Atari 2600 - A Personal Story
- Scott
- 59 minutes ago
- 4 min read
The History And Mystery Of My First Home Gaming System
When I was a kid, way back in the 1980s, there wasn't a lot of electronic entertainment available to the average household other than television. VCRs had only just begun to really become a thing but were price prohibitave to a lot of families. We had cable TV, with a wired remote mind you, on only one color TV in the house. My sister and I had tiny black and white televisions (maybe 9in at most) in our rooms to watch all the UHF/VHF channels we could get. This was the extent of electronic excellence in our house. All of this changed one mysterious day when we got an Atari 2600.
I do not remember the exact moment, or occasion that the 2600 made its way into our house, but it changed my life, in one way or another, forever. In fact, the history of that Atari 2600 is a complete mystery to everyone in our house. I have asked my parents and my older sister exactly how we came upon the system and none of them can remember. The 2600 back in 1980 was hovering around $190 brand new. Adjusted for inflation over time, that price would ring up somewhere in the vacinity of $1000, apparently. I don't remember a lot about my childhood (appart from the usual kid memories) but what I do know is that we did NOT have an extra $1000 laying around for an "electronic toy."
I can remember our neighbor down the street who was, let's say, "house poor" having a 2600 and playing it there. They were also the house that had a BetaMax AND a VCR in their house. This house is where I watched Wrestlemania III happen live... but I digress. I don't recall whether I was playing their Atari before my own or not, but I do remember playing a bunch of games there and more than likely borrowing games from them to play on our own, at some point.
All this is to say that the origins of the system, as well as my own addiction to video games is somewhat shrouded in mystery. I don't recall what was my specific "first video game" I ever played but I know for a fact it was on the Atari 2600. At some point in time we had more than a few games of our own, apart from the ones we likely borrowed from the neighbor. We had house favorites to be sure like Pong, Pitfall, Combat, Boxing, to more obscure titles like Spider Fighter, Riddle of the Sphinx, and "Name This Game."
To say that competition around out house was hot would be an understatement. Many an argument was ended and started between my sister and I playing rounds of Combat. We had a spiral notebook that we would regularly update with our highest scores in Boxing and other score-based games. I'd give up a finger to have that notebook back in my life now.
Not all the games we owned were winners to be sure. As the video game market crash would soon show, there was a LOT of garbage on the system. We had a weird Kool-Aid game that barely ever worked. There was the absolutely terrible port of Pac-Man for the 2600. Fun fact; this game's sound effects were used in countless 80s TV shows as the go-to for electronic game sounds, for some reason. I remember playing, but never owning, the legendary E.T. game. This was definitely one of the ones that we played at our neighbors house. I don't know if playing and absolutely hating it there was the reason we never owned it, but it saved my parents that chunk of change and my sanity to be sure.
My parents always kept our play time to a minimum back in the day. There were no marathon gaming sessions back then. I think a lot of that had to do with my parents but honestly, some of those games weren't worth the time. I know that over the last three decades my tastes and tolerance for games and what they can and can't do has been elevated, but it's really hard to go back to any of those games now for any long period of time. Except one; Combat.
A couple years ago during our annual Extra Life marathon we thought it would be fun to throw on Combat and play a little of that again. We ended up playing several hours of it. Turns out that game mostly holds up. Sure the graphics leave something to be desired, the controls are wonky some times, and the premise of each is super simple, but they are still fun. With a game that old and nostalgic, the fun is what you bring to the game. Playing it again thirty plus years later with a bunch of forty year old video game nerds was a blast.
I know that for a lot of folks their first console is their favorite console, however, I don't think I can lable the Atari 2600 as my "Favorite Video Game Console" but it is easily the one that makes me the most nostalgic. The time period when it was the hot thing to play in our house just has a ton of other memories that are intrinsicly linked to it. Playing in the yard with neighbors. Trick-or-Treating far too late into the night, Tree-forts, the best cartoons ever created on TV every afternoon... It all mixes together to make me pine for the past and simplier times. I truly hope that one day my own children can look back at whatever nostalgic item gives them "the feels" and remember to good times had around it as I have with the Atari 2600.