25 thoughts on “more eighties video game nostalgia”

1. The idea of a Ken Burns documentary on the history of video games would be the funniest and coolest thing ever! I can just image James Earl Jones or Morgan Freeman reading the in hushed tones the letters written by the creators of Pitfall and Dig Dug. With forlorn string playing in the background, of course.

2. Wil,
   I know a whole ton about video game history( thats why they call me the gamebrain). I love classic gaming as well. I love the sites http://www.atariage.com and http://www.digitpress.com. Those are really cool classic game sites.
   If you have any questions about video games, I’m the one to ask 🙂
   One more thing, have you ever heard about classic gaming expos? There are a couple including VGXpo (formerly Philly CLassic). Its awesome and fun!
   Its nice to see people care about the oldies!

3. I should really look into finding working classic consoles…the oldest I’ve played is the Commodore 64, and I was barely in preschool then.
   Half.com is a great place to go if you’re sick of emulators and made-for-current-gen classic games.

4. OMG, I had completely forgotten that I’d ever played intellivision games until I followed your link and saw the console. Rather, it was the controllers that brought back all the memories.
   Trying to keep the keypad cover in place while playing the game so the correct buttons could be pressed was half the challenge of whatever game I was playing.
   Awesome! Thanks for the trip in the Wayback Machine.

5. *makes note to check that out tomorrow when the weather is bad*
   today will be reading outside but not the book I wanted – I hope no one buys it before bonsus check comes in & since it isn’t in the star trek section & on the bottom shelf – I have hope

6. Well that was an interesting trip down memory lane. I had completely forgotten about Pitfall! I loved Pitfall! Unfortunately, I had one of those poorly manufactured Ataris and it self-destructed after 3 weeks. But what a glorious 3 weeks it was.
   That dog eaters site is a deadly time sucker, watch out.

7. OK, I don’t know if I qualify as being an 1980’s gamer geek or not, but I remember having Pong, the Commodore 64 console with the cassette tapes and the book full of codes that you had to enter into a sequence to play the games on it, and I still have my original Atari Game System complete with a shitload of games, but alas, I don’t have the power cord to connect it to the wall to actually play the games.
   If I weren’t so apathetic, I probably would have made a trip to Radio Shack by now. I’ll put that on my “to do” list. I swear!

8. Wil,
   You mean you never had an Intellivision? That was one of my first systems!!
   SirFWALGman

9. I still own my original IntelliVision console (and 25+ games to go with it) — and it still works! I swear, no amount of modern technology can compare with the directional disk and the utterly useless buttons on the side of the controller. Plus, hello! Burgertime? Hell yes. Bump n’ Jump? Hell yesser.
   /geekgasm

10. My mother taught with Ralph Baer’s wife when I was a kid. I actually got to go down in his basement and play with the Odyssey and his version of Pong. And I still have my Commodore 128 with the 5-inch disk drive. I’m such a geek. Oh wait a minute, that’s you.
    ahud

11. What a flashback! I grew up with an Intellivision and then a C64. I played a lot of Baseball on the Intellivision. I thought I was much cooler than the kids with only a dinky joystick with their Ataris. What a geek! It’s nice to be able to admit it here.
    -Jason of Cool Steam

12. You need to read a book called /Lucky Wander Boy/. It’s fantastically brilliant and also happens to be fun, nostalgic read for those of us who enjoy what that decade brought us in the world of video games.

13. Oh, I miss the old video games! I was a really young kid, but my brothers spent hours teaching me how to play games on the old Atari and the brand spankin’ new NES. I think that the old Atari is still up in the attic somewhere-along with a copy of the godawful ET. Now if only I could find my NES and copy of Monster Party…

14. [The idea of a Ken Burns documentary on the history of video games would be the funniest and coolest thing ever…]
    I remember a really old episode of SNL where they had a short that was a documentary of some kid who was addicted to Pac Man – scrounging quarters in the street like a junky. It was really sweet, with the same gravelly-voiced narrator who apparently read for every other documentary made in the 70s.

