Somoe epic updates above^
For me, ‘video gaming’ in general started in the days of the Commodore 64. The 1980s.
Even in those days gamers were already dicks. There was (in the UK) a war of superiority between C64 and ZX Spectrum owners. Though this generally ended with both sets ganging up and mocking the solitary BBC microcomputer owner which had Elite and pretty much nothing else going for it. Though I did learn BASIC using a BBC machine, think they were made for the BBC by Acorn.
The C64 had the better graphics by the way. And was the superior machine. International Soccer loaded via a cartridge. And I’ll never forget the days of listening to the cassette player load Manic Miner or Way of the Exploding Fist. Plus, the very first football manager I ever played was on the C64 and is one of my favourite games of all time. The PSU would generally overheat before I got tired of playing that game. The Amiga followed the C64 but I had moved onto consoles by this stage. I loved the SNES and the Sega Megadrive (Genesis) and then the N64 and PlayStation.
At which point I was back on a PC. I had crap internet for years, so only played stuff like Black, early CODs and Conflict Desert Storm type games, oh and of course Football Manager. My mate Dan had a better PC and internet so my first experience of online play was around his playing Unreal Tournament and Quake.
Special mention to the PS2 slim, which is one of my favourite things of all time, it was tiny and awesome.
It wasn’t until the Xbox 360 that I finally experienced online play in my own home. COD4 and World at War were good games but it was MW2 that really grabbed me. I played with a bunch of work mates and used to dream of UAVs circling overhead. Great days, great console.
Then the DayZ mod for Arma 2 came along in 2012 and hammered the first nail into the console coffin. I watched those early vids of folk playing the mod and it blew me away, there was nothing like it at the time. What a fucking game. The mod support was incredible, new maps, Namalsk, Lingor, Pantera and the awesome DayZ Origins on Taviana. I used to play with Aitchy and Battlefield John from the DayZ forums and I miss the mod a lot.
I only had a laptop but it played DayZ without any problems, except that it would overheat playing around the 90 minute mark. So I saved up my pennies and sorted myself a very nice PC. I did buy a PS4, a year after release, under duress from a certain South African.
It was actually from playing DayZ and meeting @Diddums on the DayZ forums that lead me here