If not an Amiga, what was your 1st system, and how did it influence you?

[chip]

Commodore VIC-20

I learned programming on it

[ptyerman]

Started with a ZX81 in 1982, it had the wobbly 16k Rampack on it, a Power Machine! Then a ZX Spectrum, although I did dabble about with other machines, a Acorn Electron, a Oric 1 and a Atari 600XL and 800XL both of which I still have and mess with very occasionally. I always went back to the Spectrum though until I got my first Amiga 500 in 1988 then a 500+ in 1991 followed by my A1200 on the day of release in 1992. My missus of the time queued most of the day at the shop in Sheffield to get it which I am still thankful for to this day. Bless her!

[Korban]

Cant recall which I had 1st, but it was either an Atari 2600 or Tandy TRS-80.
Had a pong style console too that was variations on pong but called "tennis", "soccer" and so on selectable with a switch. It also had a lightgun and a game for it that was a square that floated around the screen where you had 20 attempts to shoot it for a score out of 20 hits.
After that it was a sort of no-name style console that I think was a clone of Interton VC-4000. Ive tried looking it up online a handful of times, and this seems to be the closest match.
Had Collecovision after that, then C64.
Followed that up with the A1k.
After that it was Master System, then NES, then Tandy CoCo 3, followed by a Megadrive.
I never stopped enjoying any machine simply because I got something else as well, even if a machine new to the collection was less advanced than something I already had.
I seem to be among a minority in that Im platform agnostic and can find something to enjoy on any machine.
It's lead to an ongoing battle to have room for the hobby for many, many years, but such is life and I'd have to be an unappreciative schmuck to complain.
"Woe is me, Im fortunate enough to have too much stuff" - doesn't really evoke sympathy in people :P

Have absolutely adored the hobby since the late 70's and I cant see that ever changing.

[Snoopy1234]

CBS Colecovision. Playing Donkey Kong, Mouse Trap, Turbo, Smurfs and Zaxxon. I had to trade my Green Machine trike to get Zaxxon. Also Spikes Peak, Ghost Manor and Hangman with an Atari 2600 adapter.

[Mr Creosote]

First was a sort of Pac-Man clone with a sheep and wolves. Though I had no clue what Pac-Man was back then. After, some handheld LCD games. The type with just one game. First general purpose computer was a Plus/4.

[Galahad/FLT]

BBC Model B for me, and in all honesty, I have no nostalgic pangs for it whatsoever.

Damned tape deck couldnt save properly, so a large session on Elite was pretty much wasted.

Always got games long after other machines, if at all.

It was my first real computer after the Atari 2600 VCS.

The BBC didnt open up my yearning for cracking or doing anything but play games on it, and I wasnt an everyday gamer either, ended up with it sitting gathering dust.

Wasnt until I saw an Amiga for the first time that all of a sudden computers were exciting again, and whatever remaining "love" for the BBC was extinguished permanently.

The BBC didnt influence me at all, nothing I learned on it could be applied to Amiga because I learnt nothing on the BBC.

If it had not been for the Amiga, I wonder if I would still have trodden the same path with another computer or simply just not at all.

[onkelarie]

The first system I owned was an Atari 800XL with a taperecorder. From 1983 to 1988 I was busy writing AtariBASIC programs that would play music, a drummachine, a 'synthesizer'... And I owned the cart Starraiders from 1979, which I played hours on end.

Then I switched to the Amiga in 1988, opening up a world of soundtracking, MIDI, sampling, true heaven....! But from time to time, I still boot up Altirra to have a go at saving the universe in Starraiders.

[Keops/Equinox]

It would be nice to add Atari ST to that poll

[phx]

First computer: VIC-20 in 1983, followed by C64 in 1984. But I had "consoles" before (and never again) - although they were called "Telespiel" in Germany at that time.

I remember I had some kind of "Pong" console around 1980 (with several modes called Tennis, Squash, Pelota). Followed by a more advanced console called "Palladium something" (from Neckermann?) until 1983. Of course, I was jealous of the Atari VCS some friends had.

