Even use IE?
We had THE pong game. We then got a 2600 and I spent HOURS on Combat and Defender…and I still remember the excitement when Pac Man was released, it was amazing they could take that and squish it into a 2600.
I fondly remember Droll on the Apple ][. Fondly.
We had that too, the Sears Tele-whatever it was called. With Hockey (Pong), Tennis (Pong), Jai-Ali (Pong), and Pong (Pong). The next year we got an Atari 2600 and it was never seen again. [Sidetrack]I actually got E.T. for the Atari 2600 when it came out - christmas gift. It was horrible. But a lot of the games were in the early years.[/Sidetrack]
RNATB, The Intellevision was better in terms of processing power, and their big hook IIRC, was the sports games, which were arguably better than the dots and blobs in atari games. There were some great Intellevision games, but not that many of them compared to the 2600, which must have thousands of titles released for it. Which system was better is kind of comparing apples and oranges. What criteria are you using to judge? If I was stranded in a remote place with only one or the other, I’d take the 2600 just on the number of games. They were both good systems for their time.
Just wanted to mention that in MC Frontalot’s song, “Nerdcore Rising” (YouTube), MC Stephen Hawking declares that nerdcore rappers “Got more game than a 2600” 
Yeah, I clicked on that in the Wiki, and uh, No.
First experience outside of arcades was super mario brothers for NES.
First obsessively played game was Tetris
Most important childhood game was final fantasy 3 (6j)
First game I bought with my own money was Chrono Trigger
First computer game was civilization 2. That brought “obsessive” to a whole new level. Holy christ, the time I spent (spend!) on that game…
The very first game I can remember playing was River Raid for the Atari 2600, many moons ago.
First computer game was Chuck Yeagers Flight Simulator.
First game I got completely, totally, irrevocably obsessed over was Tie Fighter.
[aside about Intellivision vs. 2600]
The Intellivision was better than the 2600 in some ways, worse in others. When the Intellivision was new, competing games on the 2600 were quite primitive, and the Intellivision was quite a bit better. However, as time went on and programmers got used to the 2600, I’d argue that the 2600 holds the edge.
As you note, the Intellivision had a more powerful processor; it’s technically the first 16-bit game system, too. However, the system was saddled with a pokey graphics chip which made the system relatively slow, and severely limited the use of color (the sprites are mono!), both of which made the system less adept at playing arcade/action games… one of the reasons why the system ended up relying more heavily on sports and strategy games. The Intellivision has the edge on background graphics, and it’s easier to move sprites vertically than on the 2600; the 2600 has the edge on sprites (especially as programming techniques matured) and screen refresh speed.
The controllers were more capable than the stock 2600 joystick (if for nothing else than having two fire buttons standard), but again weren’t too suited for action games. The inability to plug in different controllers also limited options; there’s no option to use proportional controls, which rendered games like Auto Racing much more difficult to play than they should have been. The 2600 could use a keypad/joystick combo (see Star Raiders), paddles, driving controllers, and even had a light gun game near the end of its life.
The Intellivision BIOS made the system far more easy to program than the 2600, especially by taking the burden of creating a graphics kernel off of the programmer but also made it difficult to wring any new capabilities out of the system; games tend to look the same. The 2600 has no BIOS, and programmers have to render the screen by scanline (!), but it also allows programmers to create game-specific kernels instead of having to alter their games to fit the BIOS.
If games are created to fit the capabilities of the system, the Intellivision can still shine; I seriously doubt a game like Hover Force could be done on the 2600. The 2600, though, is a more open and versatile system, and can play a wider variety of games.[/aside]
That out of the way…
…my first video game memories are of being propped up on my mom’s knee to play some black and white games at an arcade-- this would be in the mid-1970s. I also got to play the Atari Video Pinball and Super Pong systems at her job; she worked at a mental health center that specialized in treating children, and they had a game room with the latest treats.
The first system I had was one of those junky no-name Pong-clones built around the GI AY-3-8500 game chip; my mom got it at a garage sale. Eventually I got an Atari 2600 packed with Combat, and got Chopper Command the same day. A year or so later, I was given another 2600 with a bundle of cartridges (uncle had upgraded to the ColecoVision, and I guess he wasn’t aware that there was an adapter to play 2600 games for it), and I traded the system and duplicate cartridges to a friend for his Odyssey 2 collection.
