming card. (I think that's what it was called.) He wasn't too thrilled about that. But I spent a lot of hours on that game. Lost a city or two I'd spent a lot of time on to a saving glitch, but overall, a great experience.

Edit: Now that I think about it, we did have an Atari (I think) system that resembled a TV with a keyboard mounted to it? We played games like Pole Position (or something like that) and a mountain climbing game. But I always lost the battle with older siblings to play on it. The PCs were when I started to get the time to get hooked.

Mario from Nes. Soleil from Sega Genesis.