It was huger then, but now it's a lot bigger in some different ways.

Nowadays we don't get movies like The Wizard, there's no cool gaming hotline, game tournaments are no longer really awesome special occasions (they're all over the place and boring now), the gaming mags are dead, and I don't have any Nintendo cereal, juices, and ice cream sammies.  Totally lame.  And now everybody is split up between 6 different systems, fostering different communities of fans that can't always communicate.  Same goes for different genres.  An FPS fan and an MMORPG fan would be speaking completely different languages.  Back then every single gamer in the world could talk about the warp whistles in a Mario game.

But back then we didn't know all our favorite developers by name, and they weren't playing video games live on the Oscars, on Oprah, in hospitals, military and police training facilities, and the White House.

I can say that the only times I've ever seen my mom play video games were the NES and the Wii.

But back then playing too many games and knowing way too much about video games made me a nerd.  Now it makes me accepted in an online nerd community.

Absolutely loved them, but I was only about 3 years old when I was playing them. Got the original PlayStation then in '96, and won a Nintendo 64 in...1999 probably.

The games we had on the Sega systems were perfect for someone my age: Sonic 2, Sonic and Knuckles, Alex Kidd, Streets of Rage and Golden Axe (ok, the last 2 probably weren't suited to my age group).
I picked up the Sega Mega Drive Ultimate Collection (think it is called Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection or something like that in the US) with Killzone 2 last year. SMDUC has gotten much more play time, and that is including the solid 2 months of so I put into KZ2 before falling prey to BFBC (the first one) again :)

Subscriber since issue 1, baby!  I was rocking Erdrick's Armor before the rise of bad hairdo RPGs.

My first console was an Atari 2600. I stopped console gaming though when I recieved my first C=64. Actually didnt get back into consoles until the SNES.

Atari 2600 around '85-86 (though not many memories, since I was only 2-3 years old) then into PC gaming (loved Alley Cat) around '88.

My parents (in particular my mum) have been gaming since the late 70s.

Of course!
It all started out with a monochrome pong game at a friend's place. Then I tried Atari2600 and Commodore64 at other friends' places. We then got some Game & Watch and an NES.

Good times.

Yep, Commodore 64 (actually stated on the 5Kb Vic 20 with Snackman) for the most part. Though borrowed the Sinclair ZX81 (I think that's what it was called) off a friend from time to time.

Most memorable games:
Arkon
Apache (Gunship)
Paradroid (FTW!!)
Sword of Fargol
Defender of the Crown (PS2 reboot was pretty good, but I didn't like the Robin Hood centric aspect to it)
The Impossible Mission (NOT the same as Mission Impossible)

I think we got an Amiga 500 at some point.

Good times

being born in 1984..not until five years then..yeah i got my hands on prince of persia and Accolade Car racing series...

I would be if I were alive... but I was born in the 90's with the first system I played being from the 80's - the NES.