The first computer game I ever played… I have no idea. Something in BASIC on a Teletype connected to a mainframe, I imagine. Probably Hamurabi (sic). I had David Ahl’s book of type-in games collected from Creative Computing, and a subscription to Family Computing, at an early age, and before I had my own computer. The first game I purchased for my first computer was River Raid for the Atari 8-bit systems; that one blew the minds of my 2600/Intellivision/TRS-80 Coco owning friends. When I upgraded to the Commodore 128 later, I purchased a ton of games that same day-- Skyfox, Superman, Spy vs. Spy I & II, Deceptor, Hacker, and more.
The first arcade game I ever owned was a pinball machine-- Gottlieb’s Airport. First video arcade game was Karate Champ, picked up at an arcade auction in 1992. Minutes later, I also picked up Satan’s Hollow and 1943.
The first game I remember was Pac-man on the Atari 2600. It came bundled at the time we got it. I hadn’t heard the negative press about it, so we actually loved it. Played it to death, too.
The first PC game I remember was a text adventure, and I can not(for the life of me) remember it’s name. I remember that you started out in front of a building, I think and if you walked east, you would get the message, “You are near the woods…and a storm is brewing”.
I wish we could locate that game. It wasn’t Zork or any big name game, either. I think it was scifi themed.
Can’t remember the name.
Atari 2600: River Raid, keystone cops, Yars Revenge were some of my favorites.
In case anybody’s feeling nostalgic:
When I was 10 I got my first PC, a 286 computer, and it came loaded with a couple of games - Golden Axe, a pac-man style game where you play as Tom Sawyer and collect apples and Tetris. My first exposure was watching a neighbour play Super Mario Brothers on the NES when I was 4 or 5.
The first computer games I ever bought are Quest for Glory (VGA) and HeroQuest (based off the board game…Ironically, I could have ended up getting Hero’s Quest and HeroQuest :D)
I vividly remember an isometric shoot’em up called Zaxxon. And then there was Digger, which I could play for hours, and have the music stuck in my head for even longer : Popcorn, on an loop. Ti tu ti tu tu ti tu, ti tu ti tu tu ti tu…
A bit later : Gato, Bushido, Pit Stop, Gunship, Sopwith, Lode Runner, Asteroids and the old classic, Space Invaders.
I could have gone all day … or all of my life, with out needing to know that. I don’t need another time suck.
I thought that was done by Hot Butter?
Atari was my first system, as I see it was for many others. The top 4 I can remember playing endlessly were Pitfall, Q-bert, Space Invaders, and Ms. Pacman.
The Hot Butter version is probably more famous, but it was a cover. Cite.
Holy Crap! I totally forgot about that game (and all the page flipping through the manual to fight the copyright protection). I now recall playing that one many hours on my first Acer computer, which also came w/ MS Encarta, the first time I’d ever seen that much video and information on one piece of medium. Excuse me while I flush w/ nostalgia. 
So, A One Hit Wonder, gets a One Hit, as a cover?
I think I just found out my dream job.
We had a Pong, and an Atari 2600, but the early video games that were really formative for me were those from Infocom. Discovering those was like learning to read all over again.
Had 'em all.
Pong. Atari 2600. I had a Timex-Sinclair 1000, which had a great dungeon game the name I can’t recall. Then a TI-99/4A with many games including the truly balls-to-the-wall awesome Parsec. I had a Vectrex, which rocked. Had unlimited access to my grandfather’s C-64 and C-128, which had fricking amazing games. Later the SNES, XBox, and Wii.
Most importantly, we got in on the PC thing pretty early and if you can think of any good PC game released from 1981 on up, I have played them all. I still remember Christmas 1990 (1991? I think - it was around there) when I got Civilization. Holy shit. My father and I played it all day, almost refusing to attend Christmas dinner and sprinting back to the PC and playing until 5 AM and then getting up at 8 to play more.