Samael’s recent Mario Marathon of Madness put me in a nostalgic mood. I started thinking about my history of playing video games. These days I don’t do much gaming (with occassional exceptions), but when I was younger, I certainly did. So I figure I’ll write a series of posts about my favorite games for all the various platforms I’ve played on, starting with the glorious Atari 2600.
Technically, the 2600 was not my family’s first gaming system. I do remember a strange console that had two paddles and could only play Pong. I’ll have to see if I can dig that up. In any case, in looking at the history of the 2600, I don’t think I really started playing until after the video game crash of 1983. I suspect this is partly because prices fell dramatically and thus made it that much easier to convince the parents to purchase them (plus, my brother is 4 years older than I, so he had already built up a collection of games).
In any case, you gotta love the 2600, with it’s awkward single-button controllers, faux wood panelling console, and huge library of games (yeah, most were clones of popular games like Pac Man, but so what?). The default controllers were awful, but I remember when my brother managed to get his hands on a pair of Epyx 500XJ Joysticks. These unique controllers were more responsive, fit ergonomically and comfortably in the palm of your hand, and as a bonus, could also be used with the Commodore 64/128 (which will be the next system in my series).
The games will be covered in separate posts, but I will say that while they were fun at the time, I can see why people lost interest until the NES. Most games primarily involved manipulating various elements on the screen to get a higher score. Period. There really weren’t any goals other than running the score up as high as possible (there were exceptions to this which will be covered in later posts). That said, I recently downloaded an emulator and started playing some of these games again, and it instilled a powerful sense of nostalgia. These games bring back a lot of memories! And there are so many of them. Again, my favorite games will be reviewed in separate posts, so stay tuned!
Update: Follow up posts: