RPS Asks: What's Your First Gaming Memory?

Go back. Go waaaaay back. What's the very first thing you remember about gaming?

It may be an advert. Perhaps it was that terrifying talking testcard, demanding it be plugged into a Sega? (Oh God, in French it's even worse.) Or perhaps it was seeing an older brother or sister shooting someone in the head, scarring you for life.

For me, it was a Pong clone. One of those bizarre wood-finished home gaming kits that played four or five games, including Pong and variants of it. But that's blurry. More coherently, it would be the ZX81, and watching my dad play text adventures. An experience that has permanently seared "exam" into my brain as a word that means to look at something closely.

So tell us - when was the first time you encountered gaming as a concept? And don't be shy if that's Tennis For Two on an oscilloscope, or Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare on an Xbox 360.