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.
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.
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