My First Nintendo Experience
Saturday, September 1st, 2007 at 12:00pm by Blake
As with many of you, I fondly remember my first Nintendo experience. The year was 1986 and I was at a friends house playing the original Nintendo Entertainment System. This wasn’t the first console I played at home (the Atari 2600 owns that honor), but I instantly knew I was playing something very 
different. I also remember thinking the graphics were amazing compared to the stick figures I was used to on the Atari.
Though the details of the experience are a bit foggy due to my young age at the time, I was instantly hooked on Kung Fu and Super Mario Bros. Additional titles followed like Pro Wrestling, Metroid, RC Pro Am, Zelda, Tecmo Bowl and about 500 more.
Whether young or old, regardless when you started playing Nintendo consoles, I’m confident the experience was probably the same. Can you remember your first Nintendo experience? If so, comment away!
Originally published on September 26th, 2005.
September 26th, 2005 at 6:40 pm
My first games that I played on the NES was Super Mario bros and I played Kirby Superstar on the SNES.
September 26th, 2005 at 7:02 pm
Super Mario, Spy Hunter, Metroid and Skier stick in my mind. Skier had wicked awsome music
September 26th, 2005 at 7:18 pm
SMB, Metroid, and Kid Icarus here.
It’s good to see some old-school guys like myself.
I have a site dedicated to this very topic.
http://8bit-retro.blogspot.com
anybody want to contribute to the blog?
September 26th, 2005 at 8:07 pm
Super Mario bros.
Kung Fu - Ha Ha Ha Ha
September 26th, 2005 at 8:10 pm
My first game was Zelda; I played it at a cousins house. The funny part is that my parents instantly went out and bought a Zapper.
I have no idea why, but we had that Zapper for about two weeks before we got a NES. I would hold that thing so excitedly. The worst part is that even after we got the system, we never got a game that used the Zapper.
September 26th, 2005 at 8:24 pm
Hahaha, they wanted a gun so much that they even bought a video game gun which they never used.
My first NES games I played were: SMB, Ice Climber, Kung Fu, Metroid, Zelda, RC Pro Am, etc…
September 26th, 2005 at 8:54 pm
1988 i was at my cousins house and i was 3 years old, the game was smb and i never got past the first level, i tried and tried but didn’t beat the first level til i was 4. Since then i’ve loved all the mario’s except 64.
September 26th, 2005 at 8:56 pm
My first experience in gaming was when I was about three or four. I can’t quite remember the details surrounding this historical event, but I do recall vividly how I walked right into the first goomba on SMB and threw the controller at the TV.
September 26th, 2005 at 9:04 pm
For me it all started with Zelda 2, SMB, Duck Hunt, and Mega Man 3.
Most of my friends are (to this day) befuddled that my zapper is grey, rather than orange, like theirs. How about this crowd? Grey zapper or orange?
September 26th, 2005 at 9:18 pm
Orange. It came with my bundle. But I remember the early adaptors of the NES sporting the grey one.
September 26th, 2005 at 10:41 pm
jajaja, Road Fighter!!!! yeap i’m still in love with that one T.T
September 26th, 2005 at 10:49 pm
I remember when I was about 5, I first played Nintendo with my mom (yeah, my mom) and we played Super Mario Bros 3. Now that I’m older, she tells me she used to be holding first player, actually playing, while I had player 2, THINKING I was playing (but I really wasn’t - cuz she thought I would suck). About a month later, she came downstairs to find me playing by myself, kicking some major ass.
And that’s how it all started!
PS) Super Mario Bros 3 is still my favorite game EVER created
September 26th, 2005 at 11:06 pm
i second that opinion
September 26th, 2005 at 11:19 pm
Blowing hot cartridges, Batman!
I remember watching my brothers turn on the NES and play smb for the first time. The first game I have memories of playing is DuckHunt. My Zapper was grey as well, curiously enough.
When I wasn’t playing the game, I would wrap the Zapper’s cord around my waist and tuck the gun in between the cord like a holster. Then I would run around the house “shooting” stuff like the complete geek that I was.
September 27th, 2005 at 1:13 am
My first was with SMB, my thumb was always red and could barely use it through my youth. I was 6 and after SMB, zeld, mike Tyson PO, and duck hunt, were some of my favorites. I can remember the butterflies in my stomach every time I played every SMB on each consol that came out. I am really looking forward to the day I can go to the store and buy the rev with the new SMB.
