Ah man, ages ago. My Dad was deployed at sea so it was just my Mom and I. My Uncle would bring over a few early systems like the Atari, Intellivision and Colecovision with a few early games. Eventually it really took off when visiting my parent's friends, a large family with an NES. I remember seeing Duck Hunt, Mario, Top Gun and some Wrastlin' game, and we ended up turning it off to watch some Wrestlemania event or something. I'll never forget being around 1 or 2 learning how to control Mario, I just couldn't figure it out, the timing required. I'd have to look down at the controller. I even had a nightmare over it, seeing Mario facing Bowser with the lava, fire and creepy music. My Dad later got us an NES which was great as he had to leave again.
Man its funny remembering how things happen as an innocent kid. That family's daughters got their Mom's Playgirl mag and were showing it around haha! They gave me shit for looking at it but eh, I preferred the Dad's collection of Playboy. What a time man, those electric tracks people would buy and build things around. For my 5th birthday my dad and his best friend made a full table mountain valley with a race track, train track with tunnels and full forest, lakes and fishermen lol, then a neat little town with hand made homes and stuff except the micromachine cars. I so wish my family took photos of that thing it was a work of freakin' art. We were so 80's haha, inspired by Top Gun those two entered into the Navy, all the music and fab hair, I was so Rad.
My family wasn't well off but we did get gifts from church members and stuff. I loved the C64 we got from the Pastor with that loud old printer that worked and probably still does. So many Floppies and stuff. Still boggles my mind how humans were able to get games to work on tape cassettes. Parties were so fun playing arcade ports like Centipede or learning the crazy depth of sims like Gunship and other military sims. Favorite childhood system though goes to my Sega's hands down. More fair, fun and less frustrating. Plus it felt like it was growing with me in terms of appeal as opposed to the more kid friendly Nintendo style. Not hating on Nintendo, love them too.