I just finished watching the documentary VIDEO GAMES: THE MOVIE on Netflix. Overall a fun
90-minute doc that made for a fun trip down memory lane. While not in depth enough to fully inform any
newbies of the history of the video gaming industry, it does touch upon
numerous main moments (and pitfalls) along with some fun look back at ads and
commercials while intertwining interviews with several industry professionals
like Atari’s Nolan Bushnell and celebrities who are also rapid gamers like Wil
Wheaton.
Video gaming has been an important part of my life since my
father brought home our family’s first Atari 2600 system in 1978. I was a lot like Ralphie in A Christmas Story
as I stared at the faux wood paneling on the front of the system and stroked
the luscious gaming mecha like an electrified leg of glowing sexuality. That first day we had two games Combat and
Air-Sea Battle but in short time the family began stockpiling quite a
collection of cartridges and even upgraded to the more graphic friendly
Colecovision which included an adapter pack for the Atari 2600 thus allowing us
to move our Atari 2600 to the basement TV while we had the option to play
Colecovision in the living room. This
probably explains why in a house with two adults I currently need five TVs,
five cable boxes, and multiple computers and gaming systems…because video
gaming options was introduced to me at a very young age.
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| That wood is the mark of a quality product. Bust out your Pledge! |
I have fond memories of bonding with friends while playing
games on that original Atari system.
Having them bring over cartridges that I did not own (Activision greats
like Barnstorming or Keystone Kapers, any of the Xonox cartridges, and the ever
enjoyable The Adventures of Tron and Yar’s Revenge) always allowed for a long
fun afternoon of gaming. It was an
exciting time to experience playing a video game that told a story and actually
delivered an ending. Winning the puzzle
game Raiders of the Lost Ark and borrowing from my friend Shawn the under-rated
platformer Pitfall II were high points in my early gaming career as I learned
the tricks needed to complete a game and be able to shut off my system knowing
that I had indeed reached a definitive conclusion in where I, the gamer, WON
THE GAME!
In our home, the Top 10 most played cartridges that we owned were:
1. RIVER RAID – This
was the game! Amazing that the same
Christmas we were gifted our treasured request of Pitfall the next present
opened was River Raid which my father bought on a whim. Within a few days River
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| Yellow Plane, Yellow Plane, why do you fly so low? Yellow Plane, Yellow Plane, it's not your fault. |
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| That vine sure made circumventing the crocodiles easier! |
2. PITFALL – I loved
this game as a kid so much that I had my photo taken next to my television with
my high score so I could send away for a free gift from Activision. In fact, now that I think about it…not sure
they ever sent the item. It was either a
poster or a t-shirt, but free prize or not this game was a blast and I loved
exploring the underground tunnels to determine the best way to work my way to a
high score within the twenty minute time limit.
As a kid, Pitfall programmer David Crane was a celebrity in my home and
I made sure to buy other games that he was the lead programmer on like Grand
Prix, Freeway (get the chicken across the road), and even Fishing Derby. Indiana Jones was won of my favorite movie
characters so it wasn’t too big of a leap to see that Pitfall Harry and his
vine swinging antics would be a close second.
I become skilled at Pitfall to the point that I could always easily
complete the twenty-minute session. I
won some bets with friends on who could manage the most points in that time
frame as well. Still, there was always
the momentary panic anytime you would cross onto a new screen and see the
dreaded three alligators sitting in their swamp and knowing that you had to
slow down and time your jumps precisely lest you would fall into the water or
down a gator’s gullet.
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| Never judge the fun of a game by how small the maze is. |
3. WIZARD OF WOR –
This was the most popular game for my brother and me to play together. It was a game where you controlled humanoid
warriors in a small labyrinth maze (this format will sound familiar) that was
swarming with monsters (some invisible) and then you would have to eventually
work your way toward a fight with the eponymous Wizard. During the course of the battle both players
could choose to work as a team or kill each other (often switching for no
reason during the game). Not many games
for the Atari 2600 offered this sort of simultaneous co-op play excitement. This game was one of the last “new game”
purchases my family made for our Atari 2600 but my brother and I played it so
much in our basement that it was worth every penny.
