Did your parents play video games?

[+LS650]

I've never seen either of my parents play any sort of videogame. They have zero interest.

[Shawn]

I was allowed to play video games and my parents actually wore out my first set of cx40 joysticks playing various 2600 games after I had gone to bed. They lost interest by the time I go an NES but my Mom would from time to time play duck hunt with me and she really liked the game Bomberman.

[tep392]

Not once. They never even watched us play them since they were in the basement.

[adamchevy]

Closest my dad ever came was video poker at 7 eleven or terrible Herbst in Vegas where I grew up. My mom, never. My friends dad growing up played halo with us all the time. He was the cool dad.

[RJ]

I've never seen either of my parents play any sort of videogame. They have zero interest.

Ding ding ding. Great topic BTW.

 

I tried teaching my dad Video Checkers when he retired, didnt go too well. I relate the whole story on Ferg's Game By Game podcast, an ep or 2 AFTER the VC ep. Before that, I dont recall either parent ever even touching any game system.

 

At a family thing we showed our aunt 2600 Dig Dug, & she later called it "Ding Dong", that was funny.

 

I found out a couple yrs ago, an older brother used to play Asteroids at a local bowling alley in the early 80s. Of my 3 older brothers, he's the one I least suspected to like video games.

Edited February 22, 2015 by RJ

[WolfAmongWolves]

Now my grandmother played Frogger until the day she died. She kept our VCS at her house when we had moved on to NES.

 

 

 

That is just amazing. I don't think my grandmother would even understand the concept of a video game. About 20 years ago when her cassette player broke I thought it would be a great idea to finally bring her into the digital age. My sister and I got her a CD player and three of her favorite albums on CD for her birthday. I set it up for her, showed her how it worked, and she seemed content. A few months later when I visited her, the CD player was covered in a layer of dust and the CDs were still in their cellophane wrappings. She told me she had tried, but the CD player was "alien" to her. We got her a new cassette player, and that's what she still uses today. I can't even imagine her inserting a cartridge into an Atari and holding a joystick.

[Jinks]

Never. I remember dad saying "your gunna wreck the tv!!" "Turn that bingy bingy s#$t off and do you gd homework you little a$/h#$/!!"

Once he came home for lunch and seen me playing phoenix at noon hour school break and seen the spider guy at the bottom of the screen moving back and forth and I was shooting the birds as I would move with them and fire and the bullets would look like they are going diagonal. It caught his eye on the way to the bathroom to wash up and he said "How the hell do you shoot like that?"

I think my parents would watch us play coco 2 baseball and stuff like that. That game costs lots of joysticks. Apparently bouncing them off the concrete was not part of the game..

[reklen]

My parents bought the Atari for us when they were in their thirties. My dad got into it, especially Asteroids, Pitfall, and Dig Dug. My mom actually went out and bought Frogger for herself when it was new. We were the only family I knew of that would play the games on a color tv. All my friends had it hooked up to a smaller TV or black and white TV. My dad used to get mad because neighborhood kids would come over to play Atari at our house because it was in color. When I moved out, my dad wouldn't let me take the Atari. He tried getting his uncle to play it (which he did, but he didn't like it, ) when he was in his sixties.

My dad didn't like the Nintendo, and didn't understand why my younger brother wanted one. After all, we already had an Atari.

 

Although I would consider my parents casual gamers, they really enjoyed the Wii sports games and Donkey Konga for the gamecube.

 

I do remember about five or six years ago my dad being very impressed when I showed him the Activision Classics game on the Gameboy SP. He thought it was amazing that the old Atari games could be played on such a small system.

[Mayhem]

Not really, sadly. Although they did a little bit when I was younger. My father would play a few arcade machines when I was in arcades as a youngster, and I occasionally encouraged them into playing a few games that involved boards with the computer doing grunt calculation work in the background to decide outcomes (such as Brian Clough's Football Fortunes, and Tank Attack, both on the C64). But that was about it.

[lingyi]

One of the reasons my Dad got us (my brother and I) the 2600 back in 1977 / 78 was because of Blackjack. He played a bit of Air / Sea Battle (Target Fun because we got our system from Sears), but mostly "practiced" with Blackjack. We only had our system for a few months before returning it because of video problems and I didn't get back into videogames until the early '80's.

 

Ironically, it was my Mom who got us hooked on video arcades by talking about this video game (Galaxian) at the local take-out place near next to by Dad's business building. I knew about Space Invaders, but had no interest at all in it (never even played it back then), but she kept talking about this game that all the kids were crazy about (Galaxian). So we went and tried it. There were two cocktail tables, one regular Galaxian, the other modded with the steerable shots. It was the latter that sent us searching for video arcades that had his mod.

