Our kids log many, many hours in front of the Big Ass Television, and Playstation 3. They do other things, as well; it’s not all-consuming. But sometimes I worry they spend too much time playing video games.
However… I’m not one of those hand-wringing types who lie awake at night worried people are having fun somewhere, and vowing to put an end to it as soon as possible. So what if our children kill thousands and thousands of virtual Russians this summer? Is that such a terrible thing? I think not.
When I was their age I played video games, too. But I was never as into it as they are. I dabbled, only. We had Intellivision at our house, and I liked three games in particular: Burger Time, Astrosmash, and Night Stalker.
But my brother played a lot more than I did. And my mother even got semi-obsessed with Night Stalker for a while. That’s incredible, thinking back on it, but I remember her sitting in a beanbag chair for a couple of hours at a clip, playing that game. Weird, man. My mother doesn’t fit the profile, believe me…
I don’t really like games, in general. I hate board games, and always have. I’m not a big fan of card games, either, and would rather plunge my face into an industrial fan than do word searches, or play Sudoku, or any of that nonsense. I mean, seriously.
I have no games on my phone or computer, and never will. I simply have no interest.
But people are different, and enjoy different things. I don’t have a chip on my shoulder about it. I just prefer to screw around on the internet, read, write, and listen to music. I don’t even watch much TV. I could give it up today, I believe. Many days I don’t watch one minute of television. Today, for instance.
So, I’m far from a video game junkie. I grew up in the ’70s and ’80s, though, and spent my fair share of time in arcades. My favorite arcade game, by far, is Galaga. I was never very good at it, but always had a great time. In fact, I played it not so long ago. Maybe at Knoebels? It’s still a blast.
The first video game I can remember seeing was called Death Race, and it was appealingly tasteless. You basically ran over pedestrians the whole time, and a white cross would appear whenever you offed another one. At the end, the whole screen would be full of crosses. Heh.
The Dunbar bowling alley had that game in their back room, and I liked it mostly because it was in bad taste, defiantly and gleefully. Needless to say, there was controversy surrounding it. Here’s a Wikipedia page about the late, great Death Race.
What’s your video game history? Were you into it big-time as a kid? Are you into it now? What do you play? Tell us all about it, won’t you?
Also, what’s your all-time favorite arcade game? And what was the first game that appeared on your radar screen? What piqued your interest in gaming, as it’s apparently called?
And now I’m gonna have a Mary Steenburgen frozen meal, and drag my ass to work.
See you guys again tomorrow.
Now playing in the bunker
Follow the Surf Report at Facebook!
I’ll have to give this some considerstion. Way too many games.
Qbert got me through Finals in college for many semesters (early ’80s).
I was a Death Race fanatic too! I used to play it at Skateland USA instead of skating with Andy Gibb’s music in the air.
I’ve never heard of Astrosmash and Night Stalker…waaaaayyyy efore my time, I would imagine.
My only experience with video games is Maajong, I was addicted to that game online for a while. Yeah I know… nerd.
I have a long history with video games. The arcades in the ’80s. But, really got into them in the late ’80s when I met my husband. Bought him a Nintendo for his birthday the first year we were together.
We have had all types of consoles and hand-helds. We also play pc games especially MMOs. Our daughter loves to play as well. A family that plays together stays together!
I have a degree in education, but I have been working in the video game industry for 10 years and can’t imagine doing anything else for a living. 🙂
Top 10!
First games I remember were tennis and pac man on tabletop games in a pizza hut. then we got a nintendo but I am talking maybe 1980. it had frogger and donkey kong and I dont know what all else most of which sucked.
Good Afternoon Surf Reporters….
Not a big gamer either, but I did have “home entertainment” systems growing up. The first was Pong. I think that had 4 or 5 games you could play. Pong, Doubles Pong, Tank Command, Breakout.
We graduated to Activision. Those 64k graphics were awesome!
Had one of the first Atari systems. Very cool.
Now that I have kids, we’ve run the gamut. Atari, SEGA, Play Station(s), Wii. Now the youngest has a fancy pants laptop that was built specifically for game playing. The latest Playstation or Play 360or whatever the hell it is just sits by the TV collecting dust.
