i have never owned a PS1 but considering how important it's library has become to me through emulation i simply had to mention the first game i ever played. it's alright actually!

very vague memories of this one, my parents extremely Did Not Approve of video games when I was a child and thus I only had a game boy color (given to me by my uncle) for like a week before they took it off me. however this is the first game boy color game I remember playing period, on my best friend at the time's one, which I played outside the cinema screen for Pokemon: The First Movie after I started wailing during Ash's death scene and had to be taken out of the theatre.

not the first game I played on my parents' battered old COMPAQ computer but definitely the first one that came in a box, and one of the first games I can remember my parents not detesting because my mum loves Star Wars. i read the manual from cover to cover over and over again until I finally got home from a week-long visit to extended family and dove into it any chance I got. i was completely obsessed with this, writing proto-After Action Reports about battles, creating my own scenarios and crafting my own little corner of the star wars universe made of building Troop Centers and Spaceports. I completely adored it and by virtue of the fact that it's basically a total conversion mod for Age of Empires II, it's actually still a really good game!

the moment I fell in love with this medium truly and completely is etched into my mind like words on a monolith. late at night, at my aforementioned best friend's birthday party, everyone else had left and I was staying over. we were finally allowed to play on the PS2 he had just got for his birthday, a game that had just come out. we had seen the ads before and were mystified by this game with all the disney characters. we put the disc in, and watched as Sora fell out of the sky and into my imagination, never to leave. the entire remarkable prologue section of the game is what made me think of video games as more than just a toy. they were something special, to me.

when my parents finally relented to my endless pleading to get a PS2, there was only one thing on my mind: Kingdom Hearts. and simpsons: hit and run.

first console i ever properly owned for myself was a game boy advance, got for my birthday in 2002, frustratingly right before the SP came out and made my original version feel completely inadequate. still!!! i genuinely hid under the covers of my bed to play this game have fond memories of the eerie glare of the SA-X, looking out through the screen. still my favourite metroid and my appreciation has only grown with the years. can't wait for dread!

i've mentioned my parents' animosity for video games a few times now. this was the game that turned it all around for them. seeing the entire family crowd around the tv for wii bowling, my golf-obsessed dad being completely blown away by wii golf, and myself jumping up and down with joy at knocking someone out in wii boxing, this game was just a box of delights that changed the way the rest of my family looked at my obsession. i was of quietly resentful at not getting a chance to play Twilight Princess, the reason I really wanted a Wii, but as much as I still really like that game, if I could go back to that day, I'd spend just a little more time playing Wii Tennis with my granny.

ahahaha ooooh the lengths I went to to make sure my parents did not find out that mass effect had sex in it. my dad loved the Xbox 360 because of how "real" all the games looked, and was caught up in the hype cycle for Halo 3 even more than I was. but this was the game that I layed first on my 360, the game that launched me headfirst into fandom in a way i hadn't before, and the first game I played side by side with my dad, all the way to the end, with him making all the choices and me doing the shooty bits. i remember noting down when romantic leaning conversations would occur so I could specifically avoid triggering them. could you fucking imagine the disaster that would have occured if i hadn't

i've never heard anyone talk about this game but it ripped and was the first thing I played on the DS Lite my mum bought me for my birthday one year and later admitted she half bought for herself so she could play Brain Training and Ace Attorney

in 2010 I was hospitalized for a severe asthma attack on Good Friday and was unable to leave for the entire easter weekend. bored out of my mind, my parents, along with well-wishes from family and friends, brought me a hand-me-down original PSP...with no games. when I finally got out of the hospital i rushed to gamestop (which was in Ireland at the time, weirdly!!) and bought this, and didn't stop playing it for like 5 years.

ok so this isn't the first game I played on a PC but it was the first PC game that I ended up seeking out new hardware for myself to play rather than just playing whatever would run on my parents work PC. having been enormously into kotor 2 in particular combined with THOSE TRAILERS and a long-held fascination with the MMORPG genre led me to meet this game immensely warmly where others were filled with disdain. I was preposterously excited for this and awaited Santa's arrival with it in hand on Christmas day with a fervor I have never before or since been able to muster. heartbreakingly, my total lack of understanding of how PCs work led me to buy a graphics card without any means of putting it into the PC we had. a couple of days before Christmas, i had no means to play the game that had driven my thoughts wild for literal years. which is why when Santa came with a refurbished laptop that could just about run the game on low settings, I just about cried with joy and relief and sheer unabashed materialistic love for my parents.

the game was alright.

the 3DS was the first console I bought myself with my own money! DDD was originally marketed as a 3D remake of Kingdom Hearts and, already desperate to recapture my childish wonder for that game as I continued to slide into a deep depression, vowed that I would make sure I had a 3DS by the time the game came out. at that point, it was clear that it was yet another spin-off/sequel, and my enthusiasm waned significantly. i just didn't think i was particularly into Kingdom Hearts anymore. this game convinced me that I was, being powerfully affecting enough that my affection of it withstands the memory of someone asking why I was crying while playing it on a school bus, and desperately trying to avoid explaining the mortifying truth that I cried at Riku explaining why he loved Sora while Mickey Fucking Mouse was in the background

finally getting a PS3 when it was cheap in CEX in the summer before uni so I could catch up on all those exclusives I had missed out on turned out to be a hilarious odyssey through absolute dreck. the first disc I put in was Metal Gear Solid 4, after finally playing MGS3 and MGS1 the previous year, I was cautiously optimistic for this one and it ended up being fucking wretched! and then I played Uncharted 1, 2, 3, and The Last of Us and the experience did not improve much!!! the PS3 has no games!!! except for noby noby boy.

you know what else I played the summer before Uni? Persona 4 on PS2! would it surprise you to know I was hitting the absolute nadir of my depression and refused to leave the house or do anything else but play video games? anyway I finished this towards the end of that summer as I was starting to feel a little more stable and a lot of their feelings wrapped themselves up in this game, to the point that my sheer desperation to re-experience what I felt while playing it led to buy a Vita and this game, and I adored it then too. my opinion of Persona 4 has dropped extremely sharply in the following years but there was a time in my life where this was one of the GOATs, and I still think fondly of the way it made me feel, at least

i put like 200 hours into this fucking shambles waiting for Bloodborne to come out

i don't want to talk about it

lol