But I had Pong. I played it by inserting a cassette into a tape recorder that was attached to a Texas Instruments computer. If it couldn't be purchased at Radio Shack we did not own it. If I wanted to play on an Atari I had to do it at a friend's house.
1. What was your favorite Atari game (if any)?
Mine: Frogger
2. What is your favorite video game (any system) of all time?
Mine: Super Mario 64
Hope Pong was good, but Atari was definitely better, so sorry to hear. I'm pretty sure we had an Atari 2600, loved that thing.
1. I remember being obsessed with a game called Venture and also one called Mouse Trap, couldn't pick between those two.
2. Very much into JRPGs, my favourite is either Tales of Symphonia or Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean, both I believe may be on Nintendo Switch now but I originally played them on the Nintendo Gamecube
I wonder if your Mouse Trap video game was based on The Mouse Trap board game I used to have, or vice versa. 🤔 It was loads of fun but it took a while to set up.
shareI don't think so, the atari game was very much a straightforward pac-man type game, whereas the board game from what I remember had more moving parts and contraptions.
shareI'll never forget watching my brother play on his Atari. It was almost as entertaining as watching TV when I was little :) I saw him play "Frogger," "Burger Time," the early Mario Brothers and Donkey Kong, "Atlantis," that one game with the two islands, etc. It was very interesting seeing the pixelated hurricanes hitting the islands in that one game (was it called "Utopia?")
My older brother also played a game on his Atari where you ran around shooting things with arrows, and his avatar was a little black pixelated man. I even remember the "whee-tchoo!" noise the arrows made, hehehe. I think it was called "Dungeons and Dragons," but I'm not sure. He had to travel into many different pixelated mountains with tunnels, caves, and dungeons, full of bats, rats, blobs, snakes, and dragons. At the end of the game, he put a crown together and there was special music to show that he'd beaten the game.
I know what you mean when you say that watching people play video games can be as fun as watching tv. There was a time when I liked to sit and watch my husband or sons play Super Mario 64. The music in the background was relaxing and of course I would always like to watch and see if they got a star.
shareOh yeah, I continued to watch my brother's exploits in gaming after he'd moved onto Nintendo and Playstation while we were still kids. I had fun watching him play Link in those early Legend of Zelda games. Eventually I got into PC games myself, and the best ones had a story involved with them. I also got to watch the graphics designs get better and better over time, from 8-bit with big pixels to the beautifully clear, sharp stuff we have today.
These days, I'm into survival games, MMO's, city-building games, cozy games, farming sims, The Sims 2, and BioWare RPG games, which are all fun :) The most challenging have been the survival games, because they're soooo different from the more structured stories of the 3rd-person shooters I've played in the past 14 years. If you're interested, I can recommend a few.
I don't think I ever played Frogger.
I did have an Atari, but I actually had an NES first; we bought an Atari with like 100 games for about $5 at a thrift store just as a novelty of sorts.
My favorite game of all time is a tie between the following:
Castlevania I - NES
Street Fighter II - Arcade
Secret of Monkey Island - MS-DOS
Ocarina of Time - N64/Gamecube
Did you play the new Monkey Island? Me the wife and the kid love those games and played them all. Castlevania is so punishing.
Signed, million man.
I haven't, and I've been meaning to play it since it dropped. Ron Gilbert's writing and comedy style on Monkey Island 1 & 2 had a big influence on my sense of humor and just who I am as a person, so it was really cool to find out he came back to finish the series. I want to play it I just haven't had a chance.
At one point I used to be able to beat Castlevania on 1 game. I probably couldn't do that now. The last time I tried, I made it to the twin mummies and died.
I never outgrew video games. Play em to this day
Signed, million man.
I was atari less as well in the early 80s. I collected tabletop games from coleco & tabletop pinball machines during that time. One of them was Frogger. https://youtu.be/YZjlvI7bm5s?si=S6M1EyzjxM0rJnvG
shareWe got an Atari 5200 when I was like 11. It has a reputation as a failure, but it had some good arcade ports. The controllers were as bad as people say, though. We had one break.
Unfortunately we only had two games, but I did play the heck out of Pac-Man and Qix.
Thanks to all who responded! It's clear that regardless of system or game for most of us video games were at least a brief pastime if not a long-term source of enjoyment. I did read that some studies have shown that playing video games could prevent or at least delay dementia related illness so here's to keeping the mind active!
🐸