Pitfall by Activision for the Atari 2600. I'm old.

With my own allowance money instead of asking for it as a gift?
Sim City 3000

First game as an adult with a job?
Halo 2

Orange box, everything before was pirated lol

Myst was the first game I bought with my own money

Holy shit am i the only minecraft generation kid here?

My older sisters both had several games before I got one for myself. I think the first one that was actually mine wasn’t until Burnout 3 when we got a PS2. All the PS1 games were hand-me-downs.

Pokemon Blue. I saved up then learned about sales tax at the cashier, so my dad bailed me out with the extra $5

I don't know for sure if it was my money or just my choice, but I went with Strife (1996). I chose it in the store after a long deliberation, my uncle was trying to get me to go with Half Life but I was drawn in by something on the back of the box. PC games used to come in big empty boxes with a lot of art and info on them.

It was unforgettable. Basically if you made an RPG in the old Doom engine with the sensibilities of the nineties and an overly ambitious art department. It was surprisingly well written, and I've been chasing that sense of an expansive, dark yet cartoonish, novelistic RPG ever since.

Riven: The sequel to Myst. Had to visit a whole new world and write down my adventure.

With my own money? Chrono Trigger, shortly after it was released in the US. Took a while to save up my meager allowance.

I was a tween, and it was very worth it.

Purchased was Tomb Raider II. So worth it because I loved Indiana Jones.

Bought for me: the NES deluxe kit with console, controllers, light gun, and Mario/Duck Hunt.

I first bought Super Mario Bros 3 as in, with my own money.

Super smash brothers mele, gamecube

Altered Beast came free with the Sega Mega Drive I bought as my first console.

It’s been a long time ago….

For a console: probably https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaboom!_(video_game)

For a computer: for my C64 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_IV%3A_Quest_of_the_Avatar

I don't remember.

However, I gave up gaming when I was around 18 and preparing to head off to college. Then after I graduated, I was at a store and saw Quake Arena on deep discount (b/c it was a very old game at that time) and based on the hardware requirements, it looked like my crumby ancient tower computer could play it. I don't know why, but I decided to buy it, and I guess that sort of got me back into gaming (ish).

I was in my 20s and although I barely remember the game now, yeah, it was worth it. The graphics and performance were far superior to anything I'd played up to that point. It had online play, which was entirely new to me at the time. And a few years later, I got major "friend points" when I gifted it to someone who was a game collector and had offered many times to buy the game from me.

Rise of the Triads. It was not worth it because there was a fault on the 5th floppy disk so it never worked and I couldn't bring it back to the store because I was 13 and wasn't supposed to be buying violent games but I bought it without telling my parents. So I couldn't take it back without them finding out.

The first game I ever bought 'by myself' was a sealed copy of Phantasy Star Online for GameCube long after its hayday in like 2011. I worked all summer for it, and it was 200 fucken dollars for an unopened copy. Worth every penny I still have it today, just used the disc to load it into Dolphin.

Colin McRae Rally 2.0 for the PlayStation.

I wanted a PlayStation so much but simply didn’t have the money. I was saving for it.

But bought the game so I could go to my friend’s house and play it on his PlayStation.

Wordfeud premium.

Had it since Android started. It's outlived one marriage (cancer), about six phones so far.

It's a kind of Scrabble game but slightly different layout, and 'just works.'

Very first that I bought? Deus Ex. By that time I already played it quite a lot, but I felt that it deserves buying even though I didn’t have any income at that age. Looking back at that seems nostalgic. It had a proper manual and everything. It even seemed somehow “magical”, because as kids we weren’t really used to owning games (as in our “own” games, not just something borrowed from a friend which was usually just burnt on empty CD). Good times.

