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Did John Lennon Ever Play Atari?


gracias

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i think John Lennon played Pong and i would'nt doubt he had an Atari also cos when you think about it Atari 2600 was expensive in the late 70's. I kinda remember reading an interview with him from the late 70's and he said he was interested in computers.

 

actually John Lennon was supposed to be in the movie War Games according to this:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames

 

 

 

"Development

 

Development on WarGames began in 1979, when writers Walter F. Parkes and Lawrence Lasker developed an idea for a script called The Genius, about "a dying scientist and the only person in the world who understands him — a rebellious kid who's too smart for his own good." Lasker was inspired by a television special presented by Peter Ustinov on several geniuses including Stephen Hawking. Lasker said "I found the predicament Hawking was in fascinating — that he might one day figure out the unified field theory and not be able to tell anyone, because of his progressive ALS. So there was this idea that he'd need a successor. And who would that be? Maybe this kid, a juvenile delinquent whose problem was that nobody realized he was too smart for his environment." The concept of computers and hacking was not yet present.[1]

 

The Genius began its transformation into WarGames when Parkes and Lasker met Peter Schwartz from the Stanford Research Institute. "There was a new subculture of extremely bright kids developing into what would become known as hackers," said Schwartz. Schwartz made the connection between youth, computers, gaming, and the military. Parkes and Lasker came up with several different military-themed plotlines prior to the final story. One version of the script had an early version of WOPR. Named Uncle Ollie, or OLI (Omnipresent Laser Interceptor), it was a space-based defensive laser run by an intelligent program. The idea was discarded in preference of WOPR because it was too speculative.[1]

 

David Lightman was modeled on David Scott Lewis, a hacking enthusiast Parkes and Lasker met.[1][2] Falken was inspired by Steven Hawking with the appearance of John Lennon, who was interested in the role. "

 

 

That's proof that John Lennon was into video games! ;)

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Yoko recently said that John would most likely have been a major Internet geek, which kinda leads me to believe he probably at least played SOME sort of video game, whether it was the 2600 or something else, at some point in my life. They were starting to gain ubiquity near the end of his life, after all, so it was basically a rite of passage to play a video game. Hell, even my video game-hating parents were known to play a game of Pac-Man once in a while.

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  • 9 years later...

Sure did. He wrote his song "Mind Games" about the MindLink Controller.

 

"So keep on playing those mind games together
Faith in the future, out of the now
You just can't beat on those mind guerillas
Absolute elsewhere, in the stones of your mind
Yeah, we're playing those mind games forever
Projecting our images in space and in time"

 

 

Those mind gorillas get me every time...

 

 

Edited by Andrew Davie
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10 minutes ago, Andrew Davie said:

Those mind gorillas get me every time...

Chanting, the mandrill: “peas on erf”.

 

Obviously that photo was in the early/mid 80s. Sean wasn’t born until late 1975. I have a hard time believing he’d have been playing any video game systems before he was 5.

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4 minutes ago, jgkspsx said:

Chanting, the mandrill: “peas on erf”.

Either that's a brilliant play on "mantra", associating it with an ape (hence: gorilla)... or you need to fix your autocorrect ;)

Here's a mandrill chanting, and it doesn't look that peaceful to me!image.thumb.png.5da61b07ac3244669a42ec949957a90b.png

 

Edited by Andrew Davie
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  • 2 years later...

For sure he had an Atari 2600/VCS. He was very much in "electronic stuff", was a TV-addicted ("My electronic fire place") and had Sean, his little son. There is a picture of him wearing a space invaders tee in 1979 (you can even buy a replica of this Tee). 

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On 3/28/2021 at 4:07 PM, Andrew Davie said:

Sure did. He wrote his song "Mind Games" about the MindLink Controller.

 

"So keep on playing those mind games together
Faith in the future, out of the now
You just can't beat on those mind guerillas
Absolute elsewhere, in the stones of your mind
Yeah, we're playing those mind games forever
Projecting our images in space and in time"

 

 

Those mind gorillas get me every time...

 

 

I sure love the song! If it is about Atari 2600 it would make puzzle complete

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