What year did you get your 2600 for Christmas, and what games do you get with it?

[+GoldLeader]

Christmas?  Nope!   I think I bought mine in August...Of 1980.   Age 12;  I was saving allowance money and doing lots of odd jobs for neighbors, and mowing lawns etc,  I worked my ass off for my 2600 (Atari Light Sixer)...I had $80 saved up when they went on sale at Grand Central, a store about 4 blocks from my house.  I saw in the newspaper,  they were $129.99 instead of $149.99.  I asked my mom if she could loan me the rest, and I really tried not to get my hopes up, because I thought she'd say no, but she didn't! ?

 

So I got Combat.  Later, on Halloween, my older sister sent me Space War.  She said it was a "Halloween gift".  My sister's the coolest!  Then for Christmas 1980 she gave me 5 more Atari games!  They were Space Invaders, Surround, Slot Machine, Air-Sea Battle, and Flag Capture.

 

 

[adamchevy]

I got one for myself in 2013, and I purchased another one this year for Christmas to have RGB modded. Their are so many nice Sears Tele games consoles for sale these days! For some reason I have felt like Atari for Christmas since I discovered Atariage in 2013.

 

 

[Kirkland]

Ahh.. one of my favorite Christmas stories.  As told by my mother...  to my new wife when I was 20 (in 1994).

Summer 1983- I was nine, and I was the video game king of the area.  I shoveled my allowance into the local arcade.  I was a sucker for the likes of Donkey Kong Jr., Roc n Rope, Time Pilot, Sinistar, Mario Bros., Excitebike, Defender, and Mr. Do.  I begged and pleaded for an Atari for my birthday (mid-June) and begged and pleaded more.  Growing up on a farm, we didn't have fancy pants electronics and were used to doing without the finer things, but I argued an investment in this would save money in the long run.  In the end, I was denied.  It was unfair to spend $300 on a system for just me with my older sister's birthday a few months away and she would merit $300 then and it was just far too much money.

As Christmas approached, a few boxes of a familiar shape arrived under the tree.  Some for me, some for my mother, a couple for dad, and a few for my sister.  Odd.. that we would get similar sized gifts.

And as Christmas arrived, Santa dropped a big ass box in the middle of the living room.

I tore into my presents- Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Missile Command, and E.T.; Mom opened Sky Diver and Indy 500; my sister had Super Breakout and Slot Racers; Dad had Raiders of the Lost Ark, Berzerk, and Yar's Revenge.  (I might be off a game or two, but these are the boxes I still have in the basement).  And from Santa: a beautiful Sears Video Arcade System II.

Holy shitballs!!!@#!

So my dad, a 45 year old farmer, spent time going through the manuals and fiddling with the TV until we got things hooked up.  I played all morning until mid-afternoon.  It was *glorious*.

Then my dad, who scowled at my foolish game playing, asked if he could try playing a few.  I walked him through the controls, pointed out stuff in the manuals, put it on kiddie mode ("I think I can play as an adult"), and he proceeded to DESTROY ME IN EVERY GAME.

WTF!@#$  I AM THE GAMESMASTER!

And this guy who drives a tractor ran loops around me (full disclosure: he was in the Army for 4 years when he was 18, and flew a Cessna plane).  It took until the following summer to get to his level.  And by then we had Warlords, Canyon Bomber, Star Raiders, Superman, Outlaw, and later the Swordquest games and Asteroids.  The video game crash of '83 blessed our local Alco store with loads of cheap family entertainment.

.......

So then my mom continues on- "...and do you remember when you came home from school early once that September and I met you at the door and shooed you back outside?  That's because your Dad was busy yanking the Atari out of the living room and jamming it under our bed.  You see, we DID get you that Atari for your birthday, but Dad didn't want to look like a hick farmer to his son, so he hooked it up and tried out one of the games.  And from June 1st until December 24th, when he wasn't out working in the fields or with the livestock, he was glued to the TV playing video games the moment you kids left for school.  We started out with just Pac Man and Space Invaders, but once they started getting cheap at True Value and Alco, your Dad was all 'one more won't hurt'."

I was stunned.  And to this day, my old man was awesome.

 

[+sramirez2008]

16 minutes ago, Kirkland said:

And to this day, my old man was awesome.

This story is awesome.  Thanks for sharing.

[+cvga]

1 hour ago, sramirez2008 said:

This story is awesome.  Thanks for sharing.

