What's the first video game that you've ever purchased? Do you still remember the very first time you've ever handed out some of your very own crisp green bills to someone over the counter or in another fashion? The first game, or I should say games I've ever bought, were Contra and Elevator Action. I was 9 at the time when my birthday just passed. With the $25 I received as a birthday gift, I spent the money on both games that were being sold amongst many NES titles at a garage sale.

That day is one I'll never forget either, because it's also the first time I saw Super Mario Bros. 3 in action. I went into the family's house because the people outside said there were more games inside the house if I wanted to check them out for purchase. In the boys' room where the games were located, the young guy sitting there was in the middle of playing Super Mario Bros. 3. The box was a bright yellow, and obviously very attractive. The game in action was gorgeous. I asked if I could buy that game, and it's still one of the most disappointing times when I've ever been told "No."

My parents used to buy all my games for me, but then when I requested Final Fantasy III they refused because of the $70+ price tag.

Man that took a while to save up for, but I do believe that was my first gaming purchase on my own dollar.

Ah yes, the expensive days of the cartridge. I remember the first time my family had our own garage sale, we made a total of $100 (or around it, anyway). My Mom took us to Toys "R" Us first thing where we bought two NES games. Those were Super Mario Bros. 2 and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Of course, NES games were $50 each back in those days (I think, anyway) so it's sort of an unrelated story.

But, the first SNES game I ever bought myself I believe was Bram Stoker's Dracula. Other games I bought myself were Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars. Those were the days when I first started making my own money, and when I saved up over $300 for a month in order to buy my very own PlayStation (also the first console I bought myself).

I think Super Mario RPG was a little less for me, maybe $75. I can't really remember those details either. Before the days of 32-bit though, the first gaming platform I ever bought with my own money was a Sega Game Gear. That was back in 1993 I think when I picked one up from Kaybee's. I had a small collection of maybe 6-12 games before I decided to sell the thing later on. The only games I can really remember playing was a Sonic game and a Mickey Mouse game, which weren't bad games but indeed a pain to play back when the lighting options like on the GBA SP and DS weren't yet a reality.

I distinctly remember buying Pool of Radiance for my Apple back in the late 80's. I've still got the box and original receipt at my parent's house. There was this little software shop near the mall that had a few dozen computer games and programs in it, and I bought it there. Shops like that don't exist any more.

Castle Wolfenstein for the Atari 800.

Touchdown Football for the PCjr.

Er...I believe mine was Twisted Metal for PS1, haha. And the first console I actually bought was the 360. In my defense though, my parents never let me work until after high school, the Xbox was a Christmas present for me and my brothers, and my dad bought them a PS2 one day because our PS1 was broke and it was backwards compatible.

Oh, and I never got a steady allowance either. I was wondering how some of you bought games at age 9 and then it hit me! Most normal people got allowances!

I didn't have an allowance either. Instead, I'd get paid for performing miscellaneous duties. Yard work, mostly.

I had a very meager allowance, however, I was given small amounts of money for various chores around the house.

Most of my money came from relatives on my B-day.

Err I was an adult back in the day. DOH!

My first was the original 8" floppy of Zork. Played it on a home-grown computer before computers were made readily available in stores.

Man that was fun!



OldDoc

Do you remember the little black stickers they used to give you with a box of 5.25" disks so that you could copy protect them?

Yeah I remember those.

My first gaming system was a Texas Instruments TI99/4A computer. It was programmable with either a verison of basic (TI Basic/TI Extended Basic) or assembly code -- suffice to say, I didn't learn the assembly language. It had all of I believe 32k of memory which was impressive at the time.

It used cartridges for most software, but could also read from acsette tapes (it even had a 300 baud cradle modem). The disk drive was a several-hundred-dollar peripheral that was as big as a modern tower case and held huge "memory expansion" cards, so I think that 32k may have been 16k of base memory and another 16k of expanded memory. The disk drive took 5.25" floppies, single side, single density.

Yep, we've come a long way. I don't think I actually bought any software for that system, but I did convince my dad to buy a few things, including a text adventure collection and my first true RPG, a game called "Legends" that was actually pretty complex. It had four cahracters (fighter ranger, cleric, wizard I think), an overworld with a main city, and several dungeons. The overworld info was on one disc and the dungeons on another. It actually saved your info on the game disc so we made a backup to always have a fresh game.

Yeah it was. It was actually pretty complex for the time... this must have been the mid '80s, right before Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy hit the NES.

There were random battles, and while you would only fight one kiond of monster at a time you would sometimes fight more than one of them. The battles were crudely animated, you had a very rudimentary inventory (if you picked up and kept a weapon, you'd lose the one you were using), a huge list of spells, and interactive dungeons with puzzles and "secret" passages. The overworld and each dungeon took up a screen but didn't scroll, but thegame felt really big.

I don't think I ever beat it. It was actually a hard game because there was this one particularly tough monster that could pop up any time in the overworld, so if you got unlucky you could get squashed.

It's really hard to find any info on that game. I actually still had my TI and the disks up until a few years ago, but the disks were so old and in storage for so long that the data was corrupted and I couldn't load them anymore. I'd love to go back and play it again. Then again, maybe it's for the best, maybe my nostalgia is better than how I'd actually feel about the game today.

I remember getting Atari and Pong for Christmas one year, and then Coleco vision, which came with Donkey Kong, but the first game I clearly remember buying that I really enjoyed was when I bought some new game system called Nintendo. I bought a game called the Legend of Zelda. Looking back, I guess if I held onto it, it probably would have sold to a collector. Last year, my son bought Legend of Zelda for his Nintendo SP , and was amazed that I knew all about the game!

These days I only wish I held onto my Super NES copy of Chrono Trigger. That would've made me a pretty penny had I known it would become a collector's item.