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Retro What was the first game you beat on what hardware?

Mer.Saloon

Chain Chomp
Pronouns
He/Him
We all have that one magic moment of beating our first game and it lives on in our hearts and minds.

Mine was Super Mario Land on the Gameboy Color. Yeah, I never could beat Mario Land on my original brick, despite my best efforts. It took until the gameboy color for me to finally put the game in its place. Granted, I didn't own the game until maybe a year before the color was coming out. Of course, that brick was a hand-me-down. I still remember that beautiful thing, and all the times I spent playing Tetris on it.

Yeah though, Super Mario Land was a game I just COULD NOT beat for the longest time. I already had problems with dexterity in my fingers growing up, so a lot of the finer movements of Mario and art of analog button pressing just never really hit me. But I was a persistent kid who didn't know where to buy Gameboy games.

One day I was in church and I was on a roll with level progression. Yes, I was playing during the mass, and even outdoors, when mass broke out. I was absolutely doing amazing compared to most of my failed runs. I was getting through every level with a multitude of lives and avoiding all the bottomless pits (it was the pits that always got me) until I was at last at Tatanga's Castle. I had gotten to Tatanga before, and failed quite a bit in beating him, but this time I had somehow managed to not lose my Super Mushroom until the absolute last bit. It was an amazing rush when I finally took him down.

I can still remember that warm summer's day on the steps to the church and the elation when I got to that ending. It wasn't a fake Daisy, it was the real thing. And her and Mario went off into the sunset on a rocket ship. God, I loved that game so much.
 
My story is not as good as yours, but mine was Little Big Adventure 2 on PC. I was pretty young, but I remember clearly feeling for the first time that emptiness you feel when you beat a great game. I put months into it, explored every corner of that world, and now the journey was over : while I was happy, it felt kinda sad as well. After 20 years or so it’s still a game I remember vividly – I still know the ferryman’s song by heart. And I was lucky enough to get the chance to thank Frédérick Raynal for this game many years later.
 
It was one of the Spyro games on PS1, I wanna say it was the second one. I was like 6 and adored Spyro, I remember being super hyped after beating Ripto.
 
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Tbh I don't remember exactly what my first game was. I know the first games I played were a bunch of PC games from the late '90s/early '2000s, but I don't really remember which I played first. But it could have been Math Blaster on PC. I've never been a math person but I guess I played this so much in Kindergarten that my teacher let us keep the game. I replayed it around a year ago and it's actually still pretty fun, lol.

Edit: I'm realizing the one I played was called Math Blaster: In Search of Spot.
 
Tbh I don't remember exactly what my first game was. I know the first games I played were a bunch of PC games from the late '90s/early '2000s, but I don't really remember which I played first. But it could have been Math Blaster on PC. I've never been a math person but I guess I played this so much in Kindergarten that my teacher let us keep the game. I replayed it around a year ago and it's actually still pretty fun, lol.

Oooooooo. Technically, that MAY have been my first game beaten. But, well I just never counted it as a kid. It was so short and went on endlessly, I just never really thought of it as something to beat.

Funny enough, I do remember a funny story about Math Blaster. It was the first one about the trash alien. Our Mac was not great at running the thing, so I do remember one particular run that involved the jetpak section where I decided to play on the higher grades, and I just got absolutely smoked to the point I think I actually cried a bit. I must've been 7 or something, and this Mac was sluggish.
 
Oooooooo. Technically, that MAY have been my first game beaten. But, well I just never counted it as a kid. It was so short and went on endlessly, I just never really thought of it as something to beat.

Funny enough, I do remember a funny story about Math Blaster. It was the first one about the trash alien. Our Mac was not great at running the thing, so I do remember one particular run that involved the jetpak section where I decided to play on the higher grades, and I just got absolutely smoked to the point I think I actually cried a bit. I must've been 7 or something, and this Mac was sluggish.

Oof lol, sorry to hear that. Yeah that was the one I played too. I don't remember having any issues like that, but I do remember it being much longer/more difficult than it was when I replayed it last year, lol. It's actually a much shorter game than I remember.

I'm also remembering another game that might have been my first game: Arthur's Computer Adventure. I had vague memories of this 2D underwater game where you basically just swam around and there were some underwater creatures too, I decided to look up "1990s underwater PC game" and I recognized it immediately when I saw what it was lol. I guess this game was basically like 5 mini-games in one, I have some memories of playing all of them but this underwater one called "Deep Dark Sea" was def the one I played the most/had the most memories of.

It's funny how even pretty simple games like this can still be so immersive when you're that age lol, I guess that's the nostalgia effect.
 
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A lot of the earliest games I played either didn’t have endings and looped, or became incrementally harder to the point that I never knew if they even had an ending rather than a leaderboard.

However, the first one I remember being really proud of beating was Treasure Island Dizzy on a C64 in 1989. So much trial and error, you can see longplays of people beating it in under half an hour but for children in the 80s all we had to go on was playground rumours and the odd tips section in magazines. Some of the puzzles just made no sense, you ended up doing the classic adventure game thing of ‘try everything on everything’.

On Nintendo hardware, it was almost certainly Megaman 2 on NES or Super Mario Land on GB. Can’t quite remember which.
 
