Digging up a 12 year old post! Well done!
Well.....
I grew up with an mostly unenploid singel mother and an older and younger brother, videogames and technical new inovations wasen´t something i was use to playing with.
I´m born 76 so i´m really to young to have been part of of the first video-game era.
But luckely my older brothers friend allways had the latest technical stuff (video-games, comoputers etc.). His familly was well of and he gave me his VCS i guess around 84-85, when he coulden´t bother whith that old crap anymore.
That made me cool in school for about a second, until kids around started to get the absolutelly amazing c-64.
I played my atari to bits all the way untill around 90-91 (my woodgrain died in 88 and i then got a JR.) when finally bought a c-64. Then the cool thing was the amiga.
I think i now collect what was i considered luxury to me back then: Videogames (not only atari) and VHS tapes (my mother got a VCR as late as 2006) .
When it come´s to the case of the VCS i guess it´s beocuse i was teased alot about having "some old shit console" in my childhood, and the fact that what ever they said i absolutely loved it. Especially the later games like californaiagames and tom-cat.
I got a lot of love for the 2600!
Cheers.