15. Dude, when I first got my Xbox, Intellivision Lives! was one of the first titles I found for it. We had the Intellivision consoles back in the 80’s, and many of the games that the Xbox disc packs in…I wish they’d been able to include a few more games on the disc, like the D&D ones, but copyright’s a bitch.
    If you’re as old sk00l as I am, you might also like Toe Jam & Earl III: Mission To Earth. My brother had a Genesis, and we enjoyed the original TJ&E, which the Xbox-based sequel has much in common with. Give it a whirl, and may the Funk be with y’all!

16. ***OFF TOPIC**
    AOTS poll :
    Who should be next week’s MySpace girl?
    Dawn
    24%
    Heather
    76%
    VOTE FOR WIL’S FRIEND DAWN!
    😀

17. To Wil:
    How dare you tempt me with something so clearly dangerous.
    To Nolagirl:
    “godawful ET”. Indeed that game was horrendous. Kaboom on the other hand was pure awesomeness. As was Warlords.

18. My mom bought me the Intellivision Lives for PS2 a couple years ago and I love that thing…I know it’s totally wrong and totally sadistic, but I love games where not only can my husband and I play together, but we can also ‘go after each other’ in whatever way, shape, or form the game allows. Shark! Shark! is great for that because you can eat all the fishies so they don’t get any and (it’s been awhile so forgive me if I’m wrong here) I think you can actually eat your opponent if you’ve grown bigger…but maybe not. Plus you can’t beat that soundtrack music…
    Shark! Shark!

19. Oh my dear lord, I had two different Intellivisions: The original (with the giant, wood grain hull) and the II, the little white box that wouldn’t play Coleco games. I remember that ticking me off in a major way, because I owned several Coleco games, including their licensed port of Donkey Kong.
    One of my favorite ITV games was the AD&D cart. My buddy had one, and the title screen came up “Dungeons & Advanced Dragons” for some reason. And we had an affectionate nickname for the slimes/blobs/whatever those purple, mitochondria-ish things were: To us, they were Goober Peas…

20. I love the part about how Steve Jobs met Steve Wozniak (Apple Computers).
    Steve Jobs brought in Wozniak to write a video game program for the company that he worked for. He told Wozniak that he would split the money with him. Jobs was paid $5000 but he told Wozniak that he was paid $700 and gave him $350. Some things were always the same, huh?

21. I didn’t know that access to this stuff was still around!
    We had both ITV and ITVII as well, and I can remember playing Burger Time on the white console while waiting for my carpool in the mornings before school. And Tron was a must.
    My special skill in AD&D was being able to actually count all of the clicks that indicated how many arrows you had left.
    And Night Stalker used to creep me out To No End. Giant spiders!

22. If anyone hasn’t seen the commercials CHECK OUT
    http://WWW.GAMETAP.COM
    It has Burger time and many many many other nostalgic games.

23. Bad Wil
    Bad Bad Wil
    Making me waste too much time looking at the history of video games.
    I love old video games. I play old ones on a fairly regular basis, both console and old PC games.

24. Coleco Telstar was our first…Pong on steroids.
    Intellivision Football ruled.
    Zaxxon and the Smurf’s on ColecoVision
    And don’t tell me you don’t remember the old Game/TV Switch.
    http://www.intellivisionlives.com/bluesky/games/instructions/console.shtml

25. The Odyssey? LMAO! Now I *really* feel old. (Even though I so totally know I am NOT!) I came across two books that any gamer should pick up…but if you remember buying and playing E.T on the 2600..you NEED these books. The first is an encyclopedia of consoles. http://www.play-asia.com/paOS-13-71-as-49-en-15-the%2Bencyclopedia%2Bof%2Bgame%2Bmachines-70-14fk.html
    Anyone else remember looking at the Jaguar controller and thinking “wtf?!” Don’t remember look here: http://www.atariage.com/controller_page.html?ControllerID=21&SystemID=LYNX
    The second book is an import from Germany. It has so many old handheld systems it should say “Printed in West Germany”. The book is called: Electronicplastic ISBN: 3-931126-44-7 What makes this photo book so sick is that these are all from one man’s collection. He’s got everything from the Merlin to the Atari Cosmos and even cars that run on computer punch cards. Like I said – it’s just sick!
    Thanks for the ridiculous time-kill links. Luckily I work in the gaming industry so I can still get paid for doing “research”.

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