I started gaming in the early 80s, but I've played most of this stuff or things like it. My sister had an off-brand Pong console, and I was familiar with all the Atari stuff since my cousins and friends had 2600s. I had a few cheesy LCD games from Radio Shack and even a Nintendo Game & Watch, until I got my first Game Boy.
My 1970s Gaming
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 On 08/30/2019 at 08:55 PM by KnightDriver See More From This User » |
August being my month to review the 1970s in all aspects, I thought I’d share some of my gaming experiences here on Pixlbit.
I was born in 1967, so I was between the ages of 4 and 12 during the 70s - childhood days at the dawn of video games. I would say I was mostly into playing baseball at the time but there are some games to note.
My memories, up until about 1975 when my parents moved into a bigger house, are about Pong, board games, and a single arcade racing game, probably Gran Trak. Mostly, though, I was into other hobbies like: model railroading, rocketry, WWII model building, slot car racing, Hot Wheels/Matchbox cars, stamp and sports card collecting and a lot of outdoors tomfoolery with my neighborhood friends.
In the new house, the second half of the 70s saw me start to like reading science fiction and fantasy. Then Star Wars, handheld electronic games and the Atari 2600 and Intelivision home consoles all appeared. I guess you could say 1977 was year-one for video games for me, so let’s start there.
My dad, with always an interest in the latest gadgets, got the Atari 2600 for Xmas for us kids. I remember playing Air-Sea Battle and Combat at launch. I probably thought it was pretty cool. I might even have been that kid who freaks out at Xmas, I don’t really remember.
The next year, 1978, I do remember. I was playing little-league baseball, so related video games appealed to me. I had a Mattel Electronics Baseball LED handheld that I was obsessed with (I probably slept with it, which is something I used to do as a kid. I also had a walkie talky in hand and my baseball hat on). My various neighbors had the football, basketball and hockey ones. I used to go over to their places to play them.
Space Invaders came out in the arcades that year. I probably played it on a family vacation. I wasn’t going to arcades on my own yet, I don’t think. At home on the Atari 2600 we had Basketball, Breakout, Night Driver and Super Breakout . I definitely got into Night Driver and Super Breakout. Both used the paddle controllers.
1979 saw the release of Mattel’s Intellivsion, the first serious challenger to Atari. My neighbor had one. Their family was strongly into sports, so it made sense since it had the best sports games. I think I only remember Las Vegas Poker from the release year though. Most of the games came out in the 80s. On the Atari 2600 my family had Bowling and Canyon Bomber. I played a lot of Bowling. In the arcade were Lunar Lander and Asteroids. I liked Lunar Lander a lot but it wasn’t as ubiquitous as Asteroids. Everyone was playing Asteroids and it was everywhere.
I should mention two other important 70s games: Dungeons and Dragons in ‘74 and Squad Leader in ‘77. I became aware of DnD in ‘77 or so when Advanced DnD came out. Squad Leader I discovered in the 80s as a teenager.
So that’s my 70s gaming. It was mostly board games until the late 70s and then really only a handful of video games until the explosion of stuff in the 80s. I’m revisiting the 80s in September.
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