When did you first become interested in Atari?

[potatohead]

1982 my uncle got a 400. I got a 600xl in 1984. Those were the best summers of my life.

 

 

No kidding. Back then it was possible to completely understand a computer. Well, a lot more completely than is generally possible today. Of all the Atari machines, I like the 400 for it's sleek lines and the 2600 because the original said Video Computer System on it. There was an air of professionalism and innovation to that name that really stuck in my mind.

 

Fast forward to today... I've still got the 400, looking to get a 2600 that says VCS on it and a 7800 + supercharger. For me the real interest was the technology vision --lots of interesting ways of doing things on the Atari --some of which are still relevant today. I guess that's not totally honest. I also loved --and still do love the hardware. Jay Miner had a special touch when it came to these things. The Atari video sub-systems (one could argue the 2600 is a video sub-system that just happens to play games!) are a wonderful melding of software and hardware. This has turned out to be distinctive as new display techniques have been innovated to this day. The smarter you are, the more the machine will do. Not many other systems are like that.

 

Those two attributes remain a core influence on how I view computing today. Having multiple platforms, each with strengths and weaknesses, serve to highlight the difference between what is computing and the actual computing platform used to compute! That may sound Zen, but it's as important of a realization as the difference between software and data, for example.

 

I'm glad I got to learn computing when I did. It's a wonderful time when one could go to the grocery store and purchase magazines filled with code, news, games and HACKING! Not only was hacking accepted, but encouraged! Getting more out of your hardware and making it do what you want were the issues of the day. Somehow in this bland, largely win32 and Mac world, we have lost some of that. (Well, unless you embrace the beast that is Linux!)

 

My old 400 and 7800 are connected to an SGI indy. I use the video in to display their displays in a little window, not unlike the one you get when you run an emulator. Puts things in perspective some times.

 

Somebody needs to make a $50 computer that connects to a TV that makes use of the amazing portable media we have today. Make it open, simple with a good CPU that is easily programmed in assembler. Mix in a Jay style video system with just enough limits to make creating displays and games the artform it is on the Atari machines.

 

(And it is art too. Look at the excellent homebrews seen here these days. Done for the fun of it, they all would be worth millions back in the day. We won't see the same for modern day machines because the simple joy of computing and the art of realizing immersion within sharp limits is not there on modern hardware.)

[Lauren Tyler]

Before I was born, my father worked late nights a lot of the time, and my mother would become very lonely at night. So for Christmas in 1978 or 1979 (or maybe even 1980, but I think one of the previous ones) he bought her a Sears Tele-Games System to keep her entertained. She loved playing it all night, and I remember her telling me the story about how one night she rolled the score at least once on Pac-Man, and my dad told me about how she left him a note about her achievement.

 

I started playing it little by little, but in 1986, I became addicted. I remember my mom bribing me to get my homework habits improved with a copy of Asteroids!

[jerry32]

The funniest thing is that,first of all ,I assume the ATARI VCS made its apprearance in 1978-79?,I never,and none of my friends knew about it until this kid at school told me about it in late 1980,I just cant figure out why I didnt hear about it till then!I didnt even see commercials till late 1980,AND I was a pretty "into it" kind of kid who knew ALOT about the entertainment industry,and no,I didnt live in TRANSYLVANIA or ROMANIA,or any other isolated country I was born in,and still live in Canada,so in other words,I should have heard about it long before 1980,THAT IS if I'm correct in my assumption the 2600 or vcs came out in 78or 79,anyboby know for sure?Thanx

 

 

it was 1977when the 2600 hit the scene

[Video]

It was a dark, cold, skanky night. A woman lets out a scream, and here I come, flying out my moms baby bladder with a 2600 controller in my hand....

 

LOL, Seriously now.

 

Atari is the first real console I remember playing. I fell in love with games on this thing. Atari has never really gone out of my life, I've always had a system of my own. My parrents largely looked down on the 'dinosaur' as not worth haveing. And while I loved playing some games on the C64, it really didn't have the characture for me that the 2600 had.

