Yeah, mine's something like that. Some sort of stretching-the-permutations-of-Pong thing you could plug into the telly, I think from these folks. Then we got a ZX81. It was the future!
I agree--it was totally magical. When Santa brought me that Sears Pong console, I was in heaven! When my parents hooked it up to the old black-and-white TV, I could hardly believe my eyes...all the neighbors came over to see how we could play a game right on the TV set. The late 70's were definitely an exciting time to be a geeky kid.
I kinda missed the excitement, but there was one in my house when I was born so at least I didn't miss out on the magic
Late 70s and into the 80s. The Atari 2600 ruled the roost but the Intellivision (discs of pain and all) and the Colecivision made me envious, especially because of the driving controller, which made it all the more special when I got one. (But I still loved the 2600 for the sheer amount of games you could get.) Before I got my first computer I played the hell out of these systems -- probably drove my dad nuts hogging the TV like I did. In fact, when we moved he just gave me the TV and did without for a while, listened to the radio instead, while that 2600 became my after-school sanctuary. I can't imagine what it's like for the younger generations today, having never grown up without video games, or even those whose first systems provided pretty lifelike graphics. /Lawn. Off.
Any of you Atari players still have/use it? My original one broke but I have a backward compatible 7800 and bought a couple of new carts a few years back from the Atariage store, Flap Ping and This Planet Sucks. It's awesome that there is a community of developers interested enough in a 30 year old piece of hardware to keep making games for it.
Yeah, I still play it in emulators from time to time. I used to have original hardware and had half a ton of homebrew carts for it as well (also via the AA store). I ended up selling my collection off though because I owned almost all domestic carts (except for the ultra rare $1,000+ ones and a few of the several-hundred-dollar ones) plus a bunch of Europeans, Brazil pirates (great way to get PAL games in NTSC), multicarts, etc. The collecting wasn't really fun anymore. So I sold it all off and bought some big time upgrades for my computer. Haven't gotten back into collecting since.
Not until you clean your dentures, take your metamucil, and promise to stop harassing the cafeteria lady.
I--what? Now wait just a minute here. I'll have you know the cafeteria lady likes my suggestive advances. She wears a pretty hairnet just to invite them, and I'm tell you she and I will be going to a dance some day, just as soon as she gets her hip replaced. And fixes that little incontinence problem.
This was my first, I got it when I was 13 or 14, can't remember exactly as it was 30 years ago. I had this for years and wish I still had it, it was a lot of fun. There was a shooting game, a racing game and a pong game. Good times.
I almost don't dare say this, but this is the single reason for which I will condone what would be called piracy, to preserve these gaming systems and games for future generations to experience in some way. I own nearly all the old systems/games I played when I was a kid and I will never be getting rid of them, but someday the SNES will be considered ancient and very hard to come across, and being that nearly all of my favorite games of all time are on that system, it would be such a shame if they weren't able to be enjoyed anymore. It's awesome that we have things like the Virtual Console, XBLA, and the App Store to help with this legitimately, but some games and consoles will inevitably fall through the cracks.
An N64. I was young when we got it and I wondered how we would play it without a screen- I didn't realise it plugged into the TV! XD. Got Goldeneye with it which I still play to this day.
