What was the game that really got you into becoming dedicated into gaming to the point where you began paying attention to the industry as a whole?

For me I would say I really got to dedicated gaming late in 2013 when I was 13.

Before that I've always enjoyed video games as I played my first video game Mario Party 7 in 2005 when I got a Gamecube and I played my Wii and DS a decent amount as well.

However, the game that really got me into becoming a dedicated gamer was Super Mario 3D World, I got a Wii U Christmas of 2013 and started paying attention to the console wars when I heard the Wii U was struggling. I decided I wanted a Wii U cause I was intrigued by the Gamepad and wanted to play Super Mario 3D world desperately. I ended up playing that game to death and it made me passionate about gaming.

Super Mario Bros, 1985. Before that I had played Game and Watch, the occasional arcade cabinet, and the odd Atari game here and there. But when SMB came out I realized just how immersive the videogame worlds could be. My main source of info at that point would have been word of mouth from friends, video stores, and eventually print magazines. And then lo and behold we were blessed with something called the internet and N64.com which would soon sell its soul to IGN and forever be a shell of its former self.

Doom. That's the first game I played when I was like 5.

Not the first game I played but  Bionic Commando on NES.

That's an interesting question, javi.

I suppose for me it was Super Mario 64 in 1996. Like you, I was 13 at the time. I had played and enjoyed a lot of NES and SNES games before, but gaming wasn't really a hobby. Starting in 1996, I subscribed to Nintendo Power and began to learn more about the industry.

Dedicated to gaming, I guess in 1985, typing in listings in Basic from a book, then altering the programs while learning Basic and write some myself. All on the MSX. There was no internet, the only gaming news to follow was a single page is some computer magazine my dad bought regularly.

This is what got me dedicated to gaming

https://archive.org/details/MSXBasic/page/n15/mode/2up

If I had to pinpoint 1 event that turned me from a gamer to an avid gamer, it would have to be seeing the Legend of Zelda on NES for the 1st time. I had already been playing video games on ColecoVision (plus Atari 2600 games with the expansion adapter), Intellivision (at my grandparent's house) and my family's TRS-80 Color Computer 2. ColecoVision and Intellivision were both casualties of the North American Video Game Crash of '83. So, I had to continue to get by on the games I already had throughout the mid to late 80's. My parent's got us an Atari 7800 in Christmas of '87 that we weren't too impressed by. I remember playing Pole Position II on it and not much else. One day my brother's friend brought over his NES and The Legend of Zelda. I was instantly blown away and we immediately began pleading for an NES for the next Christmas. I've owned every Nintendo home console since (and most of the handhelds).

The game that got me into gaming? The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening. The game that solidified that I was definitely into the hobby was probably Final Fantasy V Advance for the GBA. Around that time I was about 12 and I would get Nintendo Power or Game Informer magazines via Gamestop and anything I could find about FFV I would cut it out and make collages of it just waiting for it to come out. Man, when it finally came out I spent the entire day just playing it and getting lost in it.

Hobbit (1982) - sure, I've played games before that, mostly in arcades, but this graphic adventure, as a someone growing up reading Tolkien's books, just clicked with me immediately. To this day, graphic adventure games (that transitioned to Point and Click Adventure games) are still one of my (if not the) favorite genres.

I've been into gaming since the early 80s. But The Legend of Zelda on NES was what cemented gaming for me.