4. VIDEO PINBALL –
This was a visually unspectacular game but it
was fast paced and fairly
addictive. I enjoyed playing Video
Pinball the most because my father (who was not a gamer) would sit and play
this game with me and it was the rare game where he was better than me. I have fond memories of these father-son
moments sitting on the living room carpet and playing this game for hours. Years later in college, I borrowed someone’s
Atari 2600 system for the weekend and flipped the score on Pinball and on the
bumpers. I was happy with the score and
retired from any return visits although I am still a sucker to play any real
life pinball games that I spot in visits to arcades.
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| So bland to look at, but once the ball starts bouncing around there was a good deal of fun. |
5. Q*BERT – During my
formative years as a gamer my favorite game at
the arcade was Donkey Kong, thus
at home DK received less attention.
Q*Bert filled the void by offering a fun and fast paced game with
patterns that must be figured out all while under immense pressure to avoid a
myriad of enemies. The tension playing
this game was pretty high and reminded me exactly of how I felt standing in an
arcade facing the barrels of Donkey Kong.
Burger Time (for Colecovision) also comes in a close 2nd for
this very same reason. The arcade game
was rarely visited when I had the opportunity to play Donkey Kong instead. However at home I enjoyed the adventures of
Peter Pepper although the pace and the difficulty of Burger Time often left me
overly frustrated, thus I stayed with Q*Bert.
My game play with Q*Bert was solid enough that I could stretch out a
single game to go for close to an hour.
Not too shabby. On a side note,
my grandmother saw me play Q*Bert so much one holiday season that she bought me
a plastic coin bank of the character. I
remember stock piling coins until it was filled and eagerly opening up the
booty to find I had enough money to buy a home computer (more on this in an
upcoming entry).
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| The "Donkey Kong" of my living room. |
6. MISSILE COMMAND – There’s
three games that could fall into
this #6 spot since they all offered the
endless assault of a futuristic setting.
Asteroids and Space Invaders were the other two but I always found
myself drawn back to Missile Command.
Probably because the difficulty was so damn hard and the pace so
nightmarish that I never seemed to survive for more than a few minutes. I also loved that explosion sound any time
one of the six main cities would go up in a mushroom cloud. I was never a fan of the arcade version
because I struggled even more so with the track ball. However, in the later years of this system
when many games had lost their luster, I did often find myself sparing some
time for a few quick rounds of Missile Command.
Still, as a youth I wished that some of these games would offer the
possibility of actually winning. The
Atari 2600 would provide numerous sub options for gameplay on Missile Command
and I often thought a version with a definite number of levels might allow for
a more rewarding experience. Imagine
counting down from Level 100 to Level 1 and trying to keep your cities alive
the entire time. Then there is a solid
goal to strive for instead of merely prolonging the inevitable nuclear
destruction at the hands of alien invaders.
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| The tension to save those six cities was intense! |
7. SUPERMAN – As a
kid who loved comic books, when I heard that
there was an Atari game based on
Superman, I momentarily lost my mind. Then
when I saw the game box with the artwork of the red-and-blue caped superhero I
absolutely lost my mind! The game played
out like a pixilated comic book which made up for the pixilated graphics as
Superman needed to change into costume, capture criminals and a flying Lex
Luthor, avoid Kryptonite bombs, and rebuild a bridge before returning to the
Daily Planet to report the story. The game
looked ridiculous but it was certainly fun.
In the 1970s the idea of playing a video game as a comic book character
was such a rare treat that this game felt like owning the Ark of the
Covenant. Superman had an end point which
also made it feel rewarding to play. As
the superhero you could literally save the day!
