It was my first video game system. It’s still around, in the attic of my sister’s house, along with a bunch of games, some of which work, some of which don’t.<\/p>\n
About the same time, we got our first computer — a Timex\/Sinclair 1000, though that may have been a year earlier. It was an interesting, though rather useless, computer. Using books of BASIC programs, I keyed a few games into the system and saved them to cassette, games like Wumpus. I remember a bowling game, too, which I tried to interest my (other) grandfather in one day, though he wasn’t especially interested. We bought a pre-recorded game for the T\/S-1000 — Frogger<\/i> — though I only ever got it to work maybe twice<\/i>. That was the problem with cassette storage, it didn’t always work.<\/p>\n
Cassette storage vexed me with the next system I had — a TRS-80 Color Computer 2. (This one is also in my sister’s attic.)<\/p>\n
What was the first game I played on a computer or a video game console? I don’t know, it was so long ago. I know I played Wumpus and Wumpus 2 on those early computers. I keyed in David Ahl’s “Super Star Trek” on the CoCo, as well. At times, I miss those long ago days; there was something fun<\/i> about keying a program by hand into a BASIC interpreter and seeing what it did. \ud83d\ude42 Hopefully, the end result would be worth it. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
I loved Combat<\/i> on the 2600, especially the later levels where you could fly jets or biplanes. Especially<\/i> the biplanes. I also loved the tank levels, especially with the shells that bounced, because they would bounce everywhere<\/i>. And I have a great fondness for the Atari 2600 Pac-Man<\/i>.<\/p>\n
In this age of Windows and Linux and the World Wide Web, those 8-bit (or less!) days seem on occasion like such a simpler, yet more fulfilling, time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In 1982, my grandfather gave my family an Atari 2600, along with a half-dozen games (like Pac-Man, Combat, and a few others). It was my first video game system. It’s still around, in the attic of my sister’s house, along with a bunch of games, some of which work, some of which don’t. About theContinue reading “On Old-Time Video Games”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[4091],"class_list":["post-5764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-video-games","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5764\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}