Speaking of Christmas…

The first video game system I ever owned was one of the 100 or so pong clones floating around in 1978 or so.

It must not have been one of the more popular systems because I have never seen it pictured in an article on retro games. The main console was about the size of a small brick. It also served as the main controller – so it was a bit of a handfull at the time. It could take batteries, but I always used the AC plug.

A second player could use a smaller controller that plugged into the main console. There was also a light gun for shooting games.

I was given an Atari 2600 (I don’t remember ever calling it a “2600″ until much later…college maybe)for Christmas in 1980.

EVERYBODY had that system. Some of the most fun I had as a kid was during those summers between 1980 and 1985. We kids spent our time riding bikes, playing ball, and playing and trading Atari cartridges and making up stories about high scores on this and that game. I ruled on Space Invaders. I had this pattern…

Anyway, my enthusiasm for Atari didn’t diminish even when I got my first computer – a TI 99 4/A. I got the extended basic catridge and actually programmed the beginnings of a Firefox game. I had the firefox jet flying over ice. I was never able to get the anti-aircraft guns working on the ice or I would have had a genuine playable game. Still, it was a fun effort and I learned a lot about computers.

I left home for college in 1987 with a Radio Shack brand IBM PC clone called a Tandy 1000.

It originally came without a hard drive. Yeah a hard drive was considered optional in 1987. I immediately dropped a big sum of money on a 40 megabyte (that’s megabyte not gigabyte) hard drive. That gave me one of the best computers in my dorm. It looked like the picture at the top of this article.

Anyway, that machine was serviceable through college. In fact, for the first several years of our marriage – up until about 1995 or 96 – the old clunker stayed in our kitchen as Sheralyn’s recipee computer.