Agreed. Awesome story!

[zzip]

Christmas 82.   Got a 4-switch with woodgrain.   It was the first four-switch model I had ever seen,  all my friends had six-switch models, and I had a slight inferiority complex about mine only having four, lol!

I got ET and of course Combat.   I can't remember if I got any other cartridges for Christmas that year, but I got more soon after.

[keithbk]

I'm not entirely certain; I didn't get one of the original Sunnyvale models, but a later 6-switcher; probably around 1979.

 

I know that the same year I got the Empire Strikes Back giant Kenner AT-AT, I also got the Atari "Adventure" game (I have a photo), so I already had my 2600 by that point.

 

Most of my games came from K's Merchandise Mart in Danville, Illinois.

 

Because of my obsession with Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica, most of my games were space-related. I loved Fantasy as well, so I remember Adventure being the game I most loved as a kid. I also picked up several of the movie tie-ins that came out, so I had Raiders of the Lost Ark, Empire Strikes Back, Adventures of Tron, and later E-T.

 

I was an only child, so I gravitated toward single-player games. I think the games I played most were Star Voyager, Starmaster, Space Attack, a bit of Star Raiders (sorry, just wasn't in to multiple controllers), Missile Command, Space Invaders, Tac-Scan, Phoenix, Demon Attack, Cosmic Ark, Atlantis, Defender, Asteroids, Astroblast, Vanguard, and probably a handful of others. I know I had Space Shuttle and really appreciated it, but rarely played it.

 

I played Frogs and Flies with my mom and that was one of her favorites.

 

I remember a friend of mine across the street brought over games like Pitfall!, Barnstorming, River Raid, Trick Shot, etc. I think out of all of them at the time, I only bought my own copy of River Raid. I picked up the others later in garage sales or thrift stores.

 

 

[+-^CrossBow^-]

Got my 4-switch woody in Christmas '82. It came with Combat of course. But I also got Space Invaders and Defender that same Christmas. Since many of my friends in my neighborhood also had the 2600, We didn't really buy anymore games for ours for well over a year since I could just borrow games from my friends. I think the first real game I purchased with my own allowance money for it was Ms. Pac-Man in '84 I think? 

[Torr]

I got a Junior model for Xmas of '86. I was 5 years old.

No pack in games, but I also got Asteroids, Frogger, Defender, Missile Command, Pac-Man, and Yar's Revenge.

Then not long after (couple months at most) I got Star Raiders.

throughout '87-'88 a lot of my friends and family were getting Nintendos so I received quite a few hand-me-downs.

Air-Sea Battle, Combat, Donkey Kong, Dragster, E.T., Freeway, Ice Hockey, Joust, Phoenix, Raiders of the Lost Ark, RealSports Football, Skiing, Sky Jinks, StarMaster, Star Wars: Jedi Arena (Even though I had no paddles and never did until around 2010!), Super Challenge Baseball, Swordquest: Earthworld, and Word Zapper

I would only get two more games "new", Q-Bert for my birthday in '89 and then Defender II for Xmas of '89.

Then the summer of 1990 my uncle gave me his old Sega Master System.

I've always been a bit behind in video gaming!

[BassGuitari]

Early December, 1999. Bought it from another kid that I had been IMing with on AOL (I can't recall how we "met," and we lost touch not too long after, but I still remember his name and that he lived in Salt Lake City, but I digress). 4-switch woodgrain, with two joysticks but no games. And I had to source a power supply from Radio Shack.

 

I still remember how excited I was to see that UPS box on our porch when I got home from school that day. I don't know if I've ever felt that same kind of excitement since, honestly. Consequence of getting older and more experienced and knowledgeable, I suppose.

 

So I had the console and a couple of joysticks, but nothing else. But a kid in my boy scout troop had a handful of games and some paddles squirreled away in a closet at his house somewhere, and he brought them over when we had a troop meeting at our house. He was one of the few kids my age (14) who didn't find my fascination with obsolete game systems unreasonably bizarre. The games were: Combat, Pac-Man, Breakout, Super Breakout, Warlords, Space Invaders (red label!), Chopper Command, M*A*S*H, and--I think; my memory's starting to get a little fuzzy--Donkey Kong.

 

What I remember clearly, though, was that the Atari was a hit with the troop that night! Which is saying something since we're talking about a gaggle of 12-14 year olds in the midst of cutting their teeth on Super Mario 64 and Metal Gear Solid.