September 27th, 2005 at 2:24 am
Hm, my first video game experience was when I got an NES bundled with the (orange) zapper, and the Track & Field pad. I was like 5 or 6, but I loved track & field believe it or not. I also loved Duck Hunt. One time my Dad and I were playing Duck Hunt and got further than we ever had before, so we couldn’t stop, and I ended up being late for school. I also remember playing SMB (of course), and Excitebike and Shadow of the Ninja.
September 27th, 2005 at 7:02 am
Playing Donkey Kong when it was first released in an arcade in downtown Huntington Beach, CA. ahh… the quarters I spent!
September 27th, 2005 at 9:35 am
My god, SMB was just a perfect game. Best thing to start a gaming career!!
September 27th, 2005 at 10:47 pm
My Zapper gun is gray as well.
September 1st, 2007 at 12:51 pm
It was ´87 or ´88 (the year the Nes came out in The Netherlands).
got it for Christmas, the Control Set and Super Mario Bros. My first console ever, the things I remember the most is that I discovered the warp zones, but did not figure out what to do with it. The first few days I always got killed by the timer. The other one is I could not stop playing Faxanadu. Man, those were the days…
September 1st, 2007 at 12:57 pm
I remember watching a friend playing Goonies 2 in 1987. Later that year I remember going to a few friends houses and playing Super Mario Bros. We had an Atari 7800 and I wanted a NES so bad…finally that Christmas, we got one.
September 1st, 2007 at 12:59 pm
While I’m not so sure about my first Nintendo experience, the first game I owned and play on my own NES was SMB.
September 1st, 2007 at 1:28 pm
@Kurta! I had the same thing in the warp zone, haha! My nephew somehow figured it out. I remember with every new Mario game I’d press down on every pipe I jumped on.
NES was my first system, although my first gaming experience was Bubble Bobble, Metal Gear, and Vampire Killer on my cousin’s MSX2. I bought the NES+SMB/Duck Hunt+Zapper bundle for my birthday and hooked all my friends on the NES. There were ALWAYS people to trade games with or to multiplay. (Aside: happily, for the very first time since, the Wii has made this possible again - people are buying Wii’s all over the place!)
It took me about a week to reach and beat level 1-4. I thought I’d finished the game. When I finally reached 4-4 and still didn’t finish it I went bonkers. What a big-ass game!!! After that it was Super Mario 2, Mega Man 2, Ghosts n Goblins, Simon’s Quest, Zelda 2, Dr. Mario, Faxanadu, man, there were too many!
September 1st, 2007 at 1:48 pm
Man, am I the youngest guy on this blog at age 20? Well the SNES launched when I was 4, and my first experience was playing Street Fighter II at my babysitter’s house. My brother and I got our own SNES for Christmas a year later, along with my first Mario game, Super Mario World. I remember going over to my cousin’s house, and thinking that his NES was a better system than mine because it had a Zapper. I also remember my aunt knowing every secret in the original Mario Bros, like the infinite lives with the shell trick.
September 1st, 2007 at 1:58 pm
Donkey Kong Country holds the honour for me; I remember playing it at a cousin’s house back before I was even 4 years old.
September 1st, 2007 at 2:01 pm
Super Mario Bros and Duck Hunt were my first games. I first played them at the age of two…it was mostly button pushing for awhile, but around the time I was 4 I did better, and Duck Hunt was amazing.
Sure, I was a bit close to the screen with Duck Hunt, but hey, it was fun.
I continued with the Super Mario Bros series and branched off into the Kirby series, Star Fox series, Sonic series, and more later on, but I owe my gaming habit to my dad’s old NES (and later, GameBoy) and Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt.
Super Mario Bros is still my highest played Virtual Console game. I still love it as much as the first time I played, I reckon.
September 1st, 2007 at 2:25 pm
@ greatslack: Nope, I’m 19. Started playing Nintendo with SMB1 on the NES around 1992-1993 at the age of four or five. My dad borrowed the NES from a friend and he never got it back because I got so hooked at it. I remember that I mostly used the shortcut to level 8-1 but never actually completed the game. Gotta do that sometime soon and check out the rest of the levels. =D
September 1st, 2007 at 2:25 pm
My first Nintendo experience was with a SMB coin-op at the corner store. I was mesmerized by that thing. More often then not I didn’t have any quarters to play so I’d watch other kids play.