 

Nes came out, and a lot of my friends got one, and I got a huge collection of 2600 games at the time. It wasn't untill the 90's that I actually got a new system. But I still stuck with the 2600, cause hey, up till 91 or so, you could still get new games for it around here. Well, actually, around 93, but anyhow.

 

The 2600 slowly slid into the background for a few years, untill in the late 90's, I come across this thing called the Internet. Well, mid, but it wasn't till the late 90's that I tried looking for atari related stuff on there. And I come across this game called Edtris, a NEW atari game? Cool! (I still never located Edtris or Ed's Pit pitfall3, I don't know if either actually existed, but they definately got me looking) Then one day, I managed to find this place, that was early 2000, or 2001, Don't remember which, and That was when I really picked back up into Atari again.

 

Hey, how many other systems can say they get 10+ new games a year that are as old as the VCS?

 

It's simply been the most worthwhile system to have IMO, and has, and will probably always have a special place in my heart. I'll continue to get new games for years to come for the thing, and will probably always play it too. Hopefully my kids will find the joy I have in the system.

[2600lover]

Cool, cool!!!

[Dauber]

Well, I'm 31 years old right now, and if you do the calculations, you'll see that I was a pre-teen right around the height of Atarimania. I think my first-ever exposure might have been at my cousins' house -- they had a six-switcher, and the first game I remember playing was Space Invaders. Way cool, I thought. And then everybody at school was all "Do you have Atari?" and stuff, so of course I really, really wished I had one! And when Pac-Man came-out, wow...that was it for me. I was a major Pac-Man fan -- I invested a lot of my monthly one-dollar arcade allowance into the various Pac-Man games....Bally's Alladdin's Castle at Lincoln Mall in Matteson, IL had all the Pac-Man games, and I played all of 'em, except for Pac-Man And Chomp-Chomp, which I never played because I used up my allowance before I noticed it, and the next time I went there it was gone. I also never played Professor Pac-Man because, well, I felt it was a personal insult to me.

 

So of course when Pac-Man came out for the 2600, I was all hyper about it...my cousins pre-ordered it, and when they got it I was just praying we'd have some kind of family function over there. Or that there was SOME kind of function at SOMEONE's house where there was Atari and Pac-Man. When I finally saw the 2600 Pac-Man, I was taken WAY by surprise at how different it was from the arcade game, but I still loved it.

 

Christmas 1983...I remember I really wanted that Coleco table-top Pac-Man game....my brother and I opened up a present that was addressed to the both of us, and we nearly shat ourselves when we saw that it was an Atari 2600! (wood-grain four-switcher) It had both Combat and Pac-Man inside it. I seriously never thought I'd ever get one; I'd accepted that my parents wouldn't ever spend that kind of money on a video game system....but wow....my father later admitted that they were GOING to get me that Coleco Pac-Man thing, but they heard that it was extremely loud and annoying, so they thought they'd better fork over the money and get something better and less annoying! heh....

 

That's how it started for me. The weekend after Christmas that year we all went to K's Merchiandise Mart in the town where Inky currently lives. They were having a special on Atari carts, and my brother wanted to get some with Christmas money. There were some choices to make....Superman or Outlaw? (I opted for Outlaw, as I wasn't familiar with Superman and didn't want to learn a new game.) Missile Command or Defender? My brother wanted Missile Command, I wanted Defender. (I still say the 2600 version of Defender is great.) Unfortunately, he won out because Missile Command was cheaper. (I did eventually get Defender!) We also got Street Racer.

 

Shortly after Christmas the joystick port wore out from swapping the paddles and joystick so much, and we got a replacement, that is currently in Inky's possession. I fell out of it not long after 1987. Got a Commodore 64 in 1988, and basically computers turned me away from video game systems. My logic was this: why use video game systems when you have a computer? Computers have good games avaiable, and if I have the desire and skill, I can make my own! [Never did....I know C and C++, but I can't program a GUI!]

 

Shortly after I got married, I really wanted to play my Atari again. The only problem is that we only have one TV set, so the only times I could ever really play was when my wife wasn't home. (She would always ask, "So, are you gonna have a Dauber festival while I'm out?")

