Friday, October 05, 2007
Atari 2600
Introduced 30 years ago this month, the Atari 2600 was truly the first widely popular "home computer." $199 list, not a cheap Christmas present. For me, it became a generation gap, what really began the slow demise of pinball, although the greatest pinball machines were yet to be designed in response to video game competition. But the millions of Atari kids wanted to play arcade versions of Atari games & vice versa, & when Atari licensed Space Invaders in 1980 & introduced Centipede, boardwalk arcade owners were certain where the coins were dropping. Then Pac-Man became the video game equivalent of "The Twist," the one that got grownups into the action, not to mention the mildly pornographic titles like Custer's Revenge. One can admire how little memory these games required. Updated versions of old Atari games continue to rake in the change.
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"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
My grandmother purchased an original Atari VCS around 1978 or 1979 at the Magavox dealer on St. Georges Ave. & Stiles Street in Linden. Over the years, my brother and I amassed a collection of over 100 games and just about every controller made for the thing. As college approached, my mother gave the whole thing away to friends. After college, I discovered how lucrative irony can be and snatched up an Atari 2600 and a dozen games for $10 at a flea market in New Brunswick. Now there is a wealth of free Atari emulators out there in Internetland that allows a user to play their favorite old-school games right on their Mac or PC.
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