1981: Donkey Kong was the first video game I can remember playing. I lived in a small town in Arizona and the local reservation commissary had DK, Dig-Dug, and Ms. Pac-Man. My mom also started letting me play on her Radio Shack TRS-80 computer, with glorious monochrome knockoffs of all the arcade greats. One of my favorites was a 1979 BASIC game called Bee Wary, where you were a bee trying to sting a spider while not getting eaten.
1983: My dad got a TI-99/4A, which was our first home color computer. It had a library of good games. My cousin had a 2600.
1986: My cousin and I spent the summer at my uncle's house playing his Atari 130XE computer, which had some really good arcade ports as well as a lot of original titles. It was the best gaming machine of the 80s outside of the NES. A few months later, my dad got my mother one. My uncle hooked me up with a shit ton of games. I wanted a Coleco tabletop DK game but my folks wouldnt get me one.
1987: My best friend got a NES with SMB/Duck Hunt/Gyromite, Zelda, Metroid, and Kid Icarus. I spent so much time there his parents got tired of me. My teacher's husband and I corresponded through notes delivered by my teacher on Zelda game tips.
1988: I got a few LCD games, including a Nintendo G&W Balloon Fight.
1989: I got a Game Boy with Tetris and Super Mario Land
1991: I got a PC. I liked Sim City, and SimAnt, but my favorite PC game was PC-Hack, which today exists as Nethack,. I always wanted the Ultima games having played Ultima: Exodus on my friend's NES. My favorite arcade games was The Simpsons.
1994: I hung out at the arcades as much as I could playing Mortal Kombat II. I got a SNES with A Link to the Past and Mortal Kombat II.
1995: My dad had heart surgery. His home physical therapist brought me her son's copy of Final Fantasy III (VI). I was hooked.
1996: Nintendo 64 with Super Mario 64, was waiting for Zelda 64 and Earthbound 64 (which got cancelled and moved to the GBA, it still hasn't come out here).
1998: I bought a PS1 with my first paycheck so I could play Final Fantasy VII. I bought a shit ton of Squaresoft games that year. I still have most of them. And of course the gold cartridge of Ocarina of Time. I also got a Game Boy Color and Pokemon Red.
1999: Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete, a game I'd wanted since I saw the Sega CD ads. I got FF8 instead of a Dreamcast.
2000: Final Fantasy IX and Majora's Mask.
2001: I got a PS2 and Final Fantasy X for Christmas. I bought myself a GBA.
2002: Virtua Fighter and Kingdom Hearts were my big games that year. I also got A Link to the Past for GBA.
2003: I got a Gamecube for my birthday, got Wind Waker, Skies of Arcadia Legends, and Soulcalibur.
2004: This was a pretty crappy year for me. Tales of Symphonia and Harvest Moon: AWL got me through it.
2005: Resident Evil 4 at the beginning of the year, Dragon Quest VIII at the end of the year. I started going out with my wife that year, she and her daughter played DQVIII with me. She also got me FFXI.
2006: Okami, FFXII, and Twilight Princess. I wanted a Wii but they were sold out. My wife also got me a DS Lite and a bunch of DS games.
2007: I finally found a Wii. I got a Xbox 360 later on so I could play Virtua Fighter 5 Online.
2008: Fallout 3, Tales of Vesperia.
2009: I got a PS3 and Valkyria Chronicles. My wife got me Demon's Souls.
2010: Fallout: New Vegas, Yakuza 3. At that time, though, my interest in gaming was on the wane. Not much good coming out of Japan and I was tired of FPSs and TPSs.
2011: Still was in kind of a gaming slump. I got Mortal Kombat, but that was the time of the big PSN outage. Skyward Sword was my big game that year.
2012: Tales of Graces f and a few other games. I think there was a PS3 version of The Simpsons.
2013: So many great games like Ni no Kuni, Tales of Xillia, Dragon's Crown, A Link Between Worlds, Wind Waker HD My wife got me a Wii U for my birthday and a PS4 for Christmas.
2014: I got a PS TV with Tales of Hearts R. Bayonetta 2 was my favorite game of the year.
2015: FF Type-O, MKX, Fallout 4, Trails of Cold Steel, Super Mario Maker.
2016: FFXV, Odin Sphere
2017: I got a Switch for Christmas. Breath of the Wild has been one of my most played games of my entire life.
2018: Mostly gaming on the Switch, still playing BOTW. Looking forward to Valkyria Chronicles 4.

