Earliest and fondest gaming memory I have involves someone I knew as a kid playing the Super Mario Bros. trilogy for the NES. I used to watch him attentively while either standing by the door to his room or while sitting on the floor. Being a kid, I would bombard him with questions about the games and such, and he would answer me very candidly. This was pretty much the catalyst for my love for video games.
Another, and possibly one of my most vivid memories is when I used to wake up very early in the morning every Saturday and Sunday, at around 4:30am to 5am, to go to the living room with both my CD player and Game Boy Color, and some back up batteries, in order to play Pokémon Gold. I would listen to whatever I was into at the time and gleefully play the game for hours. On that same vein, I remember getting Pokémon Yellow around its week of release and enthusiastically playing it once I got home for many, many hours. When I felt I had enough, I turned the game off...without saving. At the time I didn’t even noticed until the next day. I remember how angry and disheartened I felt that day.
Other great memories involve staying the night at my friends’, or them staying at mine, and basically just playing video games. I also would attend pizza parties that Stop N' Play would host every Wednesday, which would last for about 3 hours. They used to hold contests and sweepstakes on them and give out free tokens – it was awesome. Good times, truly.
