Two Dots and a Dash

Two dots and a dash were all we needed for entertainment during the Christmas of 1975.

My friend Tom Casey’s family had invested in a home version of the arcade game Pong and it was a big hit. Being the oldest brother, Tom had wrestled it away from his 7 siblings so we could get our first taste of home video games.

Watching my son play FIFA Soccer on a high definition television last night, I was reminded of that Christmas afternoon. The Casey kids and a few stragglers like me were sitting in front of that black and white television watching a dash chase two dots up and down the screen.

Pong actually wasn’t the first video game but it was the first game to be adapted for home use. Alan Alcorn, an engineer for Atari Incorporated, created the game in 1972 based on an electronic ping pong game included with the Magnavox Odyssey system.

Pong was first rolled out as an arcade game and later marketed in 1975 as Home Pong. The game was sold exclusively by Sears because no other merchandiser felt it had a future.

The future arrived in 1977 when the Atari 2600 game system was introduced. That was followed by the Odyssey 2 in 1978 and Mattel’s Intellivision system in 1980.

By 1980 I was a college graduate and married. I had written video games off as children’s toys and we didn’t have enough money for such luxuries anyway. That Christmas, we visited some old friends who had just bought Intellivision for themselves. They even owned a color television set!

They were hooked on Intellivision and had already built up quite a collection of games. We played football and baseball, raced horses and leapt over alligator infested ponds that night.

By today’s standards, the 8-bit graphics would be laughable but all we had for comparison was Pong.

It wasn’t long before we saved up and bought our own Intellivision. We bought the sports titles along with silly games like Frogger, Pitfall, Worm Whomper and Donkey Kong.

Our favorite though was a simple game called BurgerTime. The concept was simple enough. Chef Peter Pepper had to build a hamburger without being harmed by Mr. Hot Dog, Mr. Pickle and Mr. Egg.

In the days before children or pets, we found ourselves consumed with BurgerTime. It bordered on an obsession for both of us as we beat the game and played on and on.

BurgerTime was such a hit that its developers created versions for competing game systems like Atari and ColecoVision as well as video arcades.

We both eventually tired of the game and bought a fifty pound, top loading video recorder in its place. Today we could buy a rack of VCR’s for the price of that first one but it was quite a luxury in 1981.

Daydreaming about the old Intellivision system this past week led me to Ebay where all nostalgia lives on. Apparently an entire game system with a few odd games is running about $50. I could even pick up a stack of games for only $12.99 if I bid within the hour.

The prospect of repurchasing classics such as Frog Bog, Sea Battle and yes – BurgerTime tempted me. Then I walked into the game room and heard the roar of that high definition virtual soccer crowd and I forget all about Intellivision again.

I do wonder what Burgertime would look like in high definition though.

Front Yard Sports Comlex

As I was mowing the grass last week I concluded that either my yard is shrinking or my trees are growing. I know because I spend much more time ducking branches and circling trees than I used to.

There was a time when mowing wasn’t necessary. The grass was trampled by endless games of soccer and football and baseball on the fields of the Carroll Multisports Complex.

As the head groundskeeper at the complex, I was able to quickly convert the playing surface from a soccer stadium to a Frisbee golf course in just minutes. Trim a few branches and we were ready for football or wiffle ball depending upon the season.

The Carroll Multisports Complex included a little less than Olympic-size pool for swimming competitions and of course pool basketball. Unfortunately the pool consumed our backyard so other field sports were moved out front.

Using the trees as imaginary defenders or mid fielders, we were able to simulate Super Bowls and World Cups right in my front yard. The crowds were much smaller but the parking was free.

Adapting sports to the landscape is nothing new for kids. Baseball fields have been cut into corn fields and shaped around abandoned city lots. Soccer is played by kids around the world in just about any space and surface that can hold a ball – if there is a ball at all. Regardless of the location, the rules are basically the same with a few considerations for local hazards.

I learned to catch a baseball and dodge cars the same year. We had no yard so we played catch in the city street outside our house. The stream of moving cars was only one of many challenges. Parked cars could be just as dangerous and so could their owners if balls landed on them. Sewers and fenced yards simply increased the odds that an extra game ball might be needed.

In the days before PlayStation, we spent almost all of our outdoor time playing sports. In the fall we played touch football in the street. On short winter days we even played “under the lights” although the best passes often flew over the lights and reappeared halfway down the street.

Basketball season was re-enacted on my friend’s driveway with clotheslines and curbs officially out of bounds.

Once the baseball season rolled around, we alternated between playing running bases in the street and stickball in the schoolyard down the block.

No matter what sport, the distance between two telephone poles was just about the right distance. A “football field” would extend the length of three telephone polls and manhole covers made great home plates in baseball. Trees or cars served as first and third base while second base was anything that wouldn’t blow away.

The Carroll Multisports Complex saw a lot of action in its early years. There was ASA soccer practice and that game where dad throws the ball at his kid’s baseball glove in the hope that it gets stuck there. We graduated to running football passing routes during halftime of Notre Dame games and later created a very tight Frisbee golf course.

These days the sports complex lies silent like Texas Stadium. My kids are more likely to drive 35 miles to Arlington than they are to play ball in our front yard. I’m not complaining though. At least the grass is growing again.