I think someboby on here still has a RSGC.
Video Games of My Life: Part One - 1967-1976
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 On 01/31/2014 at 04:51 PM by KnightDriver See More From This User » |
Kicking off BaD this year a day early ('cause I'll be actually gaming tomorrow), I decided to revisit a series I did at 1UP way back in 2011. It was on an old profile that I erased so I couldn't just link to it. I did have the files on my computer though, so I thought this would be the perfect time to rewrite it and add all sorts of nice multimedia for Pixlbit. So here goes the epic journey of The Video Games of My Life.
He starts playing it at the 45 second mark.
The first gaming machine that I can think of that might have kicked off my interest in video games was the Japanese mechanical game Pachinko which I played during a sleep over at a friend’s house probably when I was seven. Pachinko is like the first pinball machines with no flippers but set upright. You shoot many small balls to the top of the field and watch them proceed down and hope you capture some in the holes. It was pretty exotic and exciting with all the noise it made. It reminds me today of Peggle.
Soon thereafter, my parents bought a Radio Shack Scoreboard Pong console probably around 1976 - a true video game machine. It was a novelty to do something with a TV other than just watch Speed Racer or Spider-Man (my favorites). My sister and I played together and had some fun with it. In the version of the console I had, you had sliders for control instead of dials. You could play Tennis (straight Pong), Hockey (two paddles for each player and goals), or Handball (single player Pong). You could also adjust the speed of the ball and size of the paddles to change the difficulty. Another version of this console, called TV Scoreboard, had a light gun and controlled with dials like the original arcade Pong machine.
I also remember going into a few arcades probably during vacations with my parents. Most of those were still full of Pinball machines, and shooting galleries, but a few video games were starting to appear there like Gran Trak 10. This was a top down perspective racer. You had a pedal, steering wheel, and a gear shift, all firsts for video games. It was single player and you raced for best time.
In the years before the Atari 2600 in 1977, video games were a novelty and hardly a time consuming pastime for me. I spent most of my free time building plastic models from the Model of the Month Club, shooting off model rockets, playing with electric trains and slot cars, collecting Matchbox cars, and playing board games like Risk and Monopoly. But soon video games would be getting more equal time with my other hobbies.
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