MTV Multiplayer › Arcade

Peter Molyneux stole money from his grandmother. Chris Taylor made his hands stink of dirty quarters. I blithely played a "Donkey Kong" rip-off called "Pickaxe Pete" -- and liked it.

These are the essential components of our very first video game memories. Late last week I asked a group of people in and around the video game industry to share with me -- and with you -- their very first, hazy memories of playing a video game. Molyneux, Taylor and a dozen others -- including the Multiplayer team -- offer their first recollections below.

Read on to see how lifelong obsessions with video games begin. Then tell me, what's your first memory of playing a video game?

Brian Allgeier, Creative Director, "Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction"

First Gaming Memory: I was about nine years old and my family was vacationing in Gatlinburg, Tennessee. We were at a hotel and my brother had just run full speed into a sliding glass door (Darn invisible collision walls). While my mother tended to his wounds, my Dad entered the room giddy with excitement. He wanted to show me some new amazing thing he had just found. We rushed outside and into a nearby pool hall. In the center of the smoke filled room was a shiny "Pac-Man" arcade cabinet. We played a few quarters and I remember being mesmerized by that yellow pixilated critter gobbling up dots in a neon blue maze. Oddly enough, that was probably the first and last time I ever saw my Dad get excited about a videogame.

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Jonathan Blow, Game Designer, "Braid"

First Gaming Memory: "Combat" on the Atari 2600. I was unbeatable on the Tank-Pong levels (bouncing bullets!) I liked "Air-Sea Battle" better, but "Combat" was the canonical 2600 game, and being the pack-in, probably the first game anyone would boot up.

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