I have a fond memory of my earliest childhood growing up with the NES. Played Mario Bros. 3 a fuck ton. I liked some other games like Ninja Gaiden (a hard sonofabitch), Boulder Dash (one of my favourites) and Tetris (Tengen version ftw).
I don't exactly remember what happened to that NES nor the games, but it vanished some day without any real reason, I assume at the time they were sold for food or something (we were rather poor at the time).
A few years later the first console I actually owned was a Gameboy Pocket (little fucker has eaten so many AAA batteries (: ), which was, funnily enough, given to me by some girl I knew in school, with a cart of Pokémon Silver. Sadly the cart itself had battery issues (didn'd know why the saves didn't survive most of the times), it was still a lot of fun to experience my first Pokémon game from a gifted handheld
Some years later I owned a GBA SP, that I used so much it ended up worn out from use, lmao. Served nicely for hundred of Pokémon gameplay, I might have cumulated over 600 hours from 3 carts, that without including the few GBA games I had a few years later, when the L and R triggers didn't work anymore
Kingstone Fusion in Minish Cap was impossible, and it was required to progress, hahaha.
Both the Gameboy Pocket and the GBA collection were sold around 2009 so I could afford a Nintendo DS and A few games, later my first flashcard the DSTT. This was amazing at the time.
Eventually for multiple personal and familial problems, I've lost, sold, got taken, even stolen, most of these again. The DS has given me enough spare cash to buy myself a PSP 2000 in 2011, and that was the last acquisition I could afford until 2013, mainly due to family bullshit, and stressful work eat sleep routine that lasted until around mid 2015.
Moving out in early adulthood, I managed to retrieve most of these games and now I own a pretty (dusty) respectable collection of various retro games and consoles.
I sorted my life in a way and bought games and consoles en masse, growing a massive collection relatively quickly.
In fact, as I type this I'm sitting at my table, with a Atari 2600 conveniently modded with composite and stereo, having an Harmony Flashcard on top for music making purpose