Dad and the Crash

Jack in an unintentional discussion of home-gaming in the 1980s linked this story of the Video game crash of 1983.

I’m a massive “Classic Gaming” geek, given that I cut my eye-teeth LITERALLY on a four-toggle wood veneer Atari 2600. (OK not Literally, but there ARE home movies of me in my underpants playing Pac-Man and Donky Kong Jr, as well as the cheezy Movie port of Empire Strikes Back, and the ET Cart of Legends. Also I remember that console being sticky from some spilled beverage of some sort.

Still my first love was the Atari 7800 , which I had and charished well into the Boom of the NES…and even felt a bit of betrayal to my brand loyalty when I caved and relized that the NES was a far superior system. (What’s hilarious is I’ve never owned a home-gaming console not made by Nintendo ever since)

Still reading this article I think I need to talk to my Dad who bought me the 7800 without my request. Dad, like myself, is admirably cheap. The both of us will buy things simply because they’re a good deal…just look at my BAG Day gun!

The 7800 is a VERY utilitarian system given its backwards compatibility with the 2600 games I already owned, but given the turmoil of the mid-80s I’m curious what deals Dad managed to get on that system.

Heh, I’ll have to call him!

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0 Responses to Dad and the Crash

  1. RWC says:

    I bought a 7800 a couple of months back for nostalgic reasons.

    Played about ten minutes and got sick of blowing in the cartridges and realizing just how crazy I must have sounded as a kid – wow, these graphics almost look real!

    Helluva imagination I had 🙂

    • Weerd Beard says:

      Yeah I’d never buy an old system because I remember having to buy a new controller quite frequently, and at that age a school year was an ETERNITY, so they were NOT durable.

      There are lots of emulators that play the ROMs very well out there. I need to look into a 2600 Emu so I can re-play that Empire strikes back. I suspect I’d be a LOT better now that I know how to play it.

  2. Wally says:

    Hmn, I remeber my 2600 as a 6-toggle..
    Say what you will, the best video games have the crappiest graphics evar.

    @d ”

    (TOTH to the 4 folks who would get that)

  3. Vector says:

    I actually *did* cut my eyeteeth on the 2600; if someone still has my old system, they would find bite marks all away around the joystick. 🙂

  4. Jack says:

    A bit before my time. My first system was the NES then a year or so later a Genisis… and that’s it. Course I think having the truly awful Mario Golf and Adventures of Tom Sawyer really turned me off cart games for a while.

  5. wfgodbold says:

    We had a 2600, but never got an NES. Instead, I spent the mid/late 80s playing PC games (at least until I saved enough money from mowing lawns to buy a Game Boy).

    So while everyone else waxes nostalgic about the early days of console gaming, I get to reminisce about the heyday of adventure gaming (King’s Quest, anyone?).

    • Weerd Beard says:

      I used to play the “Quest” games from Sierra on friend’s computers (and sneaked more than a few play session with the “Adults Only” Leisure Suit Larry and the Land of the Lounge Lizards) but we didn’t get a computer until the early 90s and it was a Mac LCII which was barely able to type up school projects, let alone do any real gaming.

      BTW for those of you with Android phones they ported the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy text game to Android!

  6. LMB says:

    The idea that buying the system with the best specs never has been all that good. Sega often had better hardware, but Nintendo had the GAMES! And does anyone remember the NeoGeo game systems? IT was Way overpriced and had a relatively small software library which made it unpopular, whereas the SNES had the lions share of the market because of the games.
    As for the emulator, try Zophar.net, there’s no roms, just emulators.

    • Weerd Beard says:

      That was why I got a Wii. I thought I’d never buy another system after my SNES. I found the N64 to be overall a very poor system with one of the worst controllers I’ve ever held. By the time the Game Cube came out I had a full-time job and was soon-to-be married, my marathon gaming sessions were over.

      With the Wii they have a lot of fun less involved games that work well for adults like me who say “Eh, I’ll play a game for an hour then go to bed”.

      Plus the classic game library! Yeah!

  7. LMB says:

    Yea, by the time the N64 rolled out, my console days were done. I became a pure PC player (work and women do take up the time, don’t they?) simply because most games can be saved at nearly any point, so playing for an hour and going onto something else is trivial.
    As far as the N64 went, I totally agree with you on the controller.
    It’s like they looked at the Atari Jaguar and thought ‘We can make a fail 64 bit system too!’
    They kinda forgot the games and the controllability (Not to mention extremely slow work ram, 4k texture ram, and Nintendo’s idiotic licensing of the hardware).
    Sony remembered…

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