I was a game arcade junkie back in the 80’s. Missile Command was a good one. Joust, where you flew around on the back of giant ostriches with jousting poles, very cool. I got pretty good at Centipede and yes I loved Galaga too.
Best part of Galaga was when you got a “double” shooter. It was basically a rapid fire double barreled shotgun. Once you had that capability, death and destruction was a guarantee.
Ah, the good old days…
I played a lot of PacMan and dammit, I still love a good pinball game. When we’d wander into an Arcade, we usually mashed into that 4 for a Quarter photo booth. Maybe some skeeball. Other than that, those games don’t interest me.
Crossword puzzles on the other hand – Love them!
I’ve had games all my life I guess. We had an old Atari 2600 back in the early 80’s. Apparently I preferred crappy Pac-man over mother’s milk because my older brother tells me I started playing around the age of 2.
I graduated to gray Nintendo at the age of 3 and it’s been on ever since.
I say I have probably played video games as much in my life as I have slept. From the age of four to fifteen my schedule had been 8 hours school/8 hours games/8 hours sleep. No shit, I ate while playing games, all of it.
Now life is seemingly more important. I still neglect sleep to cram in my game playing, from the time I get up Friday morning until I wake up Sunday morning I get about 3 hours of sleep, to make sure Sony is properly funded.
The Saint Albans (WV) Mall was the place to be for video games in the 70s & 80s.
In the beginning there were analog pinball machines, air hockey and Foosball in a carnival-like atmosphere complete with bright lights and festive music.
Then it underwent a change and became populated with dark digital pinball machines and video games. The bright lights were replaced with colored lights; mostly red, blue and purple. The music was changed to popular 70s hard rock and weed could be purchased with ease.
(Dating myself) my all-time favourite game was Elite. Many, many, many hours logged, many Thargoid attacks survived. Last game I got seriously into was Goldeneye on the N64 and I eventually completed it. I’m sure that will be the last game I complete. I have a Wii but it hasn’t been powered up for 6 months.
When I was in the UK equivalent of High School the choices were go to school (yawn) or go to the University bar to play Gauntlet and drink beer. I am very good at Gauntlet and beer drinking.
The very first video game I played was at a pinball arcade in downtown South Charleston. I plunked down several quarters to play Pong, and it was the bomb at the time.
My favorite ’80s video games included Galaga, Joust, Defender, Missile Command. Spent a crap-load of time and quarters playing these games for a number of years. I also remember Death Race. It was one of the first games that distracted me from the pinball machines in the late ’70s. I have too many other interests now to waste time on video games of any kind. Where would I find the time in between my hobbies; such as competitive lawn mowing, underwater tightrope-walking, cat juggling, ampersand collecting, etc.
I started with Donkey Kong on the Atari, I have no Nintendo, Wii, Playstation or any other gaming consoles. I prefer space battle strategy games now like Starcraft (Starcraft2 will soon be released, yeah), Command and Conquer, Galactic Civilizations and currently engrossed in Starfleet Command online. Now, leave me alone, I’m playing my game…
That was it “Atari” not nintendo! A mind is a terrible thing to waste.
I’m a computer game nerd.
The first game I loved… River Raid Atari 2600
The first Arcade game I loved… Battle Tank
The first PC game I loved…Wolfenstein “Mein Leben!!”
The greatest game ever made…Half Life, still waiting on the fianal installment.
Honorable mention for all the Mech Warrior games.
I hate game consoles, they ruined gaming, like Mech Warrior. Damn you Microsoft and your accursed XBox.
My next-door neighbor was one of the first guys around to get an Atari 2600. We logged massive hours on that thing–sometimes all night (during the summer). ‘Space Invaders’ was a favorite, as well as ‘Missile Command’, ‘Adventure’ and ‘Pitfall’. I eventually graduated up to a ColecoVision and thought that was cutting edge stuff! ‘Zaxxon’ was the favorite on that.
