It All Started with 'Pong'
I'm not going to get into the history of video games, if that's your first thought. That particular feat would require a website all its own. What I am going to do is give you a rundown of how I've been affected by video games through the years, starting with "Pong".
About Pong
Although Pong was released to home consumers by Sears in 1975, I didn't know about it or any other video games until 1977 when one of my brothers received the video game for Christmas. It had to be connected to a TV and luckily, we had an old black and white TV stashed in storage. He and I played the game for hours and hours over the course of several days before we both became tired of it.
The game was simple. The screen was a rudimentary view of a table tennis table from above. It played like the real ping pong game, using sprite paddles instead of the real thing of course.
The game affected me in a way that ate up a lot of my money for a few short years.
The Early Years
From about April of 1979 to April of 1981, I spent many hours playing video games at an arcade in downtown San Diego. I'm sure the arcade no longer exists, but it consumed thousands of quarters from me.
I can't imagine how I got hooked so badly on arcade games. I remember "Asteroids", "Pac-Man", "Mario Bros", "Donkey Kong" as well as countless others. The vast majority of the games were later transcribed into home video versions and I, of course, had them all. I played them on one of the first computers I owned, a Commodore 64C, somewhere around the 1987 to 1988 time frame. That was after I got married and had children. They were too young to appreciate video games though.
I'm out of order, somewhat. Between 1985 and 1987, I owned one of the original Atari home video consoles. Don't ask me what model it was. I only know that it was the first model and not the second one. I can't remember what games I played on it. I don't want to guess because I could very well be remembering it wrong.
The Reemergence of Home Video Games
After the popularity of the Atari game console died out, it looked like the home video market was pretty much dead. The Nintendo Entertainment System, originally release in 1985, finally made its mark when it bundled Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt with the system. Sometime after 1987, I bought one for my family. Everyone, including me, got hooked on Super Mario Brothers.
When the Super NES came out, I bought one for the kids, but I never really got into the games for it. That was really the end of my infatuation with video game consoles. It wasn't the end of my fascination with video games, though, because I bought video games for my first PC in 1994.
Since that time, we've had several game consoles (including portable devices) in our house at one time or another. Although I'll probably miss one on two, I think I can remember most of them (in no particular order): The Atari 2600 (I remember!), NES, Super NES, Sega Genesis, Sega Genesis 32x, Nintendo 64, Dreamcast, Playstation 1, Playstation 2, PSP, Gameboy Color, Gameboy Advance, Gameboy Advance SP, X-Box
PC Games
I spotted a co-worker playing "Doom", when he shouldn't have been, on a PC at work one day. It think it was in 1994 or early 1995. The POS computer I bought in 1994, a Packard Bell, could play it quite well. The machine only had 72 megabytes of RAM!
I enjoyed playing Doom enough to buy the second version, Doom II. I know a Doom III came out a year or three ago, but I don't play video games anymore. Well, not very often. When I do, it's with my younger son on his Playstation 2.
Another game I got a hold of during that era was "Duke Nukem 3D". The game play was similar to Doom, but it was whole lot more fun to play because of the speech.
One thing I never got into, although my son loves them to death, are video RPG games.
Video Games Today
My younger son plays the hell out of video games. I think he plays video games more than anything else, when he's not going to nursing school. He tells me there's not much else for him to do here in the Philippines, other than chasing girls. He has a girlfriend now, kind of. She's in one of the provinces with her family for the holidays.
I digress. I'm talking about video games, right? I'll continue… sorry. Anyway, my son likes to play the different versions of "Final Fantasy" more than anything else. Right now, he plays one or two different ones on his Playstation Portable, something I gave him for his last birthday.
Every once in a while, I can get him (Jon) to switch to his Playstation 2 so that we can play one of the versions of "Soul Caliber". It's one of the few video games I enjoy playing with him. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. The best part about it is that I get to use "Nightmare" to stomp just about any character he uses.
Ah, well. I spend most of my time doing this — writing — nowadays. I really don't have time for TV or video games anymore.
Pong is one of the first video games I remember as a child. I used to have the Atari console, and played with my brother. Like you, I got hooked badly on arcade games. Today the video games are much more complicated. I miss the simple games. Thank.
It's amazing how far the game systems have come. I started off with an Atari 2600 when I was younger & thought that it was the cats meow. The wife & I just got a Wii for christmas, and it is simply amazing how much technology is packed in to that thing.
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I was so addicted to pong when it came out it was amazing. Galaga was another one that consumed a decent amount of my childhood. I think most kids these days wold think these old school games are terrible with the type of games they have these days, but you have to appreciate the classics.
Pong really takes me back to my childhood. I can't even begin to count how many days of life was wasted being addicted to that game. It was so simple but at the time it was ground breaking. I miss the old school games.
Pong, spent a lot of money trying to beat the game. Never made it on an arcade machine, only years later playing at home. More flash game news!
It's my first time to heard about Pong.
Thanks for sharing this. Nice post. I have often thought about some of the points you bring up. The way you expressed it
really makes a lot of sense.
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