I've shared my painful and embarrassing story of my first time. It was hard but I feel better now getting it all out, in fact it's a real relief.

Yes pretty much all of that last paragraph was innuendo. Okay, share people, grab a bean bag and a pina colada and tell of your first game experience.

I was at a church fete in Dunedin, New Zealand. You know what they say about some of those 'religious experiences'. Someone must've had a moment of clarity and invited her along to oogled and caressed by all the boys. It would've been around 1980 and that would've made me 7, which all sounds about right. Give or take a bit.

I remember being under the church in a room filled with all the home made stuff when I heard a commotion across the room. I saw this thing that now resembles an ATM standing in the corner surrounded by others my age laughing and carrying on. Similar noises to what you described lifted my feet off the ground and carried me across to try and peek over the shoulders of the others, and there she was; Space Invaders.

I actually don't believe I got to play it that day because I was scared of the older boys who'd claimed it because the church was in their territory and I was visiting. But I lived every moment they played and that moment was stamped into my psyche like it bonded with my DNA.

I played every .20c machine I could at every opportunity and then occasionally splashed out on .40c machines. The end of arcade games really began when they became $1 and $2 to play. A friend's old man down the road got computer, I REALLY can't remember what it was, but I used to go down there, and then another one got one eventually and we played that thing to death.

I got an Amiga 500 with a 1 meg upgrade - which gave it 1 meg of RAM. lol And my first console was the original Playstation.

Same and same, I had a shoe box, like an actual shoe box, of pirated games for the Amiga because there was no store in Perth I knew of that sold them.

And yeah, arcades were way better when everything was 40c.

I can't remember the first was too young. But there was Las Vegas 20c arcades in Brisbane we used to go to in primary school. MJs Moonwalker and Space Invaders got a smashing, actually originally it was those little hand helds like DK etc. First console was Commodore 64 witha myriad of games I forget. Wizards of War was epic lol, Shinto, some baseball game, Bionic Commando etc had HEAPS. Then all the usuals like Double Dragon, California Games etc. A 'proper' PC would have been text style games with text based graphics, the original RPGs like in the movie BIG with Tom Hanks but crapper, then games like Carmen San Diego and Contra in full CGA glory. A mate got an EGA monitor when they came out, writing swear words in Harvard Graphics was then the choice past time. Then VGA and Sound Blaster cards. Never forget Wolf 3D when the same mate, he was richer than us haha, got the first SB card, wired it up through big floor speakers, chain gun rattled the windows was epic, making Dr Sbaitso or whatever the fuck it was say swear words haha. So yeah PCs went on from there to all the classics we know and love. Consoles for me were - C64, Master System 1, Master System 2, Mega Drive, SNES, PS1, N64, PS2, GC, Xbox, 360, Wii (and only Wii coz Mrs won it, I'd never pay actual money for one, just to clear that up). I wish I could remember all the classic C64 games, most of my early gamin memories are tied up with the old Commodore. Paragraph free day. Oh and Aaron, I LOVED Dragon's Lair! Seriously how good were the Wing Commander games too and Buck Rogers and Xwing and so on, and so on, and so on...

Yeah, the list is huge. F/18A Interceptor rocked my socks, as did Defender Of The Crown. Elite(?) as well, the space game?.

Yep Wing Commander was the shizit. But I prefered Tie Fighter to Xwing. Zap zap, take that you orange jump suit wearing rebel pussies! i actually won Tie Fighter and a pewter millenium falcon statue (that I sold for $250 and have regretted ever since), in a writing competition in Hyper when I was 14.

F/A 18 Interceptor, oh man. That was one of two games I had on the Amiga 500 for about a year, the other, Indiana Jones and the last Crusade, was completed in an afternoon. I did everything in that game. Flying under the bridges, landing on water, shooting at the aircraft carrier to it smoked and 'driving' the fighters along the roads and into the city.