VIDEO GAMES

Prior to 1981, I had no clue what a video game was, my sister would stand for hours in front of those giant Pac Man Machines in front of TG&Y, K-Mart or Roses and I had no clue what the concept of those machines were other than they drew her undivided attention to them, leaving me to my own devices trying to get free horoscopes out of the horoscope dispenser or gum out of the candy machines.

We got our first taste of home video games at my sister's friend Laura Moon's house with her Atari 2600 and Space Invaders. A few months later, we woke up Christmas morning 1982 to find that Santa had left us an Atari 2600 under the tree.

The Atari went straight to my sister's room since my parents just weren't interested in watching us play video games all the time or to be more exact, watch my sister play video games after I loose interest after I lost all my men 3 minutes into playing. We didn't have many games to choose from, Pac-Man, Ms. Pac-Man, Asteroids and Space Invaders were pretty much our game collection at the time. Many years later, I got my Nintendo Entertainment System Complete with Super Mario Brothers and Castlevania.

Those were my all nighter games that I'd play until the system would throw up the screens of death that NES was so famous for.

Over the years, Terry had played PSOne & PS2 games like Silent Hill and Tomb Raider, those never really interested me. I'm a classic and board game freak. Give me a few minutes of Super Mario, Pole Position, Bubble Bobble, Uno, Wheel of Fortune and The Game of Life and I'm happy. We have a PSOne, PS2, GameCube with a Gameboy Player as well as my GBA SP and it seems that no matter how advanced systems get, I just can't abandon the classic concept. I've always found it a little odd though that the graphics on home video games are never the same as the arcade graphics no matter what system you're playing on. Even Ms. Pac-Man appeared slightly different. Since I'm not one to really care about covers, artwork or cases I found that gamestop and eb games has the perfect cheap selection for me...Disc only games for around $2.99. I've also found that eBay is great for cheap buys at a fraction of the cost of new selection. I've always been a huge pinball fan but unfortunately video pinball was never that great...Remember Pinball on Atari 2600?


It was a total different concept of pinball, not the smae at all. A few months ago, I discovered by accident Pinball Hall of Fame Gottleib Collection, I've never been a huge fan of Gottleib tables because their level of difficulty was not my thing, I like to refer to them as Take My Money Machines. After my Gottlieb purchase I found the super cool Pinball Hall of Fame Williams Collection...Now those are my tables...I was a huge fan of the Williams FIRE table back in my skating rink days, unfortunately it wasn't featured on the game but it has a few comperable tables as well as Pinbot. Pinbot was the table I used to play all night long on slow nights at the 9th Circle back when I was a hustler. The Williams Collection is like playing the real tables, aside from the limitations of the PS2 contoller the buttons aren't really in the best place but I found that I can compensate by holding the controller upside down so I can use my thumbs on the buttoms. Several people have referred me to PC emulators but unfortunatly I just can't get into PC games...I ususally feel like I have to be constuctive on some level while I'm in front of my PC...not that I was when I was obsessed with beating Terry on Cafe World and Farmville. So what's your favorite game?



My Idea of Heaven