30 Day Gaming Challenge: #1 – Your Very First Video Game

Here we go with the second of my 30 day challenges, the gaming challenge! Just as with the anime challenge, I won’t be attempted to do all thirty in one month, but will instead be posting one or two a month during gaming week. So, the first entry in this list is your very first video game.

Initially, I thought that this may be an LCD game. I certainly owned a lot of those as a kid, each once relatively bulky and containing a simple game based around things like cavemen and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. But then I realised that I only really started looking into LCD games after my first gaming system. That goes back 1992-ish when my brother and I were given an Atari 2600 with multiple game cartridges. While these included such classics as Pac-Man, Galaxian, Phoenix and Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, I do believe that the first one I put into the system was the 32-in-1 Cartridge.

This marvellous little cart was a real novelty at the time as it did exactly what it said on the label: it contained thirty-two different games. Not having menus like modern game collections, it worked thus: you put the cartridge in and turn the console on, and a game loads up. If you want a different game, you turn the console off and back on again. The games ran through in order as follows:

01 UFO
02 Human Cannonball
03 Fun with Numbers
04 3D Tic-Tac-Toe
05 Flag Capture
06 Reversi
07 Golf
08 Surround
09 Checkers
10 Blackjack
11 Freeway Rabbit
12 Miniature Golf
13 NFL Football
14 Slot Racers
15 Fishing
16 Space War
17 Boxing
18 Air-Sea Battle
19 Freeway Chicken
20 Tennis
21 Combat
22 Slot Machine
23 Skiing
24 Stampede
25 Outlaw
26 Fishing Derby
27 Sky Diver
28 Laser Blast
29 Basketball
30 Ant Party
31 Bowling
32 Homerun

While there’s nothing ground breaking there, each game had its charm. I particularly enjoyed the Human Cannonball game.

So, what about you all? What was your first video game?