My first gaming system was the Intellevision, and I have to admit that I still miss it more than a little. The games were quite basic, but well designed and very fun. The Intellevision gave way to the original Nintendo, and I spent many, many hours with that system as well. Techmo Super Bowl still stands up to me as one of the most enjoyable football games ever made. It's not at all realistic, but it's fun to play. This is a common problem I've found with newer games and gaming systems - although they're hyper-realistic, they require (due to the realism) so much specialized knowledge, or gaming skill, that they become very difficult to master unless you spend hundreds of hours on them. While that immersive gaming experience may be good for some, it puts those of us who are more than-casual but less-than dedicated gamers in a difficult spot. The games we have time for (the sort of stuff you find on Yahoo! games or whatever) don't have much in the way of engaging story lines, but the games that we would enjoy are so hard to master that they're impossible to just pick up and learn in a few hours. The one gaming series that stands out as bridging those gaps, in my mind, is the Final Fantasy series (particularly X - I haven't played XII yet so I can't comment on it). The game is fairly intuitive and easy to pick up, and can be completed fairly quickly if you play it in a linear fashion (but it has tons of side-quests if you prefer to become more involved). The basic rules are easy to learn, but if you want to make them more complicated, you certainly can. This is the kind of game that should be held up for emulation - something that works on many different levels, for many different audiences.

Ce n'est pas une pipe. C'est une signature.

I friggin had PONG.  I think it was on Atari.  I also had a Texas Instruments game system too.  This was influential on me.  While it didn't really get enough playing it first exposed me to the concept of programming.  So in 1983, I was 13 almost 14 years old, trying to use BASIC to run simple game programs that I read in a computer magazine.  I was proud that it worked as designed.  I didn't write the program, but rather copied it.  I had no idea what most fo the comments were, but some of them I did.  And it came with a little manual that explained a little about Basic graphics, sounds and whatnot.  I hadn't thought about how influential that was at age 13, but here I am now, a prorgrammer.  Not a very good one, mind you, but still in the business.  

Later on I got play station and got heavily into the Tomb Raider series.  Now I have PS2 and the greatest game ever is John Madden 05.  I have played that game more than any other.  

I had a fond recollection of a Playstation (the original boxy grey PS1) demo kiosk showing the main menu/opening/attract mode for Crash Bandicoot. I was earning a reliable paycheck, the system was cheap enough that I could afford it, I wanted to do something nice for myself...

Then I started wondering if "game system" necessarily meant console. At the time I had an Apple IIGS which, although ultimately not suited to fast-paced gaming, delivered on some fun.

Then I thought back farther, because my first computer was a TRS-80 model 1 which, although its state of gaming was sad, it could do a little.

(Say! Anyone remember SoftSide or Creative Computing magazines? They contained the BASIC program listings, and if you didn't spring for the disk with your subscription, you had to type the code in yourself. A lot harder to work with than a disk or cartridge, especially if you typoed, but technically some of it was games.)

Then I remembered the thing I had before that: the Channel F, the very first commercial cartridge-using game system produced. Atari started designing theirs first, but Fairchild was first to market. (As they say, "the early bird catches the worm, but the second rat gets the cheese.")

The Channel F also had a feature I haven't seen in any other system, and the link above has it wrong: the joystick wasn't just four-way. it could do diagonals (combinations of the first four directions), pull up, push down, and twist clockwise or counterclockwise. What they did depended on the game inserted. In that way, the Channel F had another leg-up on Atari, which had the 4/8-way joystick and a fire button. But in ways, perhaps that was easier to work with.

Damn, I miss that eight-way stick...

I shall admit to my geeky roots and say that my first video game was Pong, based on a set of joysticks I helped my Dad build in 1976.  

Then I moved on to computers that included games.  The first was the TI99, which had space invaders if I recall correctly.  I stuck to computer-based gaming mostly.  The concept of buying a special console just for games always seemed odd to me.

Thalia

   I haven't played much console since the Atari days. Once the controllers got beyond a button and a mover (joystick, ball, dial), the limits of my manual dexterity became quite apparent. Sure, I could have taught myself, but at the time- and since- the time and money just weren't available. Now I have the money, and a chance to get games and a console for real cheap, but the urge just hasn't happened. Civ takes up too much of my time as it is!
    I've heard that mocking old games is fairly common on the Net, but this is the one place I've been following that's done so that I know about. A bit immature at times, like all their content, but fairly savvy criticism of game play as well. Scroll down and check out the entry for Law of the West entry for a good example. If the humor isn't for you, that's understandable, but I like it.

Ex ignorantia ad sapientiam; e luce ad tenebras

My parents wanted to try and get me interested in programming, but all I wanted to do on it was play Parsec.  It wasn't until halfway through grad school, when I found out how to make the little arm move back and forth using software I wrote, that I really got into comptuers.  So, that venerable machine was wasted on lots of cheap computer games that I played, until the Nintendo came out.

The best overlooked game for the 8-bit Nintendo is Zanac, a shooter with an AI system that would adapt itself to your play style.  Waste more bullets, or get more useful special weapons, and it meant you were getting tougher enemies.  Here's a run on the final level.  The big drawback of it was the sound, which must have been on a one-minute loop.

I also had an original Game Boy, but I only really remember playing Tetris on it (this was the game that came free with my unit), especially head-to-head over the link cable with my friends before school.  After school, we would hit the arcade and play four-man Cyberball, the game that got me interested in real-life football.  When I was a senior, I picked up an Atari Lynx, which I need to sell on eBay sometime soon.  The best games that I got for that were the standard Klax and Chip's Challenge.  With that I exited the 3rd Generation, and didn't start playing again on the console until the PS2 came out.

(is 3fingerspointback)

Several  old ads from back in the day...even an expert guide for Berzerk

It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine

The games I feel most nostalgic about are the old Sierra "quest" series of games: Space Quest, King's Quest, and Police Quest, mostly.  The Quest for Glory series was fun, too, and was neat in that you could give your character a name and stats, and at the end of each game, save that character and "import" it into the next game in the series.  

I'll also remember these games (particularly King's Quest and Space Quest) with a particular poignancy because pretty much the only time I ever got along with or had anything in common with my father after the age of 5 or so was when we were playing those games.

The Anonymous Game Developers (formerly Tierra Entertainment) have made VGA remakes of KQ1, KQ2, and they're working on QFG2 right now.  If you've never played Sierra games, you can find a lot of them on abandonware sites for free, and the remakes of KQ1 and 2 I spoke of are free to help avoid the wrath of Sierra.  

In regione caecorum, rex est luscus.