LA Daily: have you played atari today?

This week’s LA Daily is alive … IT’S ALIVE!

“This is how we started playing video games at home when we were kids,” I told them.

“Yeah, your uncle and I got this for Christmas in 1977,” Anne said.

“Boy, you guys are so old,” Nolan – who was 5 at the time – said.

“We are totally old,” I said, not knowing that, ten years later, he and I would have to stop playing Frisbee in front of our house because I had “hurt my Old,” when I tripped over the curb trying to catch up with one of his more powerful throws.

We looked at it together: Once-shiny silver switches jutted from the top of a sleek black body that was wrapped in faux woodgrain. Black rubber cords snaked around it, ending in the iconic joystick controllers that are woven tightly into the fabric of my youth. A cardboard box, its edges revealing the passage of time as clearly as its contents, sat on the floor beside it. Inside it, 20 game cartridges waited, keys to a time machine waited: Combat, Pitfall, Yars’ Revenge, Space Invaders, Centipede, Missile Command, and Cosmic Ark among them.

I pulled Combat out of the box and gently pressed it into the appropriate slot, just like I had hundreds (if not thousands) of times between 1979 and 1985. I felt a surge of excitement well up inside me as I turned on the television, and slid a tiny black switch from TV to GAME.

I get a lot of positive feedback from my fellow Gen-Xers when I write posts about the stuff we did in our childhood, like playing Atari, so I thought I’d do something unique this week: I wrote two different columns about playing Atari, loosely related them to each other, and sent one to the LA Weekly, and the other to Suicide Girls for this month’s Geek in Review.

I thought it was cool that, because of the way these columns are published and written, I could write two columns that stand on their own, but also work well together, and publish them about 24 hours apart. So if you liked this week’s LA Daily, I bet you’ll also enjoy this month’s Geek in Review, which goes up tomorrow.

30 thoughts on “LA Daily: have you played atari today?”

  1. My first game system was a Sears Video Game System, which was an Atari with fake wood finish. 🙂 But I unlocked my inner geek with a TI-99/4A and to this day have not been able to contain him. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. Nice to know I’m not the only one who thought “Raiders of the Lost Ark” was baffling. The only bad thing is: As a child, I figured I just didn’t understand “ET”‘s gameplay. It wasn’t til recently that I realized it was just utter shit.

  2. As always, thanks for the trip Wil.
    I’m going to have to drag mine out as well now. Combat will be a must play, but I’ll have to show my boys the craptacularness that was 2600 Pac-Man and ET. Just a little taste of what it was like to group up in the early 80s.
    Then I’ll hit them with my favorites. Pitfall (am I the only person that attempted to map Pitfall on graph paper?). Frogger. RIVER RAID! If even the smallest piece of the games adhere to them at all, then I will know that they are truly my boys.
    Then maybe, MAYBE I’ll drag out the 5200. Yes I know there are issues with the system, yes I know the controller sucks BUT I defy anyone to come up with a greater feeling for a child who could beam with pride he had the closest thing to an arcade-perfect port of Pac Man and Galaga IN YOUR HOUSE!
    Wanna play? Sure dude, but I’m out of quaters. Quaters? Where we’re going we don’t need quaters. Rad.
    I haven’t been cool much in my life honestly, but I was cool for that summer.
    In my book not much is better than Star Raiders on the ol’ 52. I’m biased though.

  3. I just finished reading Racing the Beam (an excellent book detailing the peculiarities of programming on the Atari VCS hardware and how those games on that system shaped the history of video gaming – a must-read for any gaming geek with any hint of technical proclivity) and this article is like a tender and juicy cherry on top of a nostalgia sundae.
    Thanks, Wil!

