First home video game in my house in nearly 20 years!

[yesthattom]

I haven’t had a video came console in my house for nearly 20 years. I realize that’s longer than a lot of LJers have been alive, but, alas.

My family had the original “Pong” video game in the late 1970s.

We got a Atari 2600 console Christmas 1980.

While I had a series of computers that played good games (VIC-20, Commodore 64, Amiga, DOS PC, Windows PC, Mac) I never really played many games on them.

Fast forward nearly 20 years.... I bought a Wii about 6 weeks ago. It has been wonderful.

This week I ordered Guitar Hero III for the Wii. I can’t wait for it to arrive.

Comments

[rainbear.livejournal.com]

Oh Dude! I *LOVE* my Wii! :)

[cyan-blue.livejournal.com]

Oh, I remember my parents setting Pong up on our living room TV... :-)

[rainbear.livejournal.com]

FYI: 8834 0996 3760 8333

[cartographer.livejournal.com]

1980? Wowee, really? I had a 2600 when I was a youngun, but, god, I reckon it was 1988 or so. Were we so far behind?

(And I remember the ad for it: "Under 50 bucks, now isn't that nice! The twenty-six-hundred from a-ta-ri")

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Hey you kids, get off my lawn!

[emboline.livejournal.com]

OK.... now I have to try this thing out....

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

I couldn't remember the exact dates so as I wrote the original post I kept checking Wikipedia for hints about dates etc. I think they're pretty accurate.

(The "get off my lawn" comment is something I post any time I feel I'm feeling old.)

The "under 50 bucks" model was made years later when it was considered a dead platform, but then someone at Atari realized they could cost-reduce it to $50 (I think it had been $200 previously) and people would be willing to buy old games, possibly a market for used games would come up.

Tom

[cartographer.livejournal.com]

Aha. Well, I was part of the second wave then. The atari was cool. I had Cosmic Arc and Jr Pacman. I remember playing Pacman until the console was painfully hot to touch, getting excited because the score field had space for six digits and I had a score of over 900,000, and lots of spare lives, and WHO KNEW what would hapen when it hit seven digits. I remember it like it was yesterday. My whole family all impatient because they wanted to go to my grandad's house, and I refused to leave until I found out. And I remember several fairly senseless pacman deaths in succession, and looking at the final score of 954,000 and knowing I'd never do it again and pretending I didn't mind. Stupid console.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

Good times. Good times.