 

And as many of you probably know, I just got a promotion in my company that relocated me from New Jersey back home to Chicago, and unfortunately, my wife has to stay in New Jersey until the spring so she can finish work on her master's degree. However, during our separation, I've really been getting into Atari again. I've managed to acquire two heavy sixers (I only wanted ONE, but there was an eBay auction that I wanted only for the games and ended up getting a heavy sixer!) that I recently sold because I got a 2600jr that I love because of its small footprint and easy use of connecting splitters. (The heavy sixers' ports are too deep for splitters to stay plugged in.) I'm down to one machine, as I recently sold Inky my Christmas 1983 4-switcher...

 

But why Atari 2600? Well, because that's pretty much how it all started for me. I'd also love to get an Intellivision eventually, as my cousins ALSO had an Intellivision, and during my preteen years my best friend had one as well. So I played a lot of Intellivision games and really loved 'em. Since my cousins also had the Atari 2600, they left the Intellivision at my grandparents' house in Wisconsin so they could have something to do at family gatherings while adults were doing their thing...but my grandfather made them take it out of the house eventually. Surprisingly, my mother, as video-game-hating as she is, was kinda ticked off about that..."What the hell else are they supposed to do? There's nothing around here for kids to do, and in the winter it's too cold to go outside!"

Edited August 25, 2006 by Dauber

[2600lover]

Thats a cool story!!

[NE146]

I wasn't into Atari.. I was into VIDEO GAMES. Well Space Invaders more like it. Circa 1977 on up.

 

Got a home console with a Space Invaders eventually. And of course that was Sears/Atari

[AtariLover!]

I got interested in atari back in 2005? Maybe... My family had 3 or 4 atari consoles but since my father is an ATARI CONSOLE THROWING OUT MANIAC, we only had 2 at the time. So, I decided to "revive" our atari 2600 console. The only problem was that we didn't have the little box that hooks up to your tv and to your atari and your antenna, or the power supply, and I couldn't figure out what kind of plug was the power plug . So, I gave up. But one day, it hit me like a ton of bricks, the plug was an earphone-jack-like plug. So, I got an adapter that the cord was cut up on, plugged it into an earphone jack plug that was also cut up, and plugged into the atari 2600, but I didn't know if it was working or not, so I took the male rca jack on the back of the atari (it is on a cord), and plugged it into a female jack with a bared wire sticking out of the end, and plugged it into the twin antenna plug (Yes, its an old tv!) of my old Sony trinitron KV-1952rs, and it worked, (with the exception of some vhf interference). But unfortunately, this didn't last long, for the adapters that i used to power the ATARI 2600 kept shorting out. I think our old ataris had a short. eventually my DAD, the, well you know, threw the ataris out. But the good news is that I discovered ATARI 2600 EMULATORS, and since then, I've been enjoying atari via my computer!

Edited August 26, 2006 by AtariLover!

[2600lover]

Yeah thats what I do with games I dont have. I play them on the emu and then decide if I want to buy them or not!

[Atari2600Lives]

I can not remember the first time I saw an Atari2600 but I sure remmber getitng a hold of a catalog and just dreaming about it for months until my birthday came. After playing combat my very first purchase was Adventure. what great memories.....

[2600lover]

Yeah, thats what I do a lot. Just look at the photos in the catalogs and dream about it. lol

[BLarry71]

the first time I heard of the 2600 was seeing a commercial for it on tv that showed the Space invaders game. I stopped by an electronics store after work a few days later and got a system and a couple games. the tv has been replaced a couple times since but the Atari still works!

[Lord Thag]

When my cousin got one for xmas. Next year, Thrifty had a fire sale and I got a Vader with 15 games. That was one hell of a Christmas! I also used to drool over the catalogs fo hours as a kid, wishing I could play all those games. Which probably has something to do with why I have an entire room full of 'em these days....

[2600lover]

Sorry guys, Ive been working on my forum, but yeah, cool stories, keep um comin!!

[Vic George 2K3]

Why Atari? Because of the arcade games that were available for it at the time -- Space Invaders, Missile Command, and Asteroids being the big ones -- before third-party companies and their games started to spring up like crazy. The Intellivision had Space Armada (a Space Invaders clone), Astrosmash (a mindless shoot-em-up done better as Astroblast for the 2600), and Space Battle (obviously inspired by Battlestar Galactica, which was like TV's version of Star Wars back in the day), but I really didn't care for having a system whose parent company's main focus was more on sports games than on arcade-action games.