You wanna know how much my mom was against video games in our home? One day my grandma invited us to a big toystore and she said we could pick one thing of whatever we want. My mom did not allow me to go to the video game area. Which means I had to get my fix for video games elsewhere, in youth clubs, stores and at friends houses. That resulted in me neglecting my school work even more than it probably would've if I had my own console. I got my first own TV when I was 14 and I had to save up over a year to be able to afford a second hand N64. At my 16th and 18th birthday I came to a lot of money and splurged most of it on consoles and games. I bought a launch PS3 so I could finally play PS2 games at home. I also bought a PC, so I could play older games on emulators. That's what happens when you keep your kids from having fun in their youth.

I'm over 2500h in Rocket League now and it's all my mom's fault.

First home console was bought when I was 10 in 1992. Was a nes with Mario/duck hunt.

After was a snes,
Genesis
N64
Saturn
PS1
PSOne
Dreamcast
PS2
Xbox
Gamecube
GBA
GBA SP
PSP
PS3
Xbox 360
Nintendo Wii
DSI
Wii U
PS vita
PS4
Xbox One.

So since the nes, I think we’ve owned every major piece of hardware.

1998: Gameboy, Genesis, SNES
1999: N64
2000: Gameboy Color
2003: Gameboy Advance, SP
2006: Nintendo DS
2008: PS2
2010: GameCube, PS3
2014: PS4
2015: PS TV
2016: PS4 Pro
2017: Gaming Laptop

Update:

At the end of 2018 I "cheaply" shot an iPad Pro 10.5, which is always updated with the latest iOS version and is therefore also "Apple Arcade" and gamepad compatible and is now waiting for "Beyond a Steel Sky". My good old iPad Air remains on iOS 10.3.3 and therefore remains compatible with all 32-bit apps.

In September 2019 I was able to exchange my worn out Xbox One for an Xbox One X for a moderate extra charge. Of course, from then on the desire for a "4K" TV became more present to take full advantage of the console graphics. At first I wanted to wait until the launch of the next console generation, but just one month later I got weak.

I was already a big fan of the deep black levels of the OLED displays in my PSVR and my Oculus Rift, so I also wanted to have it for my next TV as well... and in fact, dark scenes in movies and games look pretty awesome. HDMI 2.1 for variable refresh rate in games, very low "input lag", HDR10, Dolby Vision and other bells and whistles had to be included, too... after all, the TV should accompany me through the complete next console generation.

So I'm ready and set up for the launch of the PlayStation 5!

Oh, and with "Sega Ages: OutRun" for the Switch and a C64 Mini I won't forget the past and we are back at the beginning of the article.

Played any battery powered "tabletop" video game I could get my hands on 80s. Discovered arcade gaming in the early 80s. If someone had an Atari, they had my loyalty.

Eventually saw an NES in my local Walmart and thought it was mankind's greatest achievement. Got my own NES in 1988 and from that point on, I bought every home/portable Nintendo ever made.

In 1996, I ran out of N64 games to play so I got a PS1 in early 1997. After that, I bought every PlayStation home/portable ever.

In 2001, after months of trying to get a PS2 and failing, I bought a Dreamcast. Loved it! After that, I bought every....uh, that didn't work out very well.

In 2007, I saw Gears of War running on an Xbox 360 in person. Before that, I was considering quitting gaming. After that, Xbox became my most played gaming hardware.

Sprinkle in some random hardware like the Ouya and you now have a pretty good idea of who I am as a gamer.

Xbox One X (November 2017)*

Xbox One S (October 2017)

Nintendo Switch (March 2017)*

Xbox One S (November 2016)

PS4 Pro (Nov 2016)*

PSVR (Oct 2016)*

Xbox One w/ Kinect (May 2016)

PSTV (Oct 2015)

Ouya (January 2015)

New Nintendo 3DS (February 2015)

New Nintendo 3DS (February 2015)

Xbox One (March 2014)

PlayStation 4 (January 2014)

PlayStation 3 Super Slim (November 2013)

Wii U (November 2012)*

PS Vita (February 2012)*

3DS ( December 2011)

3DS (June 2011)

Xbox 360 S (Late 2010)

Nintendo DSi (2009)

Sony PSP (December 2009)

Sony PSP (October 2009)

Xbox 360 60gb (2008)

Nintendo DS Lite (December 2008)

PlayStation 3 (June 2008)

Wii (May 2007)

Xbox 360 20 gb (March 2007)

Nintendo DS Lite (2006)

Nintendo DS (2006)

Nintendo DS (2006)

PlayStation 2 (2005)

