One of the few perks of being old is I got to see the video game business grow from basically nothing to the monster it is today. Sometimes it’s a bad monster, but I’m going to talk about the good one here.
As a kid, I remember seeing coin-operated Pong machines in places like restaurant waiting areas and being dazzled by the technology. Around 1976 my family got a home Pong machine, probably from Sears. It might have been this one, which looks the way I remember:
My brother managed to pull the paddles out and rewire them to be handheld. Neat! A few years later, I got my first Atari 2600, then still called the VCS. While I’ve had other consoles over the years (and decades) the 2600 was where I cut my video game teeth and I had more games for it than the other systems–partly because it was my first system, and partly because there were so many games made for it.
Most of the games were not great, because the 2600 hardware was pretty primitive, even by the standards of the time. But still, there were games I came back to again and again. Here’s my list, in no particular order (you may wonder why some notable titles, like Pitfall, are missing–it’s because I didn’t have them. I was a kid, I could only afford so many cartridges!)
All inks to Wikipedia.
- Adventure (Atari). Yes, you’re a square with an arrow and the dragons look like ducks. But back in 1980 this was one of the few home video games to make you feel like you were in an actual world.
- Superman (Atari). Flying around as Superman was engaging on its own. The rest of the game almost didn’t matter and if you squint, it’s kind of a variation on Adventure. Still, flying!
- Asteroids (Atari). This was a pretty simple game in the arcade, so it translated well to the 2600. Better, it was in colour and contained a bunch of variations the arcade version lacked.
- Demon Attack (Imagic). As a Space Invaders clone, this had one trick–some enemies could split in two. But it was the graphics that dazzled me here, which seemed amazing for the 2600.
- Video Pinball (Atari). This was my first “cozy” game and I didn’t even know it. While it crudely approximated pinball, what I liked was getting into the zone and being able to rack up ludicrously high scores. If I needed to capture some Zen, I played Video Pinball.
- Super Breakout (Atari). Surprisingly good sound design elevated this game, along with its variations.
- Missile Command (Atari). Another arcade port that worked surprisingly well. It simplified things, but the joystick control was tight, and the sound was great.
- Circus Atari (Atari). The key here was the paddle controller, which worked really well. Popping balloons was strangely addictive.
- Stellar Track (Sears). A Sears exclusive, this was my first taste of strategy gaming–and I liked it!
I had about 30 cartridges or so, and a bunch of these were Activision games, so you may be wondering why none of them made the list. It’s mostly because they looked great, but actually didn’t have a hook that kept me coming back. Barnstorming and Freeway were fine, but I’d keep going back to Asteroids or Missile Command. But here’s a few runner-ups:
- Canyon Bomber (Atari)
- Chopper Command (Activision)
- Fishing Derby (Activision)
- Kaboom (Activision)
- Space Invaders (Atari)
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