I asked my father at that time what I have to do to create games myself. He answered I have to learn programming. That's how it started...

[mech]

Originally Posted by Galahad/FLT

BBC Model B for me, and in all honesty, I have no nostalgic pangs for it whatsoever.

Damned tape deck couldnt save properly, so a large session on Elite was pretty much wasted.

Always got games long after other machines, if at all.

It was my first real computer after the Atari 2600 VCS.

The BBC didnt open up my yearning for cracking or doing anything but play games on it, and I wasnt an everyday gamer either, ended up with it sitting gathering dust.

Wasnt until I saw an Amiga for the first time that all of a sudden computers were exciting again, and whatever remaining "love" for the BBC was extinguished permanently.

The BBC didnt influence me at all, nothing I learned on it could be applied to Amiga because I learnt nothing on the BBC.

If it had not been for the Amiga, I wonder if I would still have trodden the same path with another computer or simply just not at all.

The sheer disgust you seem to have for the BEEB comes thru in your post. ROFL.

[eXeler0]

My best friend back in the day got a c64 in 1983, so I spent a lot of time at his house. Naturally i wanted my own but my parents didn’t know anything computers, so it would take 2 years of nagging but then in 1985 I got a c128.
90% time spent on playing games, 10% writing stuff in c128’s Basic 7.0

[golem]

My younger brother had a Spectrum+ and he let me use it a lot. Besides playing the games of the day on it (notably Underwurlde and Airwolf) I had a Cheetah Specdrum which was an amazingly cheap and capable drum machine for its day. Later on I learnt BASIC on it and that spurred me to buy an Amiga in 1990.

[khph_re]

Thinking about it, with the speccy, it was the software I enjoyed - not the machine, and the price of course. I could afford one.

Wasn't until I got an ST that I actually took pleasure in using a computer, and explored things a bit more - rather than use it as a games console.

[grond]

Originally Posted by Keops/Equinox

It would be nice to add Atari ST to that poll

So that Atari ST users can hide in anonymity?

I (actually my brother) borrowed an Atari 2600 for a few weeks and played the games that came with it. The first computer I ever saw was a VIC20 followed by three C64s at some neighbours' places. We also could borrow one of them for a few weeks. My first own computer was a C16 I bought from my own money when I was 12. Since I didn't own a monitor, I kept it next to the family TV (black and white) which led to my parents' only ever computer-related gift, a Taxan Vision Pal monitor to get my computer stuff out of the TV room. I couldn't believe my luck, the monitor cost four times as much as my computer. Later on I had saved enough to buy a C64 (when everybody else had moved on to Amiga500). I stopped dabbling with computers for a couple of years before I saw an A600 advertised new for so little money that I just had to buy one. That was the summer after I finished school when uni hadn't started yet. Funny enough I didn't realise I could connect the Amiga to the Taxan monitor I still owned and again connected it to the family TV (now colour) until I figured it out.

[BigD]

The Atari ST was our family computer throughout the 80s and early 90s. It was "close enough" in spec's to the A500 (although my 1040STF had 1MB of Ram) not to warrant a side step/'upgrade' to an Amiga at that point. AGA was the impetus I needed to beg for an Amiga system! It was just a shame C= were no longer with us to make sure there were A1200s for the Christmas 1994 period! I was gazumped on a Special Reserve A1200 Desktop Dynamite pack while waiting for payment to clear! Hence an upgraded CD32 became the way to go with a 1995 Super Amiga CD SX-1 bundle from Special Reserve in mid-1995! Happy days! Now knowing my history, C= were incapable of producing enough A1200s even while they were alive! It didn't stop me investing in the platform and I completely concur with the points made in an article in the latest edition of Amiga Addict regarding Amiga Experiences in the Twilight Years! I recommend the issue (the one with Newtek featured with Garth on the front)!

[PortuguesePilot]

ZX Spectrum +2A

My first videogaming experience was with a Pong console, which was a discrete system with analogue rotating pads that had no cartridge slot and only played Pong and some derivative games via the Belling-Lee plug of a CRT TV. I would be about 6 or 7, perhaps and this was at a cousin's house, so I had little contact with it. In spite of the simplicity of it, I was positively smacked.

