I started gaming somewhere around 1985, thanks to a neighbor friend down the street whose dad had a Commodore 64. He didn't have a ton of games, but I remember us putting in a fair bit of time playing stuff like Jump Man and Archon. It being the 80s, we also started going to arcades quite a bit, though most of what was around at that time consisted of old Atari stuff.
The first system I actually owned was the NES though, which thankfully also included a subscription to Nintendo Power, and introduced me to Dragon Warrior, which is probably the first game I ever became really, truly obsessed with. The SNES followed not long after, and that system (along with local arcades) really cemented my love of gaming for good. Final Fantasy II (4) and III (6), Super Metroid, Super Empire Strikes Back, Donkey Kong Country, Chrono Trigger, Street Fighter II Turbo... it was really an incredible time to be a gamer.
Around 1992, while driving home from some get-together or other, my Mom and I started needling my dad to stop in at this store off the highway so we could "just look" at the computers. 25 minutes later, we were headed home with a Micron 486SX 25Mhz and a copy of Star Trek: 25th Anniversary.
Things kind of broke down for me in the mid 90s, though. I'd been a die-hard Nintendo fan, but absolutely hated everything about the N64, so I largely stopped console gaming. Being a cash-strapped teen, I couldn't really buy more games for the NES or SNES, the local video stores gradually stopped carrying them, and being a teenager in need of cash, I sold all of the NES stuff and all but two of my SNES games. I do still have the old SNES though, along with DKC and Super Metroid, and almost everything else I had I thankfully do have on another system now.
Anyway, Nintendo had pretty much alienated me from console gaming entirely, so I dove into PC gaming exclusively, until a friend casually mentioned Final Fantasy 7 and started showing off his PlayStation, which just totally blew me away at the time. The timing couldn't have been better too, because I'd just gotten my first real job as a clerk at Blockbuster Video