  4. If you liked the Atari 5200, then get yourself an Atari 8-bit computer, which includes the Atari 400, 800, and XL/XE series. The hardware is almost identical to the Atari 5200, except you could use Atari 2600 joysticks and TV switchboxes with it, which removes pretty much all of the frustration that’s unique to the Atari 5200. Just about every game that came out for the 5200 also came out for the 400/800, and those that didn’t were ported by pirates. Get any one you like; the ultra-cheap Atari 400 will play 99% of the cartridges out there. The XL/XE machines might be needed for those “XE Game System” cartridges that make up the last 1%, back when Atari tried to use the same hardware ten years later to compete with the NES.
    I grew up with an Atari 400 instead of an Atari 2600, so not only was I spared the horror of 2600 Pac-Man, and granted the 3-D space flight experience of its 1979 launch title Star Raiders, but I eventually got a BASIC cartridge for Christmas, and started programming, and never looked back.
    Add a disk drive, and you have a machine on par with the Commodore 64. The disk drive is not only faster, but makes a happy beeping sound through the TV speaker when you boot up. You can build a cheap cable to use an old PC as a file server, too.

  5. I still don’t understand the hatred, I remember actually liking ET.
    Of course I was also into hacking the cartridges with jumpers to cause odd effects. Think a rudimentary Game Genie sort of rig. It may be that the scrambled oversized sprites that this resulted in were just more pleasing than the original graphics, and monkeying with the sprite collision detection made the gameplay more endurable.

  6. A friend of mine owned a bar for like a year and a half. He was hunting around for a ‘crowd’ and one day I hooked up a 2600 to one of the TVs. It was fascinating to see the reactions. Aging hipsters were suddenly acting like twelve year olds, while my friend’s daughter (who was seven-ish) wanted to play every chance she got. She was particularly fond of the racing game, IIRC.
    Just goes to prove, gameplay isn’t about fancy graphics.

  7. Ahh, many a good day my brother and I wasted on the Atari, even after all our friends upgraded to NES. For some reason my folks didn’t want us playing anything newer, even though the story goes my dad bought it for my mom to “keep her company” when she was in bed for a week sick. Sure dad. 8^D
    Any shout outs to River Raid or Yars Revenge here? I remember actually making a map of Pitfall2 in order to beat it once night after about 4 hours or so, and that was considered “long”.

  8. I’m gonna keep mine short and sweet, just like me (anyone buying that?). RIVER RAID baby, River Raid! And of course Chopper Command. I was addicted to showing up the old man. Of course, I was guilty of the Pitfall map as well. And yeah, waaay too long.

  11. Yar’s Revenge… that was simple looking, but fun.
    I still have my Atari VCS [Video Computer System] which they later renamed the 2600.
    Kaboom from Activision was simply the most fun game, overall.
    /Still have my 5200 with useless controllers

  13. I just wanna know what a 7 year old was doing in a bar! LOL I was never into video games (don’t hate me!) but hubby & I just got a Wii. I know that doesn’t compare with all of the nostalgia here (I’m not into video games, but I love nostalgia) but I think it’s a good system for someone like me.
    -Alicia (@aliciawag)

  14. Yar’s Revenge was my favorite, too. Something interesting about it I learned from Racing the Beam: the random pixels of the safe zone are not random. There wasn’t enough space left in the cartridge to write code to generate random pixels. Instead it’s displaying the binary code of the game executable to the screen to make those “random” pixels. When you play you are looking at the actual code running the game itself. For some reason I find that amazingly cool.

  17. Thank Christmas! I thought I was the only one who didn’t ‘get’ ET! And um…yes for Combat, Chopper Command, Space Invaders, and most especially Kaboom. Oh, and Defender!
    We didn’t have many games, and I don’t know what happened to our 2600, but I know I loved it, and the kid across the street had tons of game, so…yeah, those were the days.

