Started gaming in 1982, both at home and in the arcade.  Games I played growing up:

Pac-Man
Ms. Pac-Man
Donkey Kong
Donkey Kong Jr.
Space Invaders
Centipede
Dig Dug
Moon Patrol
Q-Bert
Frogger
Dragon's Lair

Adventure
Missle Command
Asteroids
BreakOut
Kangaroo
H.E.R.O.
Mr. Do's Castle

Spy Hunter
Mario Bros
Circus Charlie
Kung Fu
Excitebike
Duck Hunt
Hogan's Alley
Xevious
Gauntlet (I & II)
Super Mario Bros
Double Dragon
Contra

The Legend of Zelda
Metroid
Mike Tyson's Punch Out
R.C. Pro Am
Castlevania 
Super Mario Bros 2
Zelda 2: The Adventure of Link
Blaster Master
Bionic Commando
Life Force
Final Fantasy
Ultima (3 & 4)
Dragon Warrior (Quest)
Shadowgate
Super Mario Bros 3
Castlevania 3

Altered Beast
Shinobi
Golden Axe

Super Mario World
Actraiser
Final Fantasy II (4)
Super Castlevania IV
TLoZ: A Link to the Past

Those were some of my favorite games growing up.  At 17 my SNES was stolen, and then I went off to college a little while later and got a PC and Genesis.

Amstrad CPC, Sega Master System, NES, Playstation 1. Playstation 2, Diablo 2 on PC.

It's funny that you say this. The difference between 2011 and 2016, for instance, would've been the difference between 2nd grade and 8th grade. So, as an example of how "warped" my perspective may be: Super Mario Maker, Pokémon Go, Mario Run, and Nintendo Switch. All of these products released over the span of 16m, so I'd imagine these games all sorta wrap nicely together as being apart of one continuous, small chunk in Nintendo's history. For me, however, it was only as of typing when I realized how close all these games were released: I viewed Nintendo as going through their Smash 4 Period, their Splatoon Period, their Mario Maker Period (which, for somebody in seventh grade, Mario Maker was a cultural phenomenon on (a middle schooler's) YouTube), the Pokémon Go craze, Mario Run craze, and then the "Nintendo is back!!" Period. All vastly different from one another.

Yes that's true. For me 2003-2013 feels like such a huge chunk of time in gaming, but 2013 to now is all a blur. It's weird to think that the time between a game like NFS Underground and GTA V is less than the time between GTA V and now. When the former period feels like it had a hell of a lot more going on.

For someone who was born in say, 2012, the ps5 generation probably feels like an age, and not like it started just yesterday.

Started off on the Mattel Intellivision, my father's Commodore 64, and arcade games back in the mid 80s. Got an NES as a Christmas gift in '88, a Genesis in '91, and a SNES in '94.

I'm one of the two cool MSX kids here! Out of the games brother SvennoJ mentioned, I had Athletic Land, River Raid, and King's Valley. Played a ton of games on the MSX from the age of 5 until 9~, and yet still missed out on many favorites that I would discover generations later (like the Metal Gear series, Aleste, SD Snatcher, Dragon Slayer, Ys). A great gaming computer with my only negative being the poor scrolling capability. MSX had amazing shumps that were compromised by the choppy side scrolling.

From car/racing games alone: I grew up playing Road Fighter, Car Fighter (a Casio game! much better than Konami's Road Fighter), and 3 other games that I can't find on the internet. Pain...

Played 14 of these:

https://youtu.be/pdJ7LldYPCg?si=CQschg6CVMD6NZD-

Konami's SCC soundchip was the coolest thing in existence, the P4P GOAT! Look up Nemesis 2 (the original Gradius 2, which was an MSX exclusive) vs Nemesis 90 Kai (Nemesis 2 remake on the Sharp X68000). OG Nemesis 2's soundtrack was so much better:

https://youtu.be/arHP0OqNjxc?si=AB-mnxA2D1D_p2c-

Outside MSX, I had a Mattel Aquarius as a side platform. This system was a failure with a lifespan of just 4 months, but it did have a number of cool and enjoyable games and exclusives.

Speaking of sound chips. This is a bit off topic but I found this video very interesting.

That game soundtracks sounded completely different on dos games depending on your hardware and that the highest quality soundtrack probably less than 1% of gamers had access to.

DOS was just before my time so I don't have any experience with this but was very cool to hear the different versions of the soundtracks compared.

Mid80.. Atari2600-River Raid, Pac Man, Space Invaders, Megamania, Boxing, Enduro... I had plenty of those 4 games in 1 cartridge, don't remember everything.

I played Touhou 8 Imperishable Night (2004 Windows indie game). The game lets you choose between WAV and MIDI. The WAV option is your standard boring recorded format. MIDI is infinite, because it's a language. Every singer (synthesizer) will sing differently.

I would choose the MIDI option, connect the game to my synth (Roland Juno-DS) and let it sing. You get access to every channel and can change the instruments, volume levels, effects etc. The expressions are endless even when connected to a single synthesizer. It felt so alive and amazing.

Rich DOS players experienced this decades before me lol.

I went the other way, mod players were our thing at the time.



We made our own DAC converters to play the music on an amplifier via the printer port instead of PC speaker. (See 2:15 in the video) It wasn't as neat as in the video (card hanging loose) but it worked.

Amazing what could be achieved with just 4 channels.

Basically it was just a smart way to compress recorded music. Later versions also let you play music with samples on the keyboard, turning your keyboard into a well a 'keyboard' lol. 



I actually had a midi keyboard that connected to MSX. The cartridge plugged into the MSX like a game.

https://www.erixcollectables.nl/product/philips-midi-keyboard-with-cartridge-for-msx/

I had piano lessons on that as a kid, but was more interested in programming instead. So I ended up programming the sheet music into the MSX to play it for me lol.

It worked without the midi keyboard as well

Lot of things I didn't know it could do!