As far as arcade games go, ‘Battle Zone’, ‘Donkey Kong’, ‘Q-Bert’ ( I LOVED the sound it made when he fell off!), ‘Elevator Action’, ‘Defender’ and ‘Tempest’ were some of my favorites. I also wasted a lot of quarters playing pinball. I still play pinball on the Wii with the ‘Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection’. It has many of the titles I remember–and I can beat the young’uns on it!
I forgot about mercilessly wearing my college buddies out playing Mario Cart. I still crush my kids and their friends at the modern Wii version of Mario Cart, of course I am an adult and have 20+ years of driving experience and should be a better driver than the average 14 year old. I still savor each and every victory. Like Kramer when he took the Karate class.
When the first Zelda came out my husband and I were in the early dating stages and we played that game for hours on end–sometimes all night (sort of.) Loved it passionately. Burn a bush or throw a bomb.
…how could I forget to mention ‘Asteroids’? Arcade and home version were awesome!
I guess I’m a total video game geezer…I still have a 2600 and the kids play it sometimes. It’s like stepping into a time machine, and they think it’s ‘retro’.
…whippersnappers!
By the time i was old enough to be alone in the mall arcade games were pretty much a thing of the past.
You could still find a pinball machine here or there, and if you were lucky, Pizza Hut would have some table top game that didn’t work very well.
I met my first wife at a video arcade. I sure do miss Elevator Action and Centipede.
I’m 47 now and it’s all Grand Theft Auto, Baby. Nothing better than stabbing hookers and blowing up cop cars when I’m a little wound up.
As a kid I spent a lot of time alone at home playing donkey long country on the snes and then graduated to goldeneye on the 64. By the time I was in high school it was xbox and halo. We played a lot of halo. To the point where local news media did a story on us playing halo. Newspapers, actual tv news and a q+a about violence in video games roundtable. When I turned 16 it all changed and I got into cars and guns. And that’s how I ended up having more guns than sense and enough parts in my garage to build two spare trucks.
First game I remember playing as a kid was a game called ‘Joust’ on Atari. It was a game where you joust ostriches over a fiery pit of lava…it was pretty lame. My dad ended up trading in the Atari for a Nintendo, and we eventually owned all the Mario games, including Dr. Mario. We also had Knock Out, Uncle Fester’s Quest, and Castlevania. My mom was obbsessed with these games more than I was…she’d stay up until 3 am some nights playing. Few years later my dad bought a Sega, then returned it to get a Super Nintendo. On the Super I played Mario Kart, Donkey Kong Country (still wish I had this, it was such a fun game).
My favorite arcade game was Catepillar.
Currently,at my house, we have an Xbox and a PS3. My favorite game to play now is Halo 3 on Xbox. My sole purpose upon including the internet in my Comcast package was so I could play Halo 3 on Xbox live, where you play thousands of other people online. Halo is a first person alien shooter game, but your somekind of super soldier. I’m obbsessed with it, and get made fun of a lot, but I don’t care. We also played the ‘Ghostbusters’ game that came out last year. That was an awesome game, and they even used all original voices.
I’m such a nerd.
http://www.Free80sArcade.com
I loved the early vector-graphics games like Tempest, Battlezone, The 1st Star Wars arcade game. Graphics, schmaphics give me smoothly drawn and scrolling lines. Plus I am still always willing to set aside a few minutes for a pinball machine on the rare sighting in the wild…..
Spent so much time mastering Make Trax at No. 8 Capitol Street in downtown Charleston in the 1980s that I didn’t know a federal cocaine distribution investigation was going on in the barroom shadows surrounding me.
Festers Quest had to be one of the most frustratingly horrible games I have ever played. It ranks right up there with Jekyll & Hyde.
I did have an arcade place while stationed in California. Area 51 was pretty great. You shot the shit out of 10 million aliens for half and hour. They would explode and alien guts would fly all over.
My favorite arcade game, Junyared Pinball. It was great. You had to pay attention to the playfiedld and the marquee at the same time. There was a little pixel screen next to the score that you had to react to. You would have to hit specific bumpers and ramps according to what the screen was doing.
