I'm a lifelong gamer, starting with Pong in 1972.  I play all of the current consoles and have a high end gaming PC to play the current games. 

Despite all of the games I've played and enjoyed, nothing will ever match the magic of that first time I got 999,975 points on Defender.  Defender's score goes back to 0 when you hit 1,000,000 points.  It was in 1983 that I did this in a small local arcade.  This was back in the days when you'd get a crowd of people in an arcade watching good players.  I wasn't the best jock, though I tried.  I wasn't the most popular guy.  I didn't get the best grades, though certainly not the worst, but I was the best at the biggest game in that arcade ever.  I eventually played for 20 hours on one quarter on Defender for a total of 22,000,000 points.  I'll never try this again, but I can proudly say that I have done it.  Very few have ever done this.  They're out there, but in very small numbers. 

At 43 years of age, I can still get 999,975 on Defender.  I can't run as fast or far, but darn it, I can still play Defender with the best of 'em, seemingly never having lost a single step.