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So what was your first game experience? Mine was an odd and not entirely satisfying experience I have to admit, due to the character pictured below. The year was 1985, I was six years old and my parents had taken a short drive from Belfast to escape the car bombs, death threats and public executions by terrorists (tragically thats not entirely a joke), to the seaside resort of Newcastle. Of course its pretty humorous to call it a seaside resort. Beaches in Ireland didn't have sand, they had rocks you had to hobble over to get to water that was so cold it could change your gender (tragically again that's not a joke either). In fact the only reason it was a seaside resort were the buildings along the sea road being painted bright primary colours and the fish and chip shop having a sun umbrella, which was handy because it rained while we were there.

While wandering the board walk my very young and impressionable mind was drawn to a strange room next to the slippery slide full of bright lights and odd electric sounds. I didn't know it for a full four years, but I was standing in my very first video arcade.

I stumbled around in a daze at first, staring glassy eyed at each of the machines while my parents followed nervously, fermenting a permanent distrust of video games in their minds in the process. I can't remember what games I saw there, I have vague memories of Ms Pacman and Space Invaders on flat game tables you could set your drink on, some of them even had ashtrays moulded into the game box. Eventually my gaze settled on a Dragon Lair machine featuring the bright characters of animation legend Don Bluth. To me this was a cartoon come to life that I could control, sweet mana from heaven, every six year olds dream! I watched as the severely acned boy at the machine used the single joystick and button to leap the hero around the screen and slash at monsters and ghosts until he came to a level with two giant swinging bars with giant mace like heads. As soon as the character stood up one of the maces connected and he died. After a few minutes experimentation the teenager quit in disgust leaving me to watch that classic game event, the continue count down.

At this point my father stepped forward and offered a couple of coins that I automatically stuffed into the machine and hit the button. Of course this put me right back where the teenager preceding me had been, crouching below the swinging maces of death. I stood for a few minutes, screwing my mind up, trying to remember what the boy had done to pass all the previous traps and dangers. I moved the joystick, Dirk the Daring stood up, and died. I was upset and confused. I'd just used my entire entertainment allowance for an experience that had lasted less than a minute and was the most disappointing thing I'd experienced in my six years of life.

If you watch the video below, which actually looks a lot better than the original 1983 game did, you can see the section that was my first experience of gaming at 28 seconds.

I remember my father saying something about it being a waste of money. I didn't play Dragon's Lair again until years later and even as a grown and experienced gamer having cut my teeth on Donkey Kong and Qbert I still found Dragon's Lair a hellacious experience to play through. If you've never played it before its basically one long quick time event game, only without any prompts, you need to guess the right way to push the joystick and the right time to push the button to swing your sword, then slowly memorise every single section until you can get to the end of the game.

Dragon's Lair soured me so badly on games I probably wouldn't have played another one for years. But when my family moved to Australia our next door neighbour was a young man who had owned a video game store in Perth that had gone bust, game stores being even less viable in 1986 than they are now. He had a heap of old stock left and was incredibly kind enough to gift us with a Coleco Vision and a bunch of games including Donkey Kong, or it might have been a Chinese knock off called Konkey Dong, a Smurfs game (even then licensed games were crap) and Turbo, complete with racing wheel and pedals.

1986 pimp mofo's, Coleco in the hizz-ay

I have never found another racing game I loved as much as Turbo

Although none of these titles looked as amazing as the slick Don Bluth animation of Dragon's Lair complete with Princess Daphne and her bountiful bosom, their gameplay got me hooked on gaming (especially Konkey Dong). I've been wary to expose my kids to games with overly detailed graphics but complex and intimidating gameplay in favour of simple arcade style games to get them to love gaming and avoid the same nasty experience I had with Dragon's Lair.

So what was your first time like? I'd be interested in the Australian game community sharing their own stories of the first time they sat down in front of a mess of pixels and played a game? Was it fun? Was it crap? Did you have a joystick, paddle or keyboard? Were you at home or at an arcade? Were you mugged at the arcade shortly after?

Head over to our forums and share your stories. We've got an official thread on the topic here.