You didn’t have to actually, but if you wanted to put “ASS”, “DIK”, or “FUK” in the high scores you would have to; otherwise there was no way of getting on the board by playing straight pinball.
“Junkyard Pinball”
Pong. My one and only. I know…the excitement is overwhelming.
Has it been raining anywhere else for the past 5 hours?
I started at Pong and have been gaming ever since. I’ve probably played 95% of the games mentioned here, and I like almost all of them. I now have a Wii, an xbox and a PS3, and they all get some playing time, as to the afore mentioned real-time strategy games (Starcraft, C&C, et al). Mostly xbox though, because of the aforementioned Live service. There are about 15 of us that play various games together regularly. It’s really quite social (though I’m not making the argument that online interaction replaces “real life”).
It would be hard for me to pick a favorite, but those late nights putting shrooms on McDonald’s cheeseburgers and playing PGA Tour Golf on Sega (this was pre-Tiger) all night were pretty fun.
My first serious gaming console was the PS1 when i was about 8 or 9. Eventually I got into computers, and computer games. As of now I’ve logged somewhere around 5000 hours of Counter-Strike: Source since March 2006. I also have the logo tattooed on my arm.
I was never really into sports very much, so competitive gaming became my thing. 3 hours a night 5 days a week for weeks at a time. I’ll always miss it.
I grew up in the 70s and 80s and absolutely love arcade games. My favorites were Gyruss and Vanguard.
I had the Atari and NES, but right after that I went to college and forgot all about video games for a while. Recently I discovered MAME and I’m in video game heaven! I like Galaga and Donkey Kong right now.
Oh, and I hate TV. I don’t watch it at all. We have not had cable in over 10 years and I don’t miss it one bit.
Funny, yesterday I saw a cool license plate: 8BITNES
The first video game I played was a handheld football game that my dad bought for me (1970ish). I thought it was the coolest friggin thing ever. I wish I could find another one of those!
Then, my step dad bought an Atari system with the game “Pong”? for us. Very cool…
THEN, the bowling alley up the street installed an “Asteroids” game! I think that was the first time I achieved full orgasm. Seriously. What?
Soon after that, a full blown arcade opened up not 500 meters from my house. “Pistol Pete’s” was the bomb. They served nachos, coke on ice, etc, and the owner let us get high in the bathroom. The games then were Zaxxon, Joust, and many others I can’t remember because, well…I was too stoned.
That was a long time ago of course…
These days, my wife and I play World of Warcraft. Probably too much. But we have an awesome time!
Death to the Horde!
Portentous-Alterac Mountains- No Cream No Sugar
FTW!
I was hooked on Doom for a while but loved Battletank and Missile Command (loved it the way the background colors changed for each level – each one a harsher contrast than the last).
My friends, for true hard core gaming action check out Hello Kitty Tea Party Adventure – it rocks, LARGE!!!!.
I used to play Phoenix at the bar all the time. I loved Pac Man and Ms Pac Man, and the caterpillar game. My all time favorite is Tetris though. Still play it now.
I’ve never played video games. Never had any desire to play them either. Now as for the pinball machine….well THAT was fun!
In my book anything with flappers and flashing lights combined with music and boinging sounds is awesome!
Galaga, one of my bars has it for free. I can seriously kick ass on some galaga.
We had the original nintendo. I was good at Lifeforce, Contra, and Mario Bros. I hit about 1992 and just walked away and have never been back. I’ve thought about getting awii or something but I just don’t care.
I did get hooked on Chuzzle a few years ago, but only briefly.
I also wasn’t too bad at Arkanoid, the real challenge was when the damn controller had some play in it.
Round about 1982 when I had a paying job for the first time, I discovered Tempest and Defender. I could run Tempest for awhile, but to get good at Defender you needed 5 pound bags of quarters to get good at it. I never got good. It would be really neat to have Tempest and Defender on a PC and play it again.