When the NES came out my friend got one. He had a lot of games and we rented a ton of games. I played the heck out of them all. There was stuff like Commando, Town & Country Surf Designs: Wood & Water Rage, Wizards and Warriors, Ikari Warriors, RC Pro Am, Jackal, Ghosts ‘N Goblins, Mega Man, Kid Niki, Karnov, Rygar, Athena, Bionic Commando, Double Dribble, Metal Gear and of course SMB/Duck Hunt and Zelda.
Those sure are some good memories.
September 1st, 2007 at 3:22 pm
Super Mario World was my first. I would watch my sister play it all the time. Then, I finally plucked up the courage to try playing it. I only did the second level over and over again. Then I tried the third level. Oh, that was intense. Then I noticed that there was the first level and I needed to beat that too. And I did. 8 years later, I know every secret to that game. I know the fastest route to Bowser, I know what colored Yoshi is where, I know about the Top Secret Area (who doesn’t?), I know everything. And even though I know everything, I still play it to this day. It has everything; co-op, power-ups, secrets, cutscenes. It’s my favorite game of all time and will never forget when I got my first blue Yoshi.
September 1st, 2007 at 3:24 pm
In 1989, my brother won $200 from his school for being an honor student. So our family drove around to every Toys R Us store in town looking for one. Finally, we brought one home and the next day had it hooked up. My first game was actually Duck Hunt, which we absolutely loved. But the big experience was when I played Super Mario Bros. for the first time and ate the mushroom. Boy that was a grand feeling! And it only got better since then
September 1st, 2007 at 4:04 pm
First nintendo game I played was Super Mario Bros when i was over at a friends house. My hands never left the controller, my eyes wouldn’t leave the screen….until it started getting dark & the damn thing was pried from my hands.
September 1st, 2007 at 4:11 pm
Mine was pretty much the same as yours, Blake. Kung Fu was my first Nintendo experience followed by SMB. The only difference is that the Faicom was my first console.
September 1st, 2007 at 4:46 pm
Nobody here got a Game & Watch? That was my first Nintendo experience, playing Lion, Parachute, Fire and Oil Panic.
Man I’m old!
September 1st, 2007 at 5:05 pm
First Nintendo experience Pokemon Yellow never looked back since
September 1st, 2007 at 5:24 pm
My first Nintendo experience was when I was about four. I was at my Grandmas house, and walked into my uncle Chuck’s bedroom. He had a bunch of papers spread all over the floor connected with pieces of tape. He was playing Metroid, and mapping the entire thing out, room by room. He showed me where the Morph Ball, Long, and Ice beams were. I had played video games before (most notably the Star Wars, and Ghostbusters Atari games) but Metroid was huge. After begging my mom for days for our own copy of Metroid, I got it, and did the same as my uncle did, but went on to do so with Zelda, Final Fantasy…though those came with maps sort of, I just had to make comments on them with markers. So there it is.
September 1st, 2007 at 8:13 pm
My first console was an Atari, but I was too young to remember the model number or any of the games even. All I remember is one game flying a yellow plane up a river. My first real, vivid memory is SMB.
September 1st, 2007 at 9:02 pm
I remember my first Nintendo experience quite well. I was five, and in the hospital for surgery on my left foot (I was born with a club foot) when I went to the play room where a NES was set up with Super Mario Brothers being played. It was the most amazing thing ever. I was instantly hooked.
September 1st, 2007 at 9:12 pm
SECTION Z
September 1st, 2007 at 9:24 pm
Mario teaches typing 2. Sure, it was on a mac, but it was my first mario game.
September 1st, 2007 at 9:28 pm
First Nintendo experience was Donkey Kong in the arcades. Back then, it was a tough game. Then I always remember getting a Sega console, then coming back to Nintendo, back to Sega, back to Nintendo. Nintendo just lasts…
First home Nintendo experience:
My brother & I pooled our money together to get the $120 NES that included the SMB game. We played it too much and many times our parents had to yell at us to come down & eat dinner. Now that I am thinking about it, we played it on their 9″ Magnavox tv. Talk about a long time ago.
