Donkey Kong on my Super Nintendo. I played with my dad a lot as a kid whenever the levels were really hard. Now I just kick *kitten* lolz. ALSO, FF10!!

I give full credit to The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask for making me into a gamer.

Marathon Durandal on networked Macs

Aaaand, Scarab of Ra.

Pac-Man. They had a machine at the local Buehler's grocery store when I was five years old. Right as you walked in the door, there is was, in all its electronic glory and joy!

I think some of the earliest gaming that help me was probs in the original Mario Bros on the NES, I still remember my thumbs aching from the sharp curves on the NES buttons that mashed your skin after hours of gaming. I also remember playing till it felt like my eyeballs would fall out of my head with Doom on the PC at my cousin's place. I loved those games.

That said, your mention of Zelda really stuck with me. When I was shown the SNES Zelda title for the first time, it felt like a whole different realm of game than I was use to. (I hadn't been introduced to the NES game back then). Then again, when we got an N64 with Zelda Ocarina of time... seeing that for the first time blew my mind again. It's the first 3D world game that opened my mind to the possibilities of gaming going into 3D. Will never forget those experiences.

Love how you can get a general idea of people's age from their first games

Mine would have been Super Mario Bros. and Tetris on NES, and Flimbo's Quest on C64.
Then played a variety of DOS games on the 486 until we got our first Pentium II(!) and I got hooked on the Theme Park / Theme Hospital etc series of games until the release of The Sims in 2000 - that was me pretty much (aside from some deviations into most major RTS games) until I discovered online gaming and started playing EVE Online in 2005.

I gamed at 6 but got heavily serious and competitive around 11 it was smash brothers. Nintendo 64. Been competitive ever since..

I first played on atari, many many years ago. Pitfall, Grand Prix, Pac Man, Pong etc..My dad got my older sister an atari for Christmas, and I have been playing ever since.

Not sure exactly what game I got started on but I have photos of me asleep in a little stuffed kids chair with an NES controller in my hands. I was 2, haha. Ive been a gamer pretty much my entire life (turning 25 soon).

My gaming started with NES too, but what got me hooked was Guild Wars 1 PVP. In that game, the PVP is ranked and you gain ranking through wins. It was extremely discriminatory and hard to get in good groups if you didn't already have a high ranking, but I was completely suckered into it. I picked the hardest class to play because it was most likely to get picked for higher ranked groups and went at it like my life depended on it. I got so involved with the tactical intricacies of the game (It was great in its prime, when they balanced everything every week and had tournaments) that I have yet to play another game that can really compare (and I've tried a lot!) I'm currently trying to fill the competitive gaming void in my life with black ops 2, but shooters aren't really my passion and this is my first one, so it's a slow learning curve!