Edited February 23, 2015 by lingyi

[awhite2600]

My parents were born in the early 1940's. I was born in 1966 and my brother in 1970. My parents bought an original Pong in the late 1970's. A week later they returned it and bought an APF TV Fun (pong clone) because it played 4 games. My parents would initially play pong but quickly became bored with it.

 

In about 1982 our family got an Intellivision. I don't recall my father ever playing it. My mother purchased Horse Racing as she thought it might be a game that my Dad would play along with the included Poker / Blackjack. At first my mother would sometimes play Triple Action with my brother and I. After a month or two it was just my brother and I that would play. My parents even insisted that the Intellivision would break if I hooked it up to the Black & White TV in my room because all of the games said "For Color TV Viewing Only".

 

About a year later I got a VIC-20. I think the final turn off for my father was when I convinced him to try a crappy Pinball game written in BASIC. He kept trying to "nudge" the computer like a real pinball machine. When the game didn't respond to his liking he decided that it was "defective" and never touched a videogame again. To this day he will use my mom's PC to play the occasional game of Solitare. He has absolutely no other interest in computers. My mom is an avid iPad user but will not play games. I can't even convince her to try casual or trivia games. Her reply is always, "I don't play games. I knit."

 

My brother, now a magazine editor, was addicted to Astrosmash when it came out. He has no interest in games today.

[VectorGamer]

No. My Dad played pinball.

[Thomas Jentzsch]

When I visited him, I played on a Pong-Console with my father. Mostly a variation called "Football" IIRC.

 

 

Actually more like this:

Edited February 23, 2015 by Thomas Jentzsch

[BassGuitari]

My dad supposedly went through a Pac-Man phase when he and my mom were dating, and my parents had a type-in Frogger game for the Timex/Sinclair 1000 they had around the time I was born (1985). Otherwise the only times I can ever remember seeing him play a video game were when he was loading games for me on our ancient Commodore 64 when I was 4 or 5. Otherwise, my dad has no interest. In fact, he never missed an opportunity to let me know what a waste of time they are.

Mom was a bit more amicable. She loved Tetris on the Game Boy, and she was known to sneak in some NES from time to time (usually Bart Vs. The Space Mutants, of all things). And of course Windows Solitaire.

[funknflow5200]

What always blows my mind is that my parents actually bought a sears telegames system NEW from sears before I was born! So the machine was there waiting for my arrival in '79. Some of my earliest memories are playing target fun, coconuts, word zapper and squeeze box with them! I later got a master system and that's when they parted ways with video gaming for the most part. Like others have said, they both checked in once again when the Wii was released.

 

My daughters will probably think their parents play too many games once they get older.

Edited February 23, 2015 by funknflow5200

[Clint Thompson]

Everyone in my faimly owned an Atari 2600 and played games with the exception of my parents. I remember one of my aunts introducing my mom to Night Driver and tried to get her to play it, she kept crashing (and cursing) and my aunt enjoyed it thoroughly while cracking up at her the entire time. Outside of that, my parents barely knew how to operate a VHS-player, let alone play some high-tech 2600 games. I'm still really quite unsure if they are actually my parents to this day.

Edited February 23, 2015 by Clint Thompson

[+Atari_Warlord]

Great thread.

 

My parents got divorced the summer before the 2600 came out. The only game I remember my mother ever playing was bowling. Later in life I found out she liked to actually bowl, we just never went because of the drinking and smoking she didn't want to expose us to.

 

My father tried to play with me and would become agitated when I beat him. He bought his own Atari since he didn't live with us. He would buy games he knew I didn't have and practice and then bring them out when I came over so he could beat me. Unfortunately, I still beat him. Good times.

[MrMaddog]

I remember my mom said that dad had a Tv Tennis game that he played with his friends but she thought was boring.

 

As for Atari games my dad liked Golf and I would play with him. He also showed me how to get past the crocs in Pitfall w/o the vine. Other than that he always made me turn off those "stupid games" so he can watch Dialing For Dollars.

 

My mom couldn't get pass the Pitfall crocs so she avoided all action based games. She plays causal games on her Mac though and really loves pinball games.