Somewhat later, another cousin of mine owned an Atari 2600 (I think it was a 2600 Jr but my memory is a bit fuzzy) and the variation in games and the bright colours really made me fall in love with videogaming. I had very little exposure to it, though, but when I got the chance, I played as much as I could.

Then a good mate of mine got a Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K 'rubber keys' and it felt like such a step up from both the Pong console and the 2600. The resolution of the graphics was awesome, the sound was exciting, the gameplay of most games was magnificent and I became a gamer at heart.

Later that same year (1988) my father brought home a Philips PC system - a typical IBM XT clone of the time with a i8088@10MHz, 768kB RAM, 20MB MFM hard disk, 1 3.5" low-density 720kB floppy disk drive, CGA graphics and PC-Speaker sound running MS-DOS 3.30. In spite of these rather laughable specs, the games seemed like a step-up from the Spectrum's (albeit with less colours and poorer sound). But the PC was very expensive, my dad used it for work stuff and since both I and my brother were little kids, we were barred from it. Occasionally, under his supervision, my dad would allow us to play games (Alley Cat, Paratrooper, PC-Man, the original Tetris, Grand Prix Circuit, Test Drive 1, etc).

My very first computer, MY VERY OWN came later that year. It was a ZX Spectrum +2A. I was hooked. I traded games with my friends at school and became a very active member of my local "gaming circle". Most of us had Spectrums so it made sense. But by then gaming mags were becoming common and after the experience on my dad's PC and the pictures of games on the magazines (and on some TV shows) I suddenly became aware of things like "colour clash" and the ridiculously high loading times (via cassette tapes). The experience on the PC had made me realize just how limited the Spectrum was (the PC scope felt endless) and the disk drive was wonderful compared to the tape loader. Sometime during this period I was also offered an Atari 2600 clone but, as you can imagine, I really dind't pay much attention to it. I started to crave something else.

This was in 1989 and the Amiga was being hailed everywhere as the best computer in the world. Some official Spectrum games even started to come with Amiga version screenshots in the back to "bait" us into buying the game. I started to crave one very badly. I was still too young to have my own money (would be about 12) so I started badgering my parents for one. But they made me wait 'till Christmas to finally get my Amiga 500. And - lo and behold - all the hype was real. It really was the best computer ever. And the rest is history. I've been an amigan ever since. I was gifted a NES a few months later and although I recognized some of its merits, the Amiga seemed to be on a whole new dimension.

So yes, even if I was highly impacted by basically every console/computer that I came across as a child, my first Spectrum was important to establish my "social gamer" persona that became a part of my life up until I went to the University, but it somehow felt a bit short. It was the Amiga, then, that made me fall utterly in love. It was my first passion. And even though I've had a lot of fun with other machines (my first 486DX2 was also a very strong influence on me), the Amiga still remains as my strongest love and, honestly, I don't think it will ever be surpassed.

[Amigajay]

84-C16, 87-ZX+2, 89-MS, 90-GB, 91-MD

Bit of a cross-over as my mate used to leave his A500 around my house from late 1990, so it kind of felt like i owned one longer than i actually did, and by late 1992 we swapped my MD for his A500.

In hindsight….i would do everything exactly the same as had fun on every machine i used.

[Megalomaniac]

I'm glad most of us have fond memories of our first systems, even if very few of us got a cutting-edge system initially. I'm certainly glad I started with an older system with lots of games. Starting with an Amiga when I was 9 and it was still on the way up would have been a bit dizzying and overwhelming, at least with a Spectrum it only cost £3 to buy a budget game (or a magazine with several free games, I loved those) to get experience of a genre.

I'd assumed more people would have started with a C64 than a Spectrum. Most of us having started with computers rather than consoles, and for most of us games weren't the entire appeal of an Amiga.

[andyhants]

Zx81

[Karlos]

Also zx81, followed by Spectrum, followed by a loss of interest except for various esoteric programmable calculators, followed, eventually, by the Amiga.