Even at a young age I played this game repeatedly trying to memorize the
city screen patterns and finish as quickly as possible. My fastest time was 57 seconds. Yes – seconds! Now that truly has to be some form of
record. What makes that score even more
special is the fact that my father had just come home with pizza and my mother
was busy yelling at me to shut off the game and yet under all of this duress I
managed to achieve a spectacular score and save the citizens of Metropolis and
then reward myself with a warm slice of pepperoni pizza.
Later on Parker
Brothers released an Atari game based on Spider-Man. Naturally this had me thrilled to no end as I
was praying for a similar open world experience. Sadly that game was limited to climbing
buildings while your web fluid inexplicably drained. I have never had patience for “beat the
clock” style games, especially when their very logic defeats the point of
common sense (i.e. Spider-Man is capable of climbing walls! Thus if his web fluid is empty, he does NOT
fall to his death!) |
| Loved that box image. The game also holds a fond place in my heart being the first time I controlled a video game superhero. |
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| That dot with the key...that's you! YOU ARE THE DOT! |
8. ADVENTURE – You
were a “dot” with a sword that battled dragons to save a kingdom with a
chalice. Sounds lame and it looked lame
but Adventure was the first game I ever experienced that offered free
roaming. You could travel anywhere you
wanted and determine ways to make the game as difficult as needed. There were mazes, three dragons of varying
speeds, a flying bat, and even the now famous “Easter Egg” dot that would
reveal the name of the programmer when delivered to a specific spot in the
game. I remember winning Adventure the
first day we bought it and thinking, “I wonder if I’ll ever play this game again?” I did, later that day and for weeks, months,
and years to come. It was always a fun
game to return to and wander from screen to screen on a fond trip down memory
lane. Colecovision had a game called
Venutre (based off the arcade game) which I also enjoyed although that game
offered less free roaming and more intense and sometimes painfully fast deaths.
9. BERZERK – I loved
playing Berzerk in the arcade and the home
version did not disappoint. This game also has the distinction of being
the first video game that I can remember saving up my own money to buy. I did a lot of chores around the house to
save up the $40 (could it have been that much) to buy this cartridge. The second game that earned my allowance was
Haunted House, but for some reason that game never clicked with my imagination
as much as Berzerk. Back in the day I
was a sucker for any game that involved a humanoid character (see a pattern
forming in Haunted House you played as merely two glowing eyes roaming in the
dark) and Berzerk’s offering of a man with a gun running through an endless
labyrinth maze filled with angry robots was a classic scenario. Essentially it was a one player version of
Wizard of Wor. The never ending dialogue
of “Stop the humanoid!” always made me smile in arcades and I wished more dialogue found its way into the home version. The shockingly swift pursuit
of the smiling ball Evil Otto who was hot on your heels made this a fun game
that kept you on your toes. As a fan of
the movie TRON, I felt like Berzerk was a similar offering as to what the world
of video arcade gladiatorial combat might actually be like.
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| STOP THE HUMANOID! STOP THE INTRUDER! |
10. ACTIVISION TENNIS – Tennis! Tennis? I can see people
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| The #1 sport in my family (1978-1982) |
I no longer own an Atari 2600. I know there are plenty available on eBay or
there are offerings of MAME or other simulator programs. However, for this level of gaming I do
believe in the “You Can’t Go Home Again” motto.
I would rather have fond memories of plugging in a cartridge on a snowy
afternoon and spending a few hours with my brother and friends than I would owning
this same system today. An Atari 2600 would
more than likely sit on a shelf and rarely even make it to a television to be
plugged in. I have my memories and they
are great memories of a period in my life where the Atari 2600 brought a great
deal of fun into my life.
Before we move into 1983 and beyond, it is worth noting that
during the same time period that I was playing the Atari 2600 at home I was
also regularly visiting video arcades.
In my next entry on my history of video gaming (which may not fall
sequentially with my blog entries), I will discuss some of my memories of
plucking down quarters in these public establishments and which games drew my
attention, imagination, and money the most.
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| The awesome Colecovision with the Atari 2600 adaptor! Best Christmas present ever! |
GAME OVER...for Part 1.
