Topic: Did you play games for an Atari system before you owned a Nintendo system?

I wasn't even born yet so no i start with the NES just like any other 3 Generation Gamer.

Yeah, that's the one. We played that on my cousins Atari. His console was weird lookin. Like it was made of wood, lol.

NEVER!

Nintendo FTW!

A friend had one of those. The membrane keyboard was horrible, I remember typing in games out of magazines and saving them on cassette -- pure torture and even worse if the game was crap! You could still play fun games on carts and use regular Atari joysticks though. We played a whole lot of Chopper Command on that thing...ah, the memories...

Nope. Played Sega and Nintendo consoles first.

Nope, I played NES. That is, until the Genesis came out.

I started with the NES but a friend of mine had the Atari 2600 so sometimes we exchanged them to play truly retro stuff.

Not me. I was born 2 years after the NES came out! I don't think I was even aware that Atari even existed(or for that matter, anything pre-NES)!
I guess that shows how hard the game crash hurt Atari!

Yeah I got an Atari 2600 Jr for Christmas. I remember seeing it at the toy store and I can't remember if it was $100 or $50 but I asked for it because I knew it was in the price range of a possible gift. Later (still before Christmas) I changed my mind, I wanted a Nintendo but knew it was too much so I would save up for it. Well I ended up with an Atari because my grandparents had already bought it for me. Anyway I wasn't all that impressed. My friend had Super Mario Bros which felt light years ahead of anything on the Atari and my other friend had Zelda 2 which was equally amazing. I had Donkey Kong Jr, Commando, California Games, Winter Games and perhaps that's all. I still played some of the games quite a bit especially the BMX in California Games. The next Christmas I got a Nintendo with a blue Nintendo carrying case that had Mario & Luigi on it, man that was the best gift ever. My brother went on to get the SNES & N64 for birthday's in later years and I thank him for that. I bought a Playstation mainly for Resident Evil 2, Capcom's 2D fighters & Megaman, Final Fantasy 7, & Gran Turismo. But discovered a lot of other great games. After that my Nintendo days were over until last year when I picked up a Gamecube and then a Wii.

That was before my time.
I guess my brother had a Colecovision during that era.

Yes had an ATARI a few years before we got our NES on a nice Christmas morning. Used to play Pac-Man, Mario Bros. and Frogger all the time.

Got my first Atari in 1981 at age six. The system that started it all or me. The console and games are long gone..... I got an Atari Flashback 2 last year and it's got me checking Ebay regularly for a sweet deal.
About 15 years ago I bought a 2600 and Yars Revenge at a secondhand store for five bucks, no cables or controllers, and one of my drunken friends chucked it at some meatheads as we drove by. And it was a terrible throw, it just smashed in front of them on the pavement. So lame. I made him buy me a pizza for that.

Prior to the NES, I had an Atari 2600 and a Magnavox Odyssey.

My older brother had a 2600 (Woody), and I was forever sneaking into his room to play it when he was out. Later, he upgraded to a Commodore 64, which left me drooling. I finally got my own NES in '88 ...Happy days!

I actually owned one of those Pong consoles with the four variants of Pong before graduating to the Atari 2600, the Atari 5200 and, later, the NES.

First system I got was an Odyssey 400 Pong system at a garage sale in 1980. The following Christmas I got the Atari 2600 and played it until I got the Commodore 64 to tide me over until the NES came out in the US.

Through all of my friends, I basically had access to just about every system of that era including: Atari 5200, Colecovision, Vectrex, Intellivision, and Odyssey 2. It wasn't until I got on the internet that I was able to go back and buy all of these consoles that I missed owning first time around.