The Atari 2600 celebrates 30 years of low-rez fun

Now, on to the real post...

First, let me point out that yes, I did steal the blog title from this blog. What can I say? I'm uninventive and lazy - I've got better things to do...

Anyway, I'm sure every true nerd remembers the time in his (or less likely, her) life that they were first introduced to the wonderful world of interactive media. Not that we had such a name for it then - it was still computer or video games right up until the early 2000's. It was a simpler time, when one didn't have to worry about BSODs, virii or malware (not for me, at least).

For me it was the Apple Mac LCIII and the Atari 2600. The Apple came first, the second hand family computer complete with Prince Of Persia and various shareware/freeware games such as Lawnmower (all you did was mow grass, but it was SO addictive). To this day, I am yet to see a computer boot an OS as fast as that thing did on OS7, and also beat the 2 recallable software crashes it experienced over it's 10 year life. The damn thing still worked until it got compacted by the council hard waste collectors.

A year or two later came one of the original woodpaneled Atari 2600. A family friend bought a Playstation, so naturally, they palmed it off to us (the atari, that is not the Playstation, unfortunately). Who could forget classics such as Donkey Kong, Tank and Asteroids, the many countless hours spent in front of the TV, and, inevitably, the Atari becoming the dreaded awards style behavioural system, whereby it could only be used once everything had been done.

And now we celebrate it's 30 year aniversary. I was not born when it came into being, it survived 2 young families, and it is still working today. Which is more than I can say for the Playstation 1 that superceeded it at Christmas 2000, about a year or so after the Atari came into our possesion.

What's more, I feel old. The last time I had it out, 14 year olds were ripping into it's terrible gameplay and graphics. Yet without this console, arguably the most successful console ever made, we would never see the PS3, 360's and Wii's that reside in our TV cabinets today.

It lasted something like 5 to 10 years, and it was originally expected to last 3. Now it resides in museums and $30 ebay sales, it's pitiful 1mhz processor unable to keep up with a wrist watch. But what those 14yo kids don't seem to realise is that the racing games are still the same - just prettier with motion sensitive controlers.

Here concludes the "Back In My Day..." tirade. I have officialy become an old man :p. Now, back to Halo 3!!!

Interactivity: Post your first gaming machine and favourite childhood game.