Okay, so I guess I could be called a recreational gamer. I like playing video games, I’m not good at it, but I like it none the less.
I guess it all started back in the late 70′s. Like many other GenX’ers, I started out with Pong. It wasn’t really a great game, but it was the game. Pong opened the door to other video games to follow, it was my gateway-drug. Next came the ubiquitous Atari 2600 (which actually had Pong as well) and the plethora of games for it, all full of beeps and boops and bright colors. In hindsight, they really were not that good. Sure, Pole Position was alright, but for the most part the games tended to be pale imitations of their arcade counter-parts. One look at PacMan in the arcade versus the 2600 version is enough to point out the limitations of the format.
Ah yes, the arcades! Outside of the occasional driving game beside the crane-game in the foyer of the local grocery store, I don’t think my daughter has ever seen a real video arcade game. Growing up they were all over, inside the foyers of grocery and department stores. Every mall had at least one arcade (some had two!) with anywhere from 100 to 300 machines in them. The noise coming out of them was incredible, beeps, whistles, bells, laughter and cheering. It could be heard from several stores away most of the time. I miss the arcades.
But back to the home games. After the joys of the 2600 began to wear off, I progressed to the Ti-99/4a. It was a 16bit home computer that included a slot for game and application cartridges. I was never really into using it as a computer, it ran Ti’s version of BASIC and at that age (10-12 or so) I never wanted it to do anything more than play games. But it was another gateway of sorts, one that lead to the all-mighty Commodore 64. While at 8bits it could be seen as a step backwards from the Ti, it was leaps and bounds ahead of it in usability. It ran Commodore’s version of BASIC and included the ability to run other OS’s such as GEOS Desktop via the expansion cartridge port and the optional floppy drive. The Magic Desk program was actually my first office suite. It was actually a desk with a typewriter on it (word processor), a rolodex (phonebook) and even a filing cabinet beside the desk (for file storage). The C64 showed me how computers could be something more than just a slot to stick the game cartridge into.
Continued in Part II, the PC years…