Ask the Game Trust: The First Game You Bought
2/5/2009 4:57 PM | 19 Comments | Page 7 of 7
A few years later, my brother and I started renting an NES from a nearby furniture store/video rental place on weekends. We played
Punch-Out!! until our eyes practically bled. We cried when it was time to take the NES back to the store. I think that if I'd had more access to videogames when I was a kid, if my parents had bought me the 2600 when I wanted one, I don't think I would have become so obsessed with games or ended up working in this field as an adult. It was the coveting of videogames -- the longing, the days and nights of pining -- that made me who I am today.
Gus Mastrapa: I can't, for the life of me, remember the first videogame I paid for with my own money. I can remember the first record I bought (Van Halen's "1984"), the first concert I attended (David Lee Roth and Cinderella) and the first R-rated movie for which I was able to purchase a ticket without adult supervision ("Lethal Weapon"), but my first videogame is a big blank.
I think that says a lot about the state of games and my relationship to them at that time. I came of age during the heyday of Atari. And, honestly, the games weren't all that great. I was thrilled to play these games at home, but the arcade was always where it was at. Home gaming, back then, was always a stopgap between visits to the arcade. Besides, none of those Atari games really ever got their hooks into me emotionally. Not in the same way that something like
The Legend of Zelda did much later. So there it is: I have no special affection for my first videogame. I have fond memories of playing them, but no recollection of scraping up the money to buy my first. Kind of sad.
