Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Nonsuch · Mar 12, 2003, 03:24 PM

Browsing the wonderful Intellivision Lives site gets me mindful of the first Golden Age of the home game console. Some of us were Intellivision households, others Atari, and a few pioneering souls even played the Odyssey. Whatever your platform, those games showed such ingenuity and soul, despite (or because of) the blocky graphics and lousy sound. Seems incredible that at one time people actually wrote games that fit into 4K, or that a single CD-ROM today could hold more than 150,000 (theoretical) Intellivision games.

Anyway, what system(s) did you have? If you had nmore than one, which did you prefer? What games were your favorite? Me, I lost an awful lot of hours to Dungeons & Dragons, Baseball, and Astrosmash. It did kinda suck that the sports games required two players, but they were so good that someone always wanted to play.

starman · Mar 12, 2003, 03:28 PM

Atari ruled.

Mike

scaught · Mar 12, 2003, 03:37 PM

we had an atari 2600. one of the original wood panel 6 switch models. man. i thought it was the best thing ever. combat, asteroids and space invaders were the first games we had on that christmas morning in 79 (i think?). later the imagic games (demon attack, riddle of the sphinx) kicked my ass. ooh, "adventure" which is possibly the first graphic RPG. 2600 rules.

my friend had an intellivision and we played quite a bit of the "ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS CLOUDY MOUNTAIN Cartridge". as well as tron deadly discs, and B-17 bomber with intellivoice. ooh. bomb squad was rad as hell too. hated the controller. worst ever. an interesting thing though i just thought of, is somehow none of the games relied on the "push a button as fast as you can" style of gameplay as it would have been rather impossible given the type of buttons on that controller. people designed the games pretty well around that damned thing.

those classic games, to me, still hold up quite well. a good game has nothing to do with graphics or storyline. it only has to do with how well the game plays. this is what makes me mad about people who call gamecube "sissy" or "kiddy". back in the classic console games, you were a little dot chasing other little dots and the game was still fun. i guess those people are more concerned with what other people think of them rather than having fun.

starman, yr new sig ownz. pitfall, right?

euphras · Mar 12, 2003, 03:41 PM

you forgot to mention Commodore C64 (or is it covered under "computers"?). Was a helluva machine

keekeeree · Mar 12, 2003, 04:05 PM

Intellivision ruled! Atari was for the masses who didn't know any better

Man...the time I spent on that machine...some of the games I wasted a chunk of my youth on?

NFL Football and NBA Basketball. The Intellivision's control pad took these video games up a notch.

Astrosmash and Star Strike are a couple more. And I learned how to play backgammon on my Intellivision.

starman · Mar 12, 2003, 06:57 PM

Ya, Pitfall, and the font is the Atari 2600 packaging font (atari-age.com).

Intellivision was good, but the controller was pathetic. Nobody really reminices about that silly keypad.

My FIRST system was a Coleco Telstar. Anyone remember THAT?

Mike

boardsurfer · Mar 12, 2003, 07:11 PM

I had an intellivision with the voice module. I was in kindegarten in 1981. I had only a few games including bomb squad and some "defender" type game. Maybe two others. My cousin had the Atari 2600 and later the C64.

OMG!! how could I forget, I also had a game called BurgerTime. I absolutely rocked at this game.

This is a pic of the insert you put over the controler.

and a screen shot:

Stogieman · Mar 12, 2003, 08:03 PM

Why isn't the CollecoVision listed in your poll? That was the first game console I purchased. The controler that came with the system sucked but it had great games. Donkey Kong, Q-bert & Time Pilot were my top 3 games for that system.

Face Ache · Mar 12, 2003, 09:09 PM

I never had any of the early systems.

I do have a 1977 cocktail cabinet though.

Currently Time Pilot, but originally it was Space Invaders II.

They don't make games like they used to.

MindFad · Mar 12, 2003, 09:21 PM

My friend and I used to rock out the Atari all day. The first system I ever owned as a kid, though, was the NES, when I was five.

Some great NES memories:

Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, start, baby!

jckalen · Mar 12, 2003, 09:47 PM

I thought it was up down up down left right left right B A B A start.

I was a true junkie - started with an Oddyssy 2000 (pong, tennis, jai alai), followed with the Atari 2600, Intellivision, Colecovision, Atari 800, Sega master system, genesis (even the CD add-on), 8 bit nintendo, snes, n64 and sadly, a phillips CDi. Not to mention an original B&W macintosh, a IIsi and 2 imacs with a 17"PB pending.
Boy, would I love to have all of that money back I spent on cartridges and consoles - especially since I could probably emulate them all for free now. Who knew?

OwlBoy · Mar 12, 2003, 09:48 PM

MindFad · Mar 12, 2003, 09:51 PM

Originally posted by jckalen:
I thought it was up down up down left right left right B A B A start.

Nope. That might be another one, though. Weren't there a few of them, or no? I can't remember. The one I put, though, is definitely the Contra Konami one.

(Tested it to be sure.)

jckalen · Mar 12, 2003, 10:00 PM

That's sooo cool! However, he did too good of a job - I almost miss the screen flicker.

scaught · Mar 12, 2003, 10:19 PM

Originally posted by OwlBoy:

best ever.

starman · Mar 12, 2003, 11:19 PM

http://www.game-skins.com/products.php

You'll thank me

Mike

keekeeree · Mar 13, 2003, 01:49 AM

Originally posted by MindFad:
My friend and I used to rock out the Atari all day. The first system I ever owned as a kid, though, was the NES, when I was five.

Some great NES memories:

Oh man...I can remember countless hours parked in front of my NES playin' this

I always got a kick out of the end sequence once you "won"...sort of bitter-sweet success cause you know poor ol' Megaman, after making the long trek home (and ditching his helmet) will have to fight again.