A Boy And His Dad's Blog

So how did I become an addict? It goes all the way back to Pong. This one day out of the blue, my Dad had pulled out this Pong console from the closet for everyone to play. He hooked it up to an old black and white TV that we had lying around and we all had a chance to play it. I think I was six at the time, I wasn't that good at it, but it didn't matter, I was having fun with it.

It was soon after that moment that I had started noticing arcade games popping up around town. I saw Space Invaders for the first time, in cocktail table format, at our local Pizza Hut. In the summertime, I would always go with my Mom grocery shopping cause, at first, I always liked looking at the toys they had there. But then, I had a new reason for wanting to go. The store started hosting arcade games and that's where I got my first look at Asteroids. Seeing the multiple buttons, the side cabinet artwork and the wire frame-like graphics, it just caught my attention instantly. I attempted to play it, but I wasn't that good at it, and being a six-year-old at the time, there was no way I can. But I loved to watch people play it, no matter what their skill level was.

A year later, with more and more arcade games coming out, the grocery store seemed like it had a new game every couple of weeks. And then out of nowhere, this small portable trailer just got stationed there, just outside of the grocery store. But inside it, to my surprise, was an arcade. Five pinball machines, two cocktail table games (one of them my brother and I fondly remember it being Radar Scope) and around 10-15 upright arcade games, all stuffed into this small portable trailer, with lots of people in there all the time. I remember crowds of people waiting their turn with their quarters lined up all on the marquee, and watching someone play Donkey Kong, Centipede, or Tempest.

Getting off track here a little, you know, I still find that very fascinating to this day, that people would put their quarters up along with a dozen others on the arcade's marquee for their chance to play. And it wasn't like they had their name on the quarters themselves or a sign-in sheet as to who goes when, but it was all done in a friendly manner, no quarrels or fighting on who goes next, everyone knew when it was their turn.

Anyway, it was Christmas time in 1981. I was eight at the time and my brothers and I were unwrapping presents, and there was one in particular that was for all three of us. We opened it and it was the Atari 2600 system. Now, I was very naive about the existence of this system or what it was and had never asked for it as a gift. I do remember playing Combat on it before at my uncle's house, but that was it. Now we have our own Atari 2600 with Combat, Asteroids and Space Invaders to play. Both of my brothers wanted to play Asteroids, I want to play Space Invaders. Soon, we were all getting good at the games to which we were holding competitions on who can get the highest score, but in a different way.

As most people know, Atari 2600 games never saves scores and don't have a "High Score" screen that arcades do. Also, the number of digits displayed were limited to four places. So what happens if you're playing, your score is at 9999, and you score again? Simple, it "turned over" to 0000 and starts again. So for us, to get the high score, it wasn't the number itself, but the number of times each of us were able to get the score to be "turned over". If you "turned over" five times and the score was at 7840, then the only thing that matters is that you "turned over" five times and that's it.

As we kept getting more games and trying to get the high score, in the end, it was I who was on top for all the games we had, except for one...Asteroids. My second oldest brother beat my "turned over" count of 10, with his 11.

This pretty much cemented on video games being my main interest from here on out. My parents hated it, cause they felt the system would ruin the TV (which it didn't) and they felt it would keep me inactive and I would become a sloth and anti-social (it didn't as I would go outside and go over to my neighbor's house and play Atari with them). But hey, I still came out OK, I guess. Hard to believe that I've been a video game freak for over 30 years.