Gaming Beginnings

Like many other gamers in their mid 20's the first video game I ever remember playing was Super Mario Bros. on the NES. I was 5 at the time my dad brought it home and hooked it up to our huge, wooden floor model T.V. I don't remember seeing any commercials for the NES up to that point. I'm not sure if I even knew what a "video game" was yet. But I certainly remember the first time I saw Mario break that first question mark block, and get the mushroom, I was hooked. My mom was the first in our family to play it, but she didn't play it long at all before she had no choice but to hand the controller over to me because I was making such a racket over it.
Our NES library was mostly limited to games from cartoons that we watched such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Chip & Dale : Rescue Rangers, and The Simpsons : Bart Vs. The Space Mutants. I was too young to enjoy the would be classics like Contra and Legend of Zelda. I never played, or even heard of Castlevania until I was 24, when I saw it on an Angry Video Game Nerd Youtube video, and a friend told me about Emulators and Roms. Now, going back, and playing through all the NES classics I realize I missed out on a lot of great games because I was so young. I don't remember talking about video games in school that early on, so I didn't even know about these games so that I could ask my parents for them. I'm only now up to level 4 in Castlevania, and I can still only beat the first 2 guys in Mike Tyson's Punch Out.
Now I am bringing my son up on these classic titles before he gets older and only wants to play the newest games. I can't wait until he starts Kindergarten this year, and confuses the other kids when he tries to tell them about the Atari 2600, NES, and Sega Genesis.
So if your too young to have played these games, or like me, just never had them. Get on Craigslist and pick yourself up a $30 Nintendo, and get your games from the flea market for $2-$3, and take a trip down memory lane.