Mcorleonep

My first experience with Atari is always going to my friend's down the street. He got his Atari 2600 in 1978 just after they came out. We had some JC Penny Pong knockoff device at the time. I was amazed by the color graphics and the variety of games he had. Two years later on my birthday, my mom brings home an Atari system of our own along with Space Invaders. Of course it wasn't that new to me anymore since I'd been playing it every other day or so down the street but it was still great to have in our home...

My first car, I had to share with my older sister. It didn't work out so well. It was a 76 Olds Delta 88. I don't have a pic of it but mine (ours) was white. I fit eleven people in that car one time during high school. I loved that car. It hardly failed to start up during those frigid Chicago winters. I wouldn't mind driving one today if it weren't for the horrendous gas mileage...

I spent a lot of time at Lincoln Mall during the 70's & 80's as I grew up in the south 'burbs' of Chicago. I remember the arcade 'LeMan's Speedway' with a bumper car track (later became Aladdin's Castle with just more added space for video games). That was my go-to place for gaming in my youth. Sad to see they tore that mall down like many others around the country.

I remember playing this at a friends (still had an NES then). I thought it wasn't a bad game, just not very good pack-in game. It was pretty short and even then I thought it odd that Sega would have a game with such a morbid theme as a pack-in.

Probably the best thing to do without hunting for a pre-order is to go to a 24 hour Walmart at midnight on 9/28-29. That's how I got my Switch and those are still hard to find to this day...

That would have been the equivalent of Zayre (or Woolco) where I grew up in the Chicago area. I miss those old stores....

With E3 going on now this week, now would be the perfect time to spill the beans.

This is the only flashback console I own. I came across it at the Family Dollar on sale. It definitely has issues and the emulation isn't all that great especially on the Heist; one of my favorite Colecovision games from back in the day. I was also sad that there was no, Burgertime, Ladybug or Mouse Trap all great CV games. Bar none, my favorite on here is Frenzy, a superior follow-up to Berzerk which was unavailable on any other consoles back in the 80's (or the present for that matter).

How about management? Bushnell had a vision for Atari's future but after he sold Atari, he disagreed with those corporate tools from Time Warner who ultimately ran the company into the ground. Quality suffered which in part led to the crash and Atari never recovered it's former position in the industry. Remember that Apple had a similar history in the late 80s when Jobs was fired but they bounced back after he was rehired...

I remember the day my neighbor down the street picked up Earthworld and claimed he was going to win the Talisman or whatever the prize was for that game. He, his brother & I spent hours trying to figure it out. That turned out to be the most ambiguous game I had ever played and we just about gave up about a week later. The Nerd (AVGN) did a retrospective on this series some years back which sheds some light on what became of those prizes. Some likely don't even exist.

I only played the 2600 cart but would love to try out the Intellivision version.

Too bad about Tempest. Fortunately I have Jeff Minter's TxK game on the Vita. Disappointing they had to block it for other platforms because of lawsuits as it really is a great game. I would like to see reboots of Demon Attack and HERO by Activision.

I grew up with the Mattel Electronics handhelds (football, baseball) etc., before Atari. I had an imported Nintendo Donkey Kong game&watch about a year before they were sold stateside. After that I didn't bother much with handhelds until Gameboy.