What were your family videogaming rules?

[xelement5x]

We had the main TV in the family room which had the VCR hooked up to it so no gaming was normally done on it, but if you had a RF adapter you could sneak something into the A/B switch my Dad used to watch one show and record another. 

For gaming there was a second smaller TV in my parent's room which had the NES hooked up to it and would play on that.  That worked fine until an unfortunate incident when I entered my parents room to play one evening, and then it was eventually moved into the room with the Commodore 64 and hooked up on that.  Eventually I scrimped and saved my monies until I could buy a TV for my own room and got a rocking 19" which looking back on was kind of lame since there was only RF, but it was all I needed.  Did the same thing and bought my own Genesis eventually and lived the dream.

Main rules for my house were that you would only get 1-2 hours of TV, a day and that included video games if you wanted them.  From about 4th grade to 9th grade we would have someone who came over and kept an eye on us for the most part while my parents worked and to enforce the TV rules.

Weekends were a bit more open but if there were things we needed to do that took priority and needed to be complete first.  Normally wasn't a big deal, but once I started to get into RPGs that were time sinks it became a lot more important. 

I did have games and stuff taken away before because I wasn't focusing on school work, though.  My mom knew that she didn't have to take away the system, just the games, and I didn't have very many of them.

[Necromancer]

For gaming there was a second smaller TV in my parent's room which had the NES hooked up to it and would play on that.  That worked fine until an unfortunate incident when I entered my parents room to play one evening...

Oh, my.  I guess they couldn't get off to Mario? 

[johnnykonami]

For gaming there was a second smaller TV in my parent's room which had the NES hooked up to it and would play on that.  That worked fine until an unfortunate incident when I entered my parents room to play one evening...

Oh, my.  I guess they couldn't get off to Mario? 

I guess I should probably wait until I get home from work to click on this...

[Necromancer]

Nah, it's perfectly safe.

[johnnykonami]

Nah, it's perfectly safe.

Hmm, well you've always seemed like a trustworthy robot from hell...

[MisterCrash]

No rules per se at my house. I had the NES on the downstairs TV for a while until my dad brought home a surplus monitor from work with composite inputs, and set that up in my room. The TurboGrafx was hooked up to the downstairs TV as well, but I had to put it away when I was done playing. My parents generally watched TV upstairs in their room. No limits on play time, and when I started playing RPGs, I could sink 10+ hours in a row during the weekend or summer time.

[crazydean]

My parents made me go play outside when it was daylight/nice. Otherwise, I was mostly allowed to play video games as much as I wanted. As I got older, this rule became less strict. I always got my homework done so there was no rule there.

 Once, my mom asked me to do some chores. I kept telling her that I would do them in a few minutes. I was waiting to get to a save point (probably Final Fantasy on PS1). Anyway, she came into my room and turned it off! Well, the TV, at least. She didn't realize that the system would stay on. I pretended to be upset and did the chores, only to come back later and continue playing.

[majors]

During the 80's, my parent would not buy a video game system (birthday, xmas) so I'd goto friends house that had Pong, VCS, Colleco, C64, etc to play. I sold my GI Joes to help raise funds to buy a NES, then later a SMS. We had the TV in the living room, but watching TV was never that big at my house. I cannot recall rules limiting my gaming, but I also never went directly home after school so I always had homework finished before getting back to the games at home. Eventually I got a TV in my room, about the time of TG/Genny, but never any restrictions. I think my parent had given trying to control my gaming...and 30 years later, I'm still playing and it's my job now!

[xelement5x]

Once, my mom asked me to do some chores. I kept telling her that I would do them in a few minutes. I was waiting to get to a save point (probably Final Fantasy on PS1). Anyway, she came into my room and turned it off! Well, the TV, at least. She didn't realize that the system would stay on. I pretended to be upset and did the chores, only to come back later and continue playing.

At least you reacted better than this kid:

[crazydean]

At least you reacted better than this kid:

Lol. My mom wouldn't have put up with that shit. After ten seconds of that, I would have gotten, "Wait until your father gets home." 

[turboswimbz]

get me some Mother ****ing CHOC O LOT milk

[seieienbu]

During the school year my parents would let me play video games before dinner but not after.  I had to share the TV with my sister.  As my sister wasn't a big fan of video games that generally meant we could either alternate who got the TV every half hour.  If my sister wanted to play video games then we'd play something for two players.

[in99flames]

No restrictions on TV time allotment. We were monitored on which tv programs we could watch.

Videogames were allowed Friday's after school and the rest of the weekend.
If it was a holiday and school was off we were allowed. For example, Like Christmas vacation all week we could play games.
If I went to my cousin's house or a friends house, videogames were ok. I spent a lot of time going to see my cousin where we would play 2 player coop games like TMNT.

[td741]

No set rules.  If using the main TV, only able to use it when it was free (which was often enough).  Alternative TVs were available around the house and eventually became primary gaming TV.

Granted, I had good grades, would typically have homework done and whatever chores was asked, so rules wasn't really imposed.  During Atari days (and early 8 bit computer days), most games could be played for short burst so interrupting play to go do something else like chores or give up the tv was easier.

The closest to playing a long-form game at the time would be when trying to program my own games on the computer which was more or less encouraged.  But at that point the computer had a small B&W TV.

[Winniez]

No specific limitation here either since generally speaking I managed to keep my gaming under control. I had fairly few games and knew them all well so no reason to pose limits. Rentals, I played them religiously during the weekend but that was it. However when loaning games from friends the limitations got imposed. Brand new game (for me) during the school week, I just couldn't stop playing since I knew I would have to return it in few days.