The very first load you made... :D

[Nixie]

I can vividly remember the spectrum on the kitchen table plugged into a portable tv, This was dug out of the loft though and we were playing with a home made analogue controller my dad had build years prior, must have been late eighties, early nineties and I must have been 8 ish and pong screeched into memory from a cassette tape. Even though it was the first time I’d seen a real computer game it already felt somehow ancient at that time. So magic though!

[Foozwah]

Same here - friends dad was a doctor and he got a spectrum and MM - I remember we played it between 4 of us ALL weekend - we didnt turn it off and I still remember the Solar Power Generator and Skylab landing bay rooms giving us nightmares.

Hahaha, OMG yes, leaving it running for several days so as to not have to work through certain levels again sounds all too familiar!

[Foozwah]

I guess MEMOPAD doesn't count, so it would have been States & Capitals, via cassette on my Atari 400. Was my 7th b-day present in 1982. Second thing (which got WAY more use) was Star Raiders of course!

Oh man, I used to dream of getting an Atari 400 and Star Raiders back in the day.

We were pretty early adopters of the 2600/VCS and so would get newsletters from the local Atari distributor in the mail several times a year extolling the virtues of the Atari 8-bits, but they were so insanely expensive here that there was just no way, no matter how much I begged my parents that it would be an invaluable learning tool...

[Tred]

Christmas Day 1982, Blue Meanies on the Vic-20!

[toxibunny]

Vic-20 for me too. I can’t actually remember, but there’s a very good chance it was Blitz.

[Istar]

First ever: Early 1981, school computer club (before I got my VIC), loading Nightmare Park in 20 seconds from 5.25” disk on a Commodore PET 4016.

Most recent: Today, my home office, loading Visual Studio 2019 with ReSharper Extensions in 3 seconds from SSD on a standard developer-spec PC which will run 10,000 emulated PETs in VICE simultaneously without breaking a sweat

[kel]

The very first game that i remeber loving was Kikstart on Commodore 16, loved it to death, alwas remeber my olman saying: "i was going to buy you a vic 20, but the guy in the shop said the c16 was better". thanks guy in the shop i do reember playing xzap and other stuf on it. looking back kickstart has those propper sound efx



but my real jaz back in the say was popping around to my cousins and playing comando on the c64 - with a joystick, at the time, bliss.

[punkrulesok]

Christmas, 1986, Allerton, Liverpool.
The Sinclair QL Games Cartridge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPc2AyCm0H8

[gilesgoat]

Christmas, 1986, Allerton, Liverpool.
The Sinclair QL Games Cartridge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPc2AyCm0H8

I forgot how "painfully crap" the QL was ... .. now I remember ..