[AW127]

Only game my mother played sometimes with me in the 80`s, was PAC-MAN on the Atari-VCS2600 and the C64. In other games she was never interested. My father never played a videogame in his life until now, i think. Maybe this is normal when you came from a generation where video-games not existed when yourself was a kid. My parents both are 65 years old now

Edited February 25, 2015 by AW127

[+TwentySixHundred]

My father has never really liked video games besides when he was younger during the Arcade days. My mother was addicted to Tetris in the 90's although both really dont have intrest anymore. My grandmother though, bought a Super Nintendo in the 90's after i brought mine around her house one weekend. She rang up my mother and asked what it was called and the game Vegas Stakes. She bought it for the pokies(Slots) lol, played it every day for an hour or so before bed till the day she passed aged 87. In the belongings left for my mother there it was, the SNES with Vegas Stakes just sitting on the top. Depends on the person i would say, just like my grandmother who never used computers before but she wanted to play the pokies at home lol.

Edited February 26, 2015 by Tony The 2600

[AW127]

Yes, maybe it belongs to the person, TONY. It`s really astonishing, that your grandmother started playing videogames in such a high age and also that she had no problems with using a gamepad or a joystick. I remember, when my mother started playing Pac-Man with me the first time, she needed some time to get the feeling how to hold and use the joystick in the best way. Later it worked good and she played without problems, but first days she had little trouble with the steering. As a little kid, i could not understand this, because i started playing with joysticks in the age of 8 and it become ingrained how to use and hold the controllers. But now i understand it, because start using a controller for the first time in your life, when you in the late 30`s or 40`s is not so easy, than doing this when you 6 or 8 years. Maybe its similar to driving cars. The younger you are, when you make the driving-licence, the easier it is, i think. So respect to your grandmother for starting playing in such age. And i think, it was exactly the right game for here, because in this card-games the reactions are not so important like for example in fast-paced Action-Games.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

We got our first 4 switcher X-mas '82. I remember it so well because unlike most of my big gifts in the past which were always from Santa, this one was under the tree about 2 weeks before the big day. And I just KNEW what it was because my folks hadn't bothered to change the shape of the package when wrapping it. A giant box under the tree stood out..

Besides, we brought my buddies 2600 box from his house just a few doors down and compared it to mine under the tree. Dead match.

 

Anyway, it was a wonderful X-mas and in addition to the pack in of combat (Mine didn't come with pac-man thankfully!), I also received Space Invaders and Defender with it.

 

I certainly played it the most and was on it every night after dinner until I had to go to bed pretty much. But I also know that my mother got really hooked on it as I could hear here playing defender well after I had gone to bed. And her and my step-dad would play space invaders from time to time together. However that phase with my step-dad passed and withing about a year or so he never really touched the atari again. My mother on the only hand would try everything she or I bought later on. Her main games of choice back then eventually became Pitfall and Ms. Pac-man. She got so good at Ms. Pac-man that she could literally roll the score on the standard difficulty nearly every night. And she would play it for several hours until she did so!

 

It got to be so much that we eventually bought a small 13inch color TV and had the Atari hooked up to that in the corner of the living so that I or my mother could play anytime we wanted without disrupting normal TV viewing for my step-dad or whomever.

 

Now my mother still plays games even though she is 60. But she plays the very casual stuff like Bejewelled and Mahjong. In fact I just upgraded to the New 3DSxl and gaver her my old 3DSxl. She was using my old DSlite before that. So I honestly think my mother has the video game bug in her and I inherited it genetically.

[davyK]

My mother just couldn't. She tried a few times but wasn't really interested anyhow.

 

My father sometimes liked to watch us play. On the 2600 he liked watching Tank, Breakout and Surround but the only one he really played was Fishing Derby. He was a crane driver and that game kind of simulates a crane (albeit in 2D) with the dragging line - he was pretty good at the game.

 

He would have played a bit when the first pong consoles came out too.

 

But he was more interested in simulations of driving and flying - and so he lost interest until the hardware was more up to the task. He really liked Pilotwings when that came along and he tried that but preferred to watch us play. He also like watching Tetris being played and would have tried playing that once in a while.

Edited March 2, 2015 by davyK

[jhd]

My Mother played the handheld Pac-Man a bit when it was new. She has no interest in video games now.

 

My Father played Space Duel once, and he even made the high score list! Otherwise he had no interest in games.

 

Both of them were (and are) incredibly supportive of my endevours, however.

[Army Of 2600]

I used to get my Mom to play Pac-Man with me as player number 2, but I would only play a one player game. She could never figure out why she couldn't get the yellow mouth to do what she wanted. After that, she did not play too much...