What is the oldest game you have personally experienced, and how did you find the experience of playing something so old?

To make things more interesting, this also means the age of the specific version of the game, so like a modern compilation of 70s games doesn't count.

I guess it's Pong, although I've only played the original via compilations like Atari Anthology or via modern hardware like Arcade1Up. Or this thing at my local bar/arcade:

I think the oldest game I've played on original hardware is Asteroids. And it remains a gem, 46 years later.

The original Donkey Kong arcade game, which made me appreciate modern games by being way harder.

I've been playing current games since the early 1980s. My first first "favorite" game was Pitfall on Atari 2600. I played that back when it was new.

I've never really been into playing games more than a generation or so behind the current gen. In my opinion, gaming has continued to get better and better with time. So going backwards is never really made sense to me.

That said, I have played Halo CE recently. So that 20 plus-year-old title would probably be about as far back as I've ever gone, relative to the current generation. I enjoy that experience for nostalgia's sake. But, I much prefer modern controls. And that's really why I avoid going backwards. The inability to control the camera and a lot of older games, less than ideal control schemes, is a not as good physics and gameplay mechanics, and the like really just turned me off. It's often hard for me to enjoy an older game, because I just think about how much better it would be if it were made today.

Probably something like the original Super Mario Bros on the NES.
It wasn't an old game when I played it at the time, and it's possibly the first game I played.

Pong on a old style Pong arcade, wood panel sides and a big yellow front and 2 knobs I think. It was not exactly new when I played it tho I was a kid. Pong is Pong. Oldest console I played is Atari 2600 but not touched one in decades. Most unique old console I played was a Vectrex but again been decades.

The oldest would be when I was about 4 or 5 years old, at my aunt's place. My best guess would be it was a Philips Videopac G7000. I remember being confused... Not fun, can we watch cartoons instead.

Pit Stop on Atari is the first console game I can remember playing at a friend's house, it wasn't fun either. Waiting for your turn, then not knowing how to operate it, crash and pass on the controller. 

The first game I sort of enjoyed was Space Invaders in the canteen at sports. But mostly watch others play, then suck at it. 

At the time we also had one of the first PCs, the game I remember playing first on that is Alley Cat.

Experience was, this is ugly, but kinda fun. No clue what I was doing though. Still don't know what the goal of that game was haha.


MSX got me into gaming though, Konami / Athletic Land

That felt magical, music, colors, responsive, clear goals.

The first video game I ever played was the arcade of Pac-Man in 1980 and it was instantly one of those moments where I knew this was going to be an entertainment medium of the future. The sights and sounds were unlike anything else I'd ever experienced at the time and it was so addictive to play.  I couldn't stop thinking about playing it again and doing better next time.

But the oldest game I've ever played is probably Space Invaders (arcade), which released in 1978, but I didn't actually play it until after Pac-Man had already made its impression on me.

I've played "Road Runner" on an Atari 5200, a bunch of games on my first system (a Commodore 64), and the original "Pong" that first hooked up to a TV. I believe the "Pong" was a about a decade older than myself, and signaled the testing, and later intention, of releasing machines that didn't need an arcade due to sheer size and business models centered around coin slots or tokens.

An old off-brand Pong TV console from the 1970s. At the time, it was just neat making things move on a TV screen, plus it was something my family would play with me.

We also had a TRS-80, which was a computer platform that made its debut in 1977. The games I had on that were clones of popular arcade games. There was a Pac-Man clone, a Frogger clone, a Scramble clone, and a Galaxian clone. I actually liked the clones of Galaxian (Galaxy Invasion) and Scramble (Penetrator) better than the arcade originals.

The first actual game I can remember playing, possibly except for the TRS-80 stuff, was Donkey Kong in the arcade.