September 1st, 2007 at 9:38 pm
I can remember my first experience as if it was a few seconds ago. I was about 6 or 7 and I really liked the pokemon tv show. I thought it was the best thing ever, and when I saw the commercials for red and blue on the gameboy color I needed to have it. I remember taking it home and turning it on, but it didn’t work. I tried flipping the power swithch a million times until I noticed it needed batteries. So I finally get the game on and Ash lands in his room. I was stuck in that house for 2 hours becuase I didn’t know that the rug on the floor symbolized a door. I remeber being really frustrated becuase I thought that maybe the whole game took place in this one house. So anyways, I found out the rug was a door and beat blue to extenction. I’ve loved videogames eversince.
September 1st, 2007 at 9:50 pm
@ paq: Sorry I probably take the cake of baby on infendo at 15
September 1st, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Oddly enugh my first Nintendo experience is semi identical to Blake’s.
the only diferences are that the year was 1987 (Dec 17th )and I had the Super Mario / Duck Hunt combo. And it was in Ecuador.
Good times
September 2nd, 2007 at 2:47 am
@ drJay: i also had a game & watch before i had a nintendo. i had the donkey kong one that looks kind of like a ds. i use to play that thing all the time.
September 2nd, 2007 at 5:08 am
@DrJay:
Yeah, I forgot about the Game&Watch, that should have been my earliest Nintendo XP. Zelda, Donkey Kong, Fire Panic, Fishbowl, Chef… but my main prize was SQUISH! That game just went on and on and on, one of the most replayable games ever!
September 2nd, 2007 at 9:16 am
I actually have a grey and an orange zapper. But I don’t remember why.
September 2nd, 2007 at 10:15 am
My older brother and I went to our local department store with $40 each in hand prepared to get “gotcha” guns. When we got there, we opened up the boxes and saw that they were cheaply put together plastic pieces of crap, not the paintball guns advertised.
Then, we saw it. The NES on sale for $80, around 1986 if I remember correctly. I had seen them a year or two before on display at a toy store in NYC and was left drooling over the games compared to the Atari. We didn’t have the money for tax, but our father promised to pay the tax AND buy Excitebike. DONE!
Looking back we should have saved up for the tax. Our father was generous that day, but for years to come we had to wait our turn for dad to finish playing.
September 2nd, 2007 at 11:29 am
Me too Ronindennis, that will never happen again. lol
September 2nd, 2007 at 11:31 am
It was “Congorilla”, a bootleg of Donkey Kong at the bowling alley up the street from my house. Someone had busted the plexiglass in so people could reach into the cabinet and hit the credit switches by hand.
I finally played the real thing later that year in an amusement park arcade. I’d say it was at Disneyland, but I last went to Disneyland in 1981 and Donkey Kong was too new to have been bootlegged already. So I’m guessing it was Busch Gardens, where we went the following year.
After that, I avidly followed Nintendo’s arcade games, though I found the Game and Watch stuff to be really cheesy. By the time the NES came out, I was over Nintendo (and stayed over Nintendo until around 2000), but my little brother got one with the zapper and robot.
September 2nd, 2007 at 8:56 pm
My first intro was the Legend of Zelda. A friend got a nintendo for his birthday and watched people play it for a while. I had never heard of Nintendo though it had been out for a few months apparently.
I managed to get a nintendo a few months later and my first game purchased was Zelda. It was all downhill from there.
September 3rd, 2007 at 1:51 am
My first memory of Nintendo was on Christmas morning with the NES about 20 years ago. The weird thing is, I was so excited for it, but I don’t ever remember asking for one or even knowing what it was.
Although I THINK I remember playing one at my friend’s house before my parents moved.
We played Mario Bros and Duck Hunt until the family came over to visit. In particular, I remember my Dad shouting at me and my brother, “SHOOT THE DOG! SHOOT THE DOG!”
Eventually, we got Zelda and even though my brother was only 3 at the time, he actually beat it before me. Looking back, it was really a stunning accomplishment for a 3 year old.
…especially since I get my ass STOMPED by that game nowadays on the VC.
September 4th, 2007 at 3:41 am
DrJay the Game & Watch was also my first Nintendo experience. I still have my Donkey Kong Jr. Game & Watch. I also had Parachute. Right now it has been misplaced. Need to look for it. My first NES experience was Metroid. Then there was Super Mario 3. It is hard to describe that first time when you discover you could bounce on that music note into the clouds and get those coins! I still play these games today.
December 24th, 2007 at 7:35 am
i wuz 3 and i played mario
my dad still has the nes