View from a 5-year-old

[e1will]

My 5-year-old boy recently asked me to hook up the Atari so he could play some games on it. It's got a Harmony cart with a mixture of homebrew and old-school games on it. He likes his dad's game the best (I'm sure he's biased) but he also loves playing Berzerk, Jammed, Adventure, Juno First, and Stay Frosty, roughly in that order.

 

He made me promise to say "thank you" to the authors of those games for making such cool games, so here's a public "thank you" to Thomas, Chris, and Darrell, at least, for adding some fun to my little boy's life.

Edited October 26, 2018 by e1will

[InactiveX]

Warms the cockles of my heart.

[Video]

Awesome. At that age they can understand and play games, but have often not yet formed opinions and bias against little things like graphics. Hopefully it'll continue as they get older.

[+SpiceWare]

Tell him "you're welcome!"

[NostAlgae37]

I can't wait for him to try out Chaotic Grill when it's finished, splendidnut is working really hard to make it extra-special for old and new BurgerTime fans (and I helped, too).

[CaptainBreakout]

I love that you are bringing your offspring into the fold. Now only is it great father son bonding, it plants a deep love and appreciation for this material. Way to go!

[masschamber]

What little kid likes atari, you must have stuck rose tinted googles on him as there is no other way people can like classic games, the video game journalists that don't play video games told me so!

 

but in all seriousness unbiased little kids always love classic games, my daughter likes messing around with anything where she can see changes on the screen when she pushes buttons (she is 2), my friend's kids love the good atari, odyssey 2, and cassette vision games (these are the consoles they've played with a lot) in fact the board game/ video game hybrids on the Odyssey 2 are really popular with them.

[Lynxpro]

That's awesome. My son is 6 and he loves Adventure, Outlaw, and Warlords. So does my 7 year old daughter. They've primarily played those games via my Flashback 2 and also the Atari collections on my Xbox One. They also play modern games on their iPads and their cousins' Nintendo Switches so it's not like I've only exposed them to retro gaming...

[JBerel]

What little kid likes atari?

 

I'm guessing the ones that don't constantly have mom and dad stick an IPhone in their hands to keep them quiet or occupied.

[Pink]

I may not be a "little kid" but I feel like a kid compared to a lot of the people here in that I am only 26 years old.

 

2007 I think it was (I would of been 15), Target had Atari Flashback 2's in their black friday ad for $17. I wanted to go to Target on Black Friday of all days just to get an Atari Flashback 2 of all things. I didn't care about anything Wii related, or Xbox 360 or PS3 or any of that. All I wanted was that Atari Flashback 2. They were regularly $29.99 but I was like 15 years old and had no money, no job, and this is probably the only chance where my mom was willing to buy me one and my only chance to get one. My dad had an Atari 2600 (The 2600 jr) and I always wanted my very own Atari and they weren't willing to get a used one for me from eBay or anywhere else online or try to track one down at a pawn shop or used game shop or anything.

 

I showed up at Target with my mom and dad before they opened and waited outside in line before the store opened at 6am (back when Black Friday was on a Friday and stores opened at like 5 or 6 am Friday morning rather then Thanksgiving evening) and they had none anywhere. My mom asked an employee, someone on the walkie responded eventually and said "Back aisle of toys" right where we were standing, by the other plug and play electronic games and what not. None were there. Not even an empty spot on the shelf for them.

 

Took a very long time, I want to say close to an hour. I stood there as a teenager in electronics and waited that long while numerous employees were searching the "back" and eventually ended up coming out with like 3 or so brown cardboard boxes eventually that said something like "Atari Inc. Contents Atari Flashback 2" on them or something similar, and my eyes glowed up like you wouldn't believe. The electronics employee, who was an older gentleman, kept telling me he was very sorry during the whole time I was waiting and I was just like "suuuure" or "ok" He opened the box and took out a flashback 2 and handed it to me immediately and didn't want me to wait any longer and told me one last time he is terrible sorry for the long wait. I don't recall saying thank you or anything (I was an immature teenager at the time and unfortunately quite pissed off) Fortunately my mom was standing by me and thanked the employee and was very appreciative to him. I was so excited to finally have my very own Atari!

 

I worked at Walmart for almost 6 full years from 2012-2018 and looking back as an adult, knowing what retail employees go through not just on a day to day basis, but especially Black Friday of all days, and also know what it's like trying to look for something in a back room that is probably jam packed full of pallets and random carts of boxes scattered everywhere, I am very appreciate of everything those employees did and I feel guilty for not saying think you. Wish I could go back in time and thank them.

Edited October 31, 2018 by Pink

[KevKelley]

My 5 year old comes over whenever I am trying to program my game so he will test it out and he finds it fun. While it is still early and really just consists of grabbing a shopping cart before it hits the "car" he had found it exciting while I would see some little things here and there. For the original he started to live my favorites like Joust, Dig Dug, or Atlantis but he loves many of the shooters and maze games. It is awesome to see his interest and reminds me of when I used to play it in the basement when I was little.