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I'm reasonably certain it was Super Mario World, which was also the first game I ever played (at a friend's house), first game I ever owned (along with SNES for my first console), and first game I ever got 100% in.
 
Prince of Persia

Amstrad IBM Compatible PC2086 (8086 intel processor)

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Contra on NES in coop with my best buddy.
Fun fact: it was like 2006.

It wasn't really the first one, but I guess Soccer and and the NES Pocket Monster Gold bootleg game don't really count.
 
The first game I actively remember beating was pretty unremarkable - it was The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland for the Game Boy Color. An extremely short and extremely easy game that loosely follows the plot of the film, one that even my younger self could finish in around 10 minutes.



I don't remember how I got that game - I was a Sesame Street fan as a kid, sure, but I'm pretty sure I only watched the Elmo movie once and I don't remember loving it or anything like that - but I played it a bunch and beaten it several times. I no longer own it - gave it away to a younger cousin well over a decade ago - but it exists as a vague nostalgic memory, even if the game itself wouldn't hold much interest outside of those memories.
 
I started playing games so early with my older brother I’m not sure at all what the first game I properly beat was. I’d guess either A Link to the Past or Super Metroid though since those were two of my favorites.
 
Super Mario Bros 2 (USA) on NES. Beat it at a friend's house while my dad was housesitting for the family (I never owned the game myself). I remember nearly crying at the combination of the music, the imagery, and the suggestion that the game didn't actually even happen.

It would be years and years before I'd be able to beat Mario 1. Mario 3 was much easier for me for some reason, as was Link to the Past, Link's Awakening, Super Metroid, and on and on, all beat before Mario 1. Even though it was my first game back in 1985.

Fun fact: I've still never beaten Zelda 1. My best friend and I dedicated a few weeks in a summer to mapping it out ourselves (before the interwebs) and got mostly through it but somehow never solved the mystery of how to enter the final dungeon. Few years ago he was home for a week, he had ahold of his grandma's NES and games and a Game Genie so I suggested trying again with invincibility turned on so we could blow through in one evening and finally do it. This time we knew where to go (thanks internet) and got all the way to Ganon except, we hadn't found the silver arrows first. And we had no way to die and restart at the beginning of the dungeon so... 🤷‍♂️

Still never beat it. And now I actually kinda like it that way.
 
Hard to answer, the first game I ever played was Frogger on the 2600, which you could not traditionally 'beat' but I did clear it enough. Since the 2600 was the first system I got to play with I'd not argue you could beat most of them. I would guess the first game I cleared with a definitive ending would have been the original Super Mario Bros.
 
Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge on "Monkey 2 Light" mode, though I'm very uncertain about this. It may have also been a racing game like Mario Kart 64 or Wave Race 64.

I had very little time allowed to play console games during my childhood (first an hour a day, later than about two to two-and-a-half hours per week), but my parents didn't check how long I was playing computer games, so eventually I was able to make my way through MI2 on Light Mode. Why not MI 1? Well... I really struggled with the fencing mini-game.
 
I’m not sure honestly. It was either Kirby’s Dream Land, or one of the gen one Pokémon games. I had Red, Blue and Yellow, and have memories of playing all three at basically the same time.

The first game I actively remember beating was pretty unremarkable - it was The Adventures of Elmo in Grouchland for the Game Boy Color. An extremely short and extremely easy game that loosely follows the plot of the film, one that even my younger self could finish in around 10 minutes.



I don't remember how I got that game - I was a Sesame Street fan as a kid, sure, but I'm pretty sure I only watched the Elmo movie once and I don't remember loving it or anything like that - but I played it a bunch and beaten it several times. I no longer own it - gave it away to a younger cousin well over a decade ago - but it exists as a vague nostalgic memory, even if the game itself wouldn't hold much interest outside of those memories.

I had this game too! I remember getting it from Toys R Us. I don’t remember ever beating it. I think I might still have it too, somewhere.
 
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This is the one I can remember, think I played the other Dizzy games on Commodore 64 but never beat them(?)

Super Mario Land was also a very early one for me too, on the OG Game Boy. That was a hard game. Old school.
 
Probably SMB1 on NES in the late 1980s, but I don't actually remember that event.

I clearly remember beating Dragon Warrior 1 in late 1991 (I called up a buddy with the urgent news, interrupting a family dinner) and sorta remember beating Super Mario Bros 3 in 1990 (I recall failing to beat Bowser in public at the YMCA though I'd already beaten the game in private at home). I also sold off The Legend of Zelda in early 1990 after getting to, but not defeating, Ganon (I was sure I had bombed the right wall for the silver arrows and my cartridge was buggy, but I was likely mistaken).

I think I beat some other NES games, mostly rentals from the local video store, in that period (1988-1991), but I don't have any real memories of having done so. I did complete a fair few in 1992 (notably Double Dragon 2 & 3) before upgrading to a SNES, though some I left incomplete (Blaster Master).
 
It's weird but I honestly don't remember. I beat very, very few of the games I played as a kid and would often just restart the game from scratch instead of finishing them. I want to say Super Mario Land on the GBC was the first I saw the ending for.
 
It is hard to remember. It definitely had to be a Super Nintendo game. The best guess that I can come up with is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV: Turtles in Time.
 


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