Nintendo DS (November 2004)*

PlayStation 2 (2003)

Nintendo GameCube (November 2001)*

PlayStation 2 (April 2001)

Sega Dreamcast (March 2001)

Nintendo 64 (December 1999)

PlayStation (1998)

PlayStation (March 1997)

Nintendo 64 (September 1996)*

Super Nintendo Entertainment System (December 1993)

Nintendo Gameboy (1991)

Nintendo Entertainment System (December 1988)

• day one purchase

I first learned about video games at about 6 years old when a friend at school invited me over to his house. I played on a Commodore 64 and immediately started asking my parents for one, which I eventually got. Here is a rough timeline of systems, not including hardware revisions e.g. PS2 Slim, GBA SP.

1988-1989- Commodore 64 + weird edutainment system "Socrates" and some use of my step dad's Amiga.
1991- NES and Atari 7800, some exposure to the Mega Drive
1992/1993- Barcode Battler
1993- SNES, some LCD handhelds around this time including Ghosbusters, Dinosaurs (Tiger Electronics) and some game involving shooting planes with AA guns.
1995- Mega Drive, this felt like my first purchased console since my parents stopped giving me money around this time and gave me money at birthdays and christmas.
1996- Gameboy and Sega Saturn
1997- First PC, it was Windows 95 and had a 2 gigabyte hard drive.
1998- PS1 and N64
1999- Gameboy Color
2000- Dreamcast, this was the first console I bought with my own money
2001- PS2, GBA
2002- Gamecube
2003- Xbox, Mega CD and Game Gear
2005- DS, PSP
2006- Wii
2007- PS3
2009- Xbox 360
2012- 3DS and Vita
2013- Wii U
2016- PS4 Pro + PSVR
2017- Switch

Somewhere around 2000, I got my first mobile which could play simple games and I've had several others over the years which I've used for gaming but I couldn't be bothered to remember or list them all. I also haven't listed any PC after my first, since I have never been much of a PC gamer and it took me about a decade to replace that first one and even now I have an outdated PC that is really only used for FFXI and some old games from GoG.

But hardware is only part of the story. There are some key games that I consider milestones in my gaming history.

The first is Pipeline, a C64 game that is the first game I remember playing, funny that it says fast loader in the corner. I don't think I'd ever seen that, but I do remember that it was one of the faster loaders on an incredibly slow machine like the C64. I don't think it was the first game I played, but it's the first I have a memory of when I got a second hand C64 with about 60 games at the age of 6-7, I thought the guy looked like Mario. There were other memorable C64 games like TMHT (yes Hero Turtles in the UK) and Dizzy the Egg games, Blinky's Scary School....and of course Samantha Fox Strip Poker but I only saw that one in a C64 magazine (I also had a huge stack of C64 magazines and demos which are all long gone now)

When I got the NES, the first game that really stood out to me was Duck Tales, and then a bit later, Kirby's Adventure which I still consider one of the best games ever made. Gargoyles Quest II is another memorable one.

Barcode Battler is the butt of some retro gaming jokes, but for me, at the age of 10 this was revolutionary, I could get warriors, weapons and items from just ordinary barcodes....and so began the destruction of everyday product packaging and even....NES game boxes to get those barcodes (Pogs also claimed a few NES boxes when I got a Pog making machine and desperately wanted that HUGE Nintendo Seal of Quality from the Duck Tales box). As far as I recall, I only got a handful of decent characters or weapons from these plundered codes. But aside from that, the gameplay was oddly addcitive for me. It was turn based and revolved around character stats and defeating enemies to improve those stats until I was strong enough to conquer the entirely text based game (I did use the manual for some context as to who I was fighting). This was my first introduction to RPG mechanics, in fact when I first played a proper JRPG, my first thought was "oh this is like Barcode Battler".

The SNES introduced me to Mario, I knew about him earlier and even had Mario Bros on C64, but this was the first time I played his platform games with the Mario All Stars cart. I probably had close to 20 SNES games, but the biggest thing the SNES did was introduce me to the DKC trilogy and Mystic Quest (my first Final Fantasy game but I didn't know it since the FF name was dropped in the UK). About 5 years after the life of the SNES I hunted down more games like Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore and Terranigma which I also enjoyed. I also played Wolfenstein 3D which I though was terrible and put me off FPS games for a few years.

When I got a Mega Drive it was mostly to play Sonic (which I'd played years before at friends houses and one time in hospital) but although that became a firm favourite, I was also introduced to Phantasy Star which helped further my interest in JRPGs. It also gave me Worms and Streets of Rage which are still some of my favourite 2 player games.