I lived in a pretty rural town at the time. This was the best game zcmi had for our brand new 386. World Gamee

I think it was KotOR 🤔

The first game system I ever had was a Game Gear when I was 6, but I think every game I ever got for it was a gift. We got a Sega Genesis the following year, when I was 7 (1996). Little did I know at the time it was actually obsolete at that point, but that's why my parents got it for me when they did; it was dirt cheap. So were the games. I kid you not when I say I could walk into a FuncoLand with $10 and walk out with 20 used Genesis games, most of which were $0.25 each. So as a result, I have no idea what the first game I bought was, because my brother and I bought a plethora of games all at the same time. In that haul though, probably, was Vectorman, Jurassic Park, Clayfighter, and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (we already got Sonic 1 and 2 with the console, as well as a couple of Mortal Kombat games that our parents made us return when they realized how violent they were, because I guess the title left it ambiguous).

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater for N64

i bought "sensible soccer" to impress my dad, how cool my amiga 600 was. he was not impressed. and i never was into soccer.

With my own money, it would have been some ZX Spectrum budget title. I clearly remember Fantasy World Dizzy being mine and I think I bought it with my own money rather than it being purchased for me, so I'm going to go with that.

Can't remember if I purchased it or asked for it, but it is the first game that was just for me and not anyone else in the family and would have been in my early teens. Wanted it as a computer version of the tabletop Battletech game that I was introduced to by a friend's older brother.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BattleTech:_The_Crescent_Hawk%27s_Revenge

The play speed was tied to the CPU speed, so when we upgraded the family computer a couple years later all the movement happened at ludicrous speeds! Good thing it was turn based.

BATTLETECH 2019 was like a modern version which was pretty awesome and hit all the nostalgia buttons!

Final Fantasy 7 for the PS1.

Let's see... when I was 4 I got a Sega Genesis for my birthday. It came with Sonic the Hedgehog 2, and Granddad took me shopping to pick out two other games for it. I picked Sonic the Hedgehog and Ms. Pac-Man, and both were bangers. The Genesis port of Ms. Pac-Man had a bunch of alternate modes with different mazes.

I became a big fan of the Sonic the Hedgehog games. I got Sonic 3 for my next(?) birthday, and Sonic and Knuckles the Christmas after that(?). I was convinced that Lock-On Technology was going to be the future of video games!

Also my recollection is that Sonic 2 wasn't actually packed in with the system, Granddad had to fill out like a rebate form to claim it from the retailer and it came in the mail. It had a NOT FOR RESALE sticker on it which I now understand meant "only for use in the promotion, don't put this on the shelf" but as a kid I was very confused about what peril would befall me if I sold it to someone else.

Secret of Mana. I was 12, and went and worked under the table stripping tobacco. The game was well worth what I paid, the job wasn't.

Fallout 3, when I was 15. I had read the strategy guide (with no pictures) at my library, and struggled to even comprehend a game that expansive.

Hell yeah, it was worth it.

Ultima Underworld.
Saved a whole year for that one. Took a whole day to figure out how to configure the EMM386 line that would enable me to have enough memory to run the damn thing (tears of frustration were shed).

Absolutely worth it. Blew my little mind. Never got to finish it though, because of a bug in the quest in the last level T_T

The Legend of the Red Dragon (L.O.R.D.)

(A BBS "door" game.)

Absolutely worth it.

With my own money: Link to the Past. Most definitely.

The first game I ever bought with my own money was Metal Gear Solid 1. And the PS1 to play it on.

I wanted FF7 but they didn't have it. But MGS was a good second choice. It was also the first time ever buying anything from a second-hand store. I wish I could remember the name of the store; it wasn't Funcoland or EB. They had a logo that was an anthropomorphic SNES cart, tho.

Please keep them coming and please please tell your stories. It’s the best part of gaming really

I'm pretty sure it was Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. I don't actually remember buying it and might have played Warcraft 2 beforehand, but I spent many ... Many happy hours on DF2. One of those two was my introduction to multiplayer gaming, but for sure I spent a lot more time on DF2.

As for whether it was worth it, it arguably shaped a lot of my life to date. Also I met at least one friend whom I still talk to (though rarely) to this day. I would say yes.

Crash bandicoot 3.

Considering how uninformed I was back then, it was a hell of a success.

That I bought myself? Dragon Warrior. I bought it from a teenager who lived nearby for 5$ (a couple hundred when adjusting for inflation). He even threw in a cut out of a Nintendo power article on how to beat it.

Was it worth it? Absofuckinglutely!