  18. All ive ever played has been the hand held Nintendo, because like ive said on here a MILLION times, I was born in the 90’s and I didnt start playin video games till I was like 8 or 9… though I have played the Nintendo 64 a few times I was never really a hard core gamer… and I figured out something! On my myspace fanpage for Wil a girl’s screen name was Suicide Girl and I looked at her profile and there was like a whole gang of em’ and I was like, “why would girls like that be fans of Wil Wheaton?”… but now I know why they asked for the friend request! Haha if ANY of you people on here have a myspace PLEASE send a friend request.. the screen name I have on there is **Wil Wheaton Fanpage**…

  19. Thanks for the walk down memory lane. The Atari brings back great memories. I loved Combat, but Breakout was my favorite. Since everyone is talking about firsts, mine was the Comodore64. My mom couldn’t justify a straight game system so she got me this one so I could practice typing on the tv screen when I wasn’t playing Rat Race. Little did she know that her $90 purchase from KMart would set me on a course to computer geekdom!

  20. Raiders of the Lost Ark seems like it would have been impossible to beat without the manual. I can’t imagine I would *ever* have thought of the things the book said to do.
    I never beat either of the Swordquest games I had. I didn’t have the manual for Earthworld and didn’t have the clue-containing comic book for Fireworld. I don’t know if they even made the other two they were supposed to do.

  22. Alas, my own Atari 2600 console is ensconced in its leather slipcover “Atari blanket” now, buried deep in a trunk in storage, it’s power cord and game cartridges having long since been given away to friends smarter than myself who pull it out of the closet every once in awhile and actually play it. A big beautiful bouquet of memories sits in a vase on a shelf in my mind labelled “ATARI 2600”. It was special indeed.
    Everyone always gives gamers shit about being socially inept but I played games with so many friends and kids from the neighborhood, not to mention complete strangers’ kids at doctors’ offices and other public meeting places that were clued-in enough to have an Atari system set up for use in the waiting areas, that it felt like an extended family. Everybody I knew had one, or knew somebody that did. If you didn’t have a certain game, you could damn well bet your best friend, or his friend, or his cousin, or someone within a few block radius had that cart. If you’re family was less fortunate than other people’s and you didn’t have your own system, you could always go over to someone else’s house after school and play it there. You could talk to ten different people at school (if there were that many at your school) about the latest, hottest Atari games of the age, and you’d get ten different viewpoints and sets of strategy tips. It truly was a cultural touchstone for folks my age. To my impressionable young mind, it seemed as if EVERYONE was playing Atari at the time.
    Though the games may be laughable by today’s standards, I loved every one of them that I played. Hours and hours of unrefined, raw joy could be had. I can still remember the Christmas we first got our Atari system. I can still just about remember the days I got Pitfall I & II, River Raid, Adventure, Star Raiders and other sweet carts. Kids who played Superman and Empire Strikes Back did NOT know who they were fucking with. You beat wave after wave of sinister, stomping Imperial Walkers back to hell in your blocky little snowspeeder day after fucking day and you begged for more.
    I can vividly remember playing the already mentioned classic, Yar’s Revenge, at my childhood orthodontist’s office. Since children were the doctor’s main clientele, he had set aside a little side office as a play area and TV room. Nearly every time I went there, somebody was playing the lone Atari 2600 console and its stack of games. All the kids were bent on getting some Yar’s Revenge and ramming some Zorlon smoke right up the evil Qotile bastard’s tailpipe. It kept my mind off of the impending dental impressions and palate split horrors that awaited me on the other side of the door at least.
    How those games held our attention day after day, hour after after is a true testament to how much sheer fun we were having while playing them.
    I never had as many moments of unfettered fun playing video games later on like the ones my friends and I had playing the Atari 2600 when I was twelve.
    Jesus, does anybody?

  24. Recently I was showing my family that I could get a 2600 emulator for the PC. I got the emulator and a whole bunch of games in a big zip file. So I was showing them River Raid and Bezerk and a few others.
    So then my mum, who had never shown any interest in the Atari when I was a kid, says “have you got the phoenix one?”.
    Me: Phoenix one?
    Mum: I can’t remember what it’s called but there was a game with a phoenix at the end.
    I shrugged, looked through the zip file and found one called, funnily enough, “Phoenix”. I bunged it on, and these waves of nostalgia swam over me. I suddenly remembered this game, and got very excited. Then my mum floored me with her next comment.
    Mum: That’s the one. I used to play that for hours. Sometimes I would look up, see you kids coming home from school, and realise I was still in my dressing gown.
    Turns out the geek is hereditary.
    Oh and I never got ET either.