The Saturn was a major leap for me, games like Sega Rally (which I had previously played in an arcade), Panzer Dragoon and VF2 were the first time I was actually impressed by 3D graphics.

When I got a PC, I expected it to offer graphics like Terminator 2, Jurassic Park, Toy Story, DKC promo CG or other CG demos, after hearing how much more powerful PCs were and how all this CG I was seeing was being created on 64 bit PCs. So I was a little let down initially to see games that looked maybe slightly better than my Sega Saturn. However, that was still pretty good and I enjoyed several games like Command and Conquer and Outpost that introduced me to the genre of RTS games. POD built on my interest in 3D racing games and introduced me to the idea of online mutiplayer gaming. Dark Earth was...weird but I forced myself to like it, Galapagos was even stranger but the unique idea seemed interesting. Ultimately I gave up on PC gaming as I saw many of these games on consoles and at the time the PC was just awkward with so many incompatibility issues (and DOS) that threw me back to the hassle of C64.

The PS1 and N64 helped grow my already existing love for platformers and JRPGs (especially JRPGs) with games like Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, Spyro, Final Fantasy 7/8/9, Saga Frontier II, Vagrant Story. This was also the time when I started buying games myself and also expanded my interest in finding out more about games in general. So I bought games magazines regularly, started using the internet and stayed up way to late to watch videogame shows at 2AM. Lots of my favourite games come from this time period. The N64 also got me interested in FPS games again, with Goldenye.

I could go on but I'm getting sick of writing this, so I'll summarise and say, every system since has offered so many real classics but have mostly just given me prettier versions of what I discovered on these earlier systems. They have expanded the services around gaming though, things like digital stores, subscriptions, patches, dlc, streaming, cross play, cross save and widespread online features can all contribute positively in some cases. However, in 2016 I got PSVR which was the first time in a long time, that I felt like I'd experienced a huge leap in gaming. I'm still happily gaming on PS4 and Switch and look forward to the next generation.

I still have my ColecoVision, and ColecoVision "game center" which holds the console and 30 cartridges. I have around 50. The game center thing still has poofy plastic A-Team stickers on it. Mostly Mr T. That's where I started in 1983, right before the crash.

Then:

C-64

NES

Genesis

SNES

PS1 x2

N64

Dreamcast x3

GBA

PS2

GameCube

Xbox

DS

Xbox 360

DS Lite

PS3 x4

PS Vita x3

PS4

PS4 Pro

I think that's everything, and in order. I had a small amount of small "electronic gaming devices" as a very young pup too. The Mattel Football was the best.

I will skip on console/games played at friends home, Arcade or videogames stores.

I started gaming in 1988 when I was 7 years old, I and my brother asked for a NES for Christmas and fortunately Santa Claus got the message :)

In 1988: Nintendo NES with Super Mario Bros and Kid Icarus.
In 1989: Atari Lynx with California Games and Blue Lighting.
In 1990: Sega Megadrive with Golden Axe and Mickey Mouse: Castle of Illusion.
In 1990: Nintendo Gameboy with Tetris and Super Mario Land.
In 1991: Nintendo Super Famicom (jap) with Super Ghouls & Ghosts and Super Castlevania 4.
In 1994: Sony PSX (jap) with Ridge Racer and Toshinden.
In 1994: Sega Saturn (jap) with Virtua Fighter and Clockwork Knight.
In 1996: Nintendo 64 (jap) with Super Mario 64 and Pilotwings 64.
In 1999: Sega Dreamcast (jap) with Soul Calibur.
In 2006: Nintendo DS Lite with New Super Mario Bros.
In 2007: Nintendo Wii with Super Mario Galaxy.
In 2008: Sony PS3 with LittleBig Planet and Soul Calibur 4.
In 2013: Nintendo 3DS XL with Super Mario 3D Land and Kid Icarus: Uprising.
In 2017: Nintendo Switch with Zelda: BOTW.
In 2021: Sony PS5 with Astro's Playroom.

Yeah, I did the same, but had A LOT of experience with the 2600, and to a slightly lesser extent, the Intellivision. The Coleco TelStar got some time too. I also fell in love with the Vetrex at a couple kiosks on family vacation. I still want one. It's the only old school system I'd still like to buy to this day. There were other systems too. The Vic 20, and another oddball system I can't remember the name of. It had a Pac-Man clone called either CK Crunch? or KC Crunch? but I shockingly can't find info about it on google.