Two Stop Bits | My first exposure to Atari was December 1978. My dad took me to a friends house ...

bmonkey325 68 days ago | parent

My first exposure to Atari was December 1978. My dad took me to a friends house who had just gotten an Atari. Played it in colour. I was just mesmerized by the games. I was so clumsy with the the joystick controller.

I remember it because the guy who owned the Atari was talking about the Newsweek article covering the Jonestown tragedy with my dad while we played.

qingcharles 66 days ago
My 2600 experience is the second oldest memory I can recall. That's how big an effect it had on me! I can remember literally every detail of my first time playing video games. My neighbor had the 2600 with Pac-Man and Missile Command. The fact he had Pac-Man means it must have been 1982, which means I was coming up on 5 years old.
- ddingus 62 days ago
  Is that not a potent experience? For me, it was a single chip, analog circuit PONG game. But I was entranced. A few years later, I saw BREAKOUT on a VCS and it was amazing!
  The sound, colors, way the paddle moved... it was intense!
  Same for me. I can recall everything about that moment. Where I was, who, what the game looked and sounded like...
  - qingcharles 59 days ago
    There were so many of those little one-chip TV games around in the early 80s. Every "car boot sale" (as us Brits call them) you went to you could pick up a dozen of them for almost nothing. I bet a ton of them are super rare nowadays.
ddingus 68 days ago
My very first exposure was actually paddle games, then Combat and a few others with the joystick. Then Indy 500. I really loved paddle games on the VCS and thought they needed two buttons as well.
Anyone ever create anything that could take advantage of 8 paddles on the 400 and 800 machines? Or 4 analog sticks? Sure seems like a home brew opportunity of some kind.