Not my first memory, but an enduring one - watching my high school boyfriend play PacMan and Tron arcade games for HOURS on one quarter.
Not as exciting as it sounds.
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I disagree, moving to 5.25" drive was staggeringly faster than the tape drive we started with. And woe unto those who didnât rewind it all the way!
This is very similar to my earliest experience.
My very, very first experience: the elementary school had a teletype terminal to a computer at a university, one that required dialling the mainframe on a rotary phone and putting the handset on two rubber cups. Then we often played either Oregon Trail or Star Trek, amazed at the high tech.
Some time later, I recall first seeing Space War in a roller skating rink when I was there with the Cub Scouts for some outing or another. Everyone else was gathered around the air hockey table, but the vector graphics of that early video game system fascinated me.
In 1978 I discovered BYTE Magazine, and David Ahlâs BASIC Computer Games. About the same time we got a computer lab, outfitted with the Apple ][. And I discovered that I loved finding out how games worked more than I loved playing them, and the rest is history.
Brrrrr, chck! Screebleleebleeble, bleeeee! Happy days 
not my first gaming experience, but it was the only computer game I actually owned until my NES. I programmed it to play âRed River Valleyâ by keying in all the notes and rests from the script in the ownerâs manual. Running it was the first time I ever heard the tune lol. Speaking of music, the TV ad had an insanely catchy jingle (which will now be your earworm for the evening, heh heh.)
My first was probably some âgameâ we played in first grade ('80-'81) on a Commodore PET with tape drive (a staple of MI public schools then) where you guessed which house a person was in or something? it was only three options and one of them was a tepee. it sucked. But in second grade, we got to play Oregon Trail on those same computers and a cooler game IMO called Miner that nobody else has ever heard of. Although by that point I had played my friendâs Intellivision (impressive graphics but the games he had were wack, and that controller was god-awful) and Iâd fed a quarter into a PacMan console at a pizzaria.
Iâm not a gamer, though. Iâve always preferred pinball :^)
EDIT:
this was my true first, a kid on the plane the first time I flew (Piedmont Airlines) had one and that was when I was in preschool. His mom made him let me play.
My parents were part of a church bowling league in the 70âs-80âs, and every Sunday afternoon we went to a different bowling alley in various towns in our state, so over the course of a decade I got to watch as pinball was slowly replaced by the first minimal video games (Pong, Breakout) then began to take off with new (still minimal) games being introduced every year (Space Invaders, Asteroids), finally going color with games that seemed almost like movies to me (Donkey Kong.) Meanwhile home video games evolved from being electromechanical toys (there were a number of Mattel games that were not âvideoâ at all, like a racing game that had an actual 2-D scrolling road you had to slide a car back and forth over) to being little more than blinking LEDs (Electronic Quarterback, Merlin) to finally the Atari 2600, which reigned supreme for what seemed like years.
I got to watch all this grow, and it kind of boggles my mind now how quickly it all happened.
Remember this one? Good times.
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Tron was the first arcade game I actively hated. The 7-11 on the corner had it and Ms. Pac-Man. On Sunday mornings, I had to go fetch the newspaper, but got the change to do whatever with. In a few short months, I could play Ms. Pac-Man for at least an hour on one quarter. So many banana levels. Just look at 'em. Tron essentially ate my quarters.
First gaming, same as many other commentersâŚPong. It was a home version my dad brought home when I was 4 or 5. Shortly after, one of the local pizza joints got Space Invaders and Asteroids cabinets. Thusly, the course of history was set. Flash forward to present, and our house is stocked with Wii, Xbox and PS3 (not to mention a fairly kick-ass PC set up).
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Games We Hates, thatâs something I think we can all add to as wellâŚ
I would go with the Journey game, which I recognized early on as for the benefit of a band not worthy of their own game.
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The Infocom Game? I thought it rather linear.
No, the game starring the 1980âs band Journey. Even as a kid I recognized a marketing crossover.
http://www.arcade-museum.com/game_detail.php?game_id=8242
Did you stop believing?
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funnest.
game.
ever.
Iâm with you on that one. I liked the movie well enough at 12 (got it on DVD six years ago or so, and man did it not hold up, so I never bothered with the sequel), and I was excited to try the game when I found one at the arcade next to the 7-Eleven down the street from my house. Four games in one? Yowza!
And then I played it.
The lightcycles part was the only part that didnât feel derivative of other, better games. And it was too easy to be particularly interesting, once you figured out the patterns.
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I liked the âsequelâ (felt an awful lot like a reboot). It was fun, and The Dude really tied the movie together, if you know what I mean. Bumpinâ soundtrack, too, if you dig Daft Punk.
I was only 8 or 9 when that Tron machine was installed, and hadnât gotten enough time at the arcade to know that it was derivitive, plus I saw no reason to waste quarters in it when Ms. Pac-Manâs patterns practically jumped off the screen at me. 
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There have certainly been worse cinematic crimes against humanity. It really felt like there was a good awareness of the original 8-bit world that lived underneath the whole thing. I canât say it didnât roll out the standard tropes all along the line or that there were events that caught me by surprise, but if youâre on a plane and want to watch a fun popcorn movie you can do a lot worse.
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