My grandfather worked at Ferrell Music in Huntington back in the 70s and 80s. They fixed Jukeboxes, pinball machines, video games, etc. Once in while he let me go with him when he had to work a few odd hours on a weekend. While there, he’d power up a few of the video games and pinball machines that were fixed and waiting to be returned and let me play them. I remember how he used to open up the coin doors and flip a switch that counted the quarters being inserted a few times so I wouldn’t even need to use quarters. That just made the experience so much better.
I got that same feeling again in the late 90s when I discovered MAME and managed to find the ROM files from many of those old video games.
As a teen, Pole Position was my absolute favorite. In the 1990s I graduated to Afterburner2, which was absolutely awesome at the time. Also, playing Super Hangon with my buddy at the 7-11 in Parkersburg at 2 o’clock every morning while scarfing down cheap hot dogs was a darn good time.
Clintcurtis, thanks for the Parkersburg shout-out. Did you have any video games in any of your bars?
Big fan of Dig-dug & Pole Position back in the day.
Interesting enough i just got back from vacation and at the beach house they had an upright ‘old school’ looking video machine that had about 30 games: 1941, Catapillar, Millipede, Tempest, Commando, Street fighter, Ms Pacman…. I got to show off to the kids a bunch of old school skills
There was a time when my mom could get rid of me for the day for 50 cents. I’d take the two quarters, ride my bike 5 miles (each way) to a grocery store that had an Asteroids game. Burn the two quarters, ride home.
I remember the glory days of the arcades. My favorites where Crazy Climber ( you climb a building to get to the helicopter on top, while people slam windows on your fingers and throw flower pots at you, birds crap on ya, King Kong tries to take you out, and so on)……… And Atari “race drivin'”……
Robotron and defender/stargate were kickass, too…
Good stuff. I almost never touch a video game today.
In the home video games, I had atari, colecovision, intelivision, a vectrex system, Nintendo NES, Sega, and Psone, PS2…… Virtual boy…..
Vectrex is the coolest, black and white like Asteroids. I still have all those systems and carts.
When my daughter was about 5, she loved the game “Boogerman” on the Sega. Weapons involve belching and farting, as well as flicking boogers, so right up a five year old’s alley. Um, I liked it a little, myself, as well………………
Pong and Asteriods was about it. Lost interest. Current “games”…Bookworm, anything trivia/ knowledge challenge. Corsswords…knowledge, trivia, words, spelling…and get this…you play it with a pencil.
(actually I use a pen because I’m a snob).
From 82-84 I was known as Tron.
Oh my, I must be a nerd… I feel strangely alive after reading all these posts SCARY!
I started in the mid-70s with the Magnavox Odyssey, which was pre-Pong (damn I feel old right now!). It was “awe”-ful-“some”. I recall sticking some plastic sheet on the TV screen and then some dots of light from the TV shone through to create the game effects. Different plastic sheets = different “games”. The “football” experience was something like a single dot moving across the green plastic sheet. Talk about EXCITEMENT! From there, I graduated to the hand-held football that Sydney mentioned. It’s still a mystery to me how the Madden franchise ever got a toehold in this market.
The Atari 2600 came next – didn’t those things cost like $150? In the 70’s?! WTF?!!!! Isn’t that like a million dollars today? Defender is about the only game I remember playing. Flying through a continuous 2 foot loop in the space/time continuum – what joy. Actually, at the time it was the best thing on the entire freakin’ planet!
At the arcade and bowling alley… Pole Position, Punch-Out!! boxing, Elevator Action, Dig Dug, Pac-Man, Galaga, Donkey Kong, Joust… and TRON! Does anybody remember this game? As I recall it was many games in one – one where you killed spiders, one where you were a tank in a maze, one where you shot at a wall of colors and some other one with lights. At the time, it was an amazing concept. (Yep, confirmed – I’m a nerd.)
Today – jeez, today my son can’t get me to play anything. He hands me the controller which has SEVENTEEN different controls – apparently one for every finger. Once he’s up 70-0 in the first quarter and I’ve cursed using every word I know, he says something sweet like “Dad, you could at least try or something.” As if audible-ing a quarterback sneak on every 4th and 45 isn’t trying…
It sucks to get old…