QOTW: What's the first game you bought on your own?

Every week the hosts of TalkRadar present and answer a new "Question of the Week" - a personal inquiry which unearths some of our deepest, and sometimes most sinister, gaming memories. Everyone is encouraged to answer each week's question, so go ahead, tell us your most glorious, nostalgic, or shameful story!

It could be the first game you bought after escaping the bonds of your parents with your very own driver's license, or the first game you bought with money you earned from your first job. In other words, what was the first game you acquired without having to beg for a Christmahanaquanzika present?

Answer this week's question in the comments!

Questions can also be answered in the QOTW forum thread. Our favorite posts this week will be read next week on TalkRadar 70, and appear in the next edition of this article. Listen to TalkRadar 69on Fridayfor our answers!

Below are a few of last week's answers that tickled our collective fancies, but since we can't feature them all here, check outlast week's articleandforum threadfor more...

Bobbety wrote...
"Whenever the SEGA logo sound came up my idiot friend would yell BAGELS. For years I thought that it said bagels. I didn't stop to think because I was just a little kid who hadn't heard of Sega before, all I wanted to do was play Sonic the Hedgehog."

"BAGLES!"

super0sonic wrote...
"This is easy and covers two games. Now when I was young I was in Nintendo’s camp, not because I liked them better but because we were poor. We owned a NES but my parents never bought a SNES instead every couple months we would rent one for the weekend from blockbuster, this later became the N64. Now we picked Nintendo systems because we knew them, it was rare we got to play a system so we wanted only fun stuff to play. So Sega and later Sony were ignored because we did not know them, we did end up getting a PC so I became a PC Gamer growing up playing shareware and game demos. But I knew about sonic and I really wanted to play his games. So fast forward years and I am at a London Drugs in there computer section and there is Sonic CD for PC!!! and I was so happy. Then a few years later I got Sonic and Knuckles for PC!! I was so glad that these games came out for PC and I still have both of them as seen in the pic I am posting with this. Sadly I have long since lost the case for Sonic CD."

Narte wrote...
"...my fondest memory has got to be the Sega Channel. I played pretty much every single Genesis game, legally (this was before the Gens and Kega emulators), and for only 11 bucks a month. Early demos called "Test Drives" of Earthworm Jim 2 and Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 blew my mind and unreleased games (in america anyways) such as Worms, Mega Man: The Wily Wars, and Battle Frenzy became some of my favorite genesis titles. I still remember the boot up and menu music like it was just yesterday."

zigs wrote...
"playing Shenmue as a 10 year old. Absolutely blew my mind, and completely changed my entire perspective on what games could be. Feel entirely indebted to Yu Suzuki, i doubt i'd still be gaming if not for Shenmue. I'd never seen a game with that much freedom in controlling the character, and with such a huge city to explore, with so damn much to do. I'd never even in my wildest dreams imagined how real a games world and protagonist could be, completely immersed myself in the whole game. And at that age, the pace of the game was utterly perfect for me, and things i'd probably hate if i played it now (QTEs, forklift minigames, etc) i absolutely loved at the time."

"Unfortunately, i never actually owned a Dreamcast, and my older brother had borrowed it from a friend in exchange for our N64, and despite the ~100 hours i played the game, i never got to the end of the game before my brother swapped the console back. also never got to finish Jet Set Radio, TrickStyle or Tomb Raider: The Last Chronicles. The bastard.

So actually, that's both my best and worst Sega memory."

Harmon20 wrote...
"Like many, mine was figuring out how to get past the first loop-de-loop in the first Sonic the Hedgehog on the first level. I tried on about 5 separate occasions to do it, until I realized I had to hold right after about 10 minutes of pondering it. Man, did I feel stupid..."

Sep 17, 2009

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GamesRadarTylerWilde
Associate Editor, Digital at PC Gamer