  25. this is completely unrelated but there is a facebook site dedicated to you to get you on dancing with the stars. Was wondering if you’d seen it. I just thought it was funny 🙂

  26. The 2600 is so full of great memories!
    I loved Yar’s Revenge, even though my every hope of there being some unlocked hidden level if you repeated the other 2 levels enough never came to fruition.
    Outlaw has to get a mention from me because that was the first game I can ever remember playing. 2-years old at Shakey’s Pizza and playing it with my mom, I liked going there for the game more than the pizza.
    I think my favorite game on the 2600 was Vanguard. I spent so many quarters on it, just to hear the same music that was used in Flash Gordon when you got the invincibility. Once I could just play it continuously without blowing my allowance, it was smiles all day.

  27. Like everyone who had one, I absolutely LOVED the 2600. In addition to being a kick-ass gaming system, my console was also used as Mer-Man’s throne when I would play with my Masters of the Universe action figures.
    I was at a Gamestop a few years ago and saw a Playstation 2 disc that had a bunch of Activision games on it…Pitfall, Boxing, Barnstorming, Keystone Kops, and Fishing just to name a few.
    I snagged it up in a heartbeat and, like you, gathered my kids around the TV to show them what video game were all about when I was their age.
    They thought it was cool and all, and I agree that it’s the simplistic nature of the games which are the draw…at least for a little while. Although they tried every game in the anthology, it was only a matter of days before the kids left it for the greener pastures of Spider-Man 2 and Dexter and Jax.
    I played the games on the Activision disc, too. But it wasn’t the same as I remembered. Like the penny to Chistopher Reeve in Somewhere in Time, the damn PS2 controller kept me grounded in the present.
    If only there were an Atari 2600 contoller for the PS2…

  28. Now, see, I was one of the poor unfortunates. My mom simply Didn’t Love Me Enough to spend way more than she could afford buying me a video game console and a bunch of game cartidges, no matter how loudly I hinted about it and mooned over advertisements in magazines and catalogs. She’d say things about me getting a “summer job” so I could afford to buy my own. I should’ve reported her for child abuse, by golly.
    Instead I spent a lot of afternoons over at my best friend Bill’s house playing with his 2600, and later his Atari 400. (Bill had a ten-speed bike, too, and mom Didn’t Love Me Enough to spring for one of those babies either. I swear I don’t know how I survived my childhood.)
    Then about six or eight years later I went off to college and got a part-time job to pay my way, found myself with a little extra pocket money, and discovered that not far from work was the Goodwill warehouse where they sorted through all their donated merchandise, and an outlet store that let you pick over the piles. Elderly but serviceable ten-speed bike: $15. Box containing an Atari 2600 plus 30 assorted game cartridges: $5. Ha! Suck on that, Mom!! Who needs parents, when I have product obsolescence and the disposable consumer culture giving me everything I want for practically nothing, and all I had to do was wait a really really really really really long time!
    Anyway, I played the heck out of that 2600 for a few months until I was well and truly satisfied, then put it away for a few years, then gave it to a friend, then didn’t think of it again for almost 20 years, then remembered it when I read this article today. So I can totally relate to all your memories, except for this time displacement thing where my summer-of-1982 playing Atari happened in 1988.

  30. Doing it right this time:
    My mom took our Atari with her when she moved back to New Brunswick. I think my kids would’ve loved it — they’re so old school. They presently kick back with Nintendo 64, Gamecube,Playstation 11, X-box and PC games.
    When I hear that old Donkey Kong music kick in, I feel young again.

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