[rubixcube]

the verry first time i played atari was when i was about 3-4 years old. and i still remember it. i dont remember all the games but i think i had othello and defender.

 

great topic btw

[KevinZ]

I first started getting into Atari when I got my Jaguar at KB Toys for $30 in 1998. I later picked up a 2600 and a box of Intellivision games for $4 at a yard sale. Then I went to the local Savers and got a couple games they had there. I remember I couldn't play it because I had no joysticks or power supply. I finally found a joystick at Savers and a power supply that had the original headphone jack plug-in missing. So me and my friend used solder and managed to hardwire it internally.

 

Then I got some more 2600s with power supplies and eventually got rid of them all when I got a boxed light 6-switch model with joysticks and hookups AND original box for FREE at a yard sale. Now, I;m trying to get all the Atari 2600s again because at one point, I had every version they made.

 

Kevin

[supercat]

I had an Odyssey2 growing up that my uncle received as a consolation prize on a television game show. At the time, I judged it to be between the Atari 2600 and Intellivision in terms of quality. It couldn't do nice background graphics like the Intellivision, but it could show lots of stuff on screen without flicker. I had six carts for the Odyssey: the pack-in (okay for awhile, but meh), Alien Invaders Plus! (meh), UFO! (awesome!), Armor Encounter/Sub Chase! (meh), K.C. Munchkin! (blows Pac Man out of the water!), and Quest for the Rings (meh). One summer I borrowed a friend's 2600 and got to play a variety of games including Grand Prix (cool), Haunted House (decent), Freeway (meh), and some others. I couldn't believe what sort of special circuitry they could cram in to get some of those graphics.

 

AFter that, though, I never got really interested in the 2600 until I read some stuff in 1993 on rec.games.video.classic about how it worked. Thought it sounded interesting, so I bought a 2600jr and a few games for $10 from a co-worker. I ripped open the Froggo "Karate" cart, hacked out the chip, and installed a ZIF socket. Then tried my hand at programming. I got a color bar program to work, but after a few days of not getting the logo for my planned game to work, I decided I wasn't going to get anywhere burning EPROMs at the office after work and then taking them home. A few months later, I got a 7800 and Harry Dodgson's monitor cart. With that, I had a bit more luck and in 1994 managed a game kernel for what would later become Strat-O-Gems. I didn't figure out how to use the RIOT timer, though, so I couldn't figure any way to manage workable play mechanics.

 

In 2005, I found AtariAge. That helped fill in the gaps of my knowledge and complete my game.

[marakatti]

My first experience was 1990 when i worked hard in my summertime job to buy Atari 520STfm and a CM8833. It was around ten years later i discovered 2600 and 8-bit computers. Now i have almost all Cart or Disk-based Atari-models you could buy from shops which i enjoy a lot. Only missing 5200 which is very rare in Finland. I only saw it once a few years ago in our e-bay style auction website huuto.net but without controllers:(

[Shawn]

1983

[bretthorror]

For me, I always wanted to try every system, and I tried the Atari when I was really young, around 4 or 5, but didn't like it. Stampede was the game and the graphics weren't up to NES standards. Or, maybe I didn't like the fact that there weren't really levels on Atari games.

 

Then about 5 years ago, I bought a plug n play, thinking they'd be NES games or something, but they turned out to be Atari. I ended up really liking them. I then bought the Activision and Atari Anthologies. Then I bought a 2600 (should have got a 7800) for third party titles that won't be released in compilations. And here I am.

[Dusk2600]

yestorday 6:53 PM

[PSP-Maniac]

i got my 7800 in 1997 from my uncle and the i played it foer about a year and then hid it away and the in 2003 i found it again and played alot and i searched the internet for some info and found this forum i looked alot in the forum but never became member before 2006.

 

btw I LOVE ATARI!!!!

[tcv]

I don't remember how I _first_ became aware of them. I do remember playing Combat with my father around the time the system was released. I don't recall, however, whether this was the Sears system or the original Atari.