Flashback To My Teens - ATARI Wars

When I was in junior high school, the first personal gaming system came out and we wanted one! 
 
Before that time, the only type of gaming system was a hand held football game and the little red lines would move and blink on the hand-held game. 

We were SO excited when we got an Atari gaming system for Christmas! We would all line up for games but our favorite was asteroids and breakout. 

Centipede was fun along with Missile Command and I don't remember that we owned some of the other games but think we would trade out our games for friends games so we could have a new challenge. 

We would spend hours working on the "High Score" and I remember the day that I got to 99 free lives on Asteroids. I think it wouldn't let me get 100 but got stuck on 99 free games but I just remember having 100 free lives thinking I was so cool to be able to get so many extra lives.  

Imagine my nostalgia when I found this little plug and play game at a second hand store for $4 that had all the Atari games in one small plug in game! I couldn't believe my luck. I figured Princess Five and I could have a fun few hours playing all the games I spent hours playing as a teen. 

Of course we played all the games I had and remembered first and then went into the games that weren't as fun and some I don't remember playing at all. 

I laughed out loud when we played this precursor to Zelda castle and dragon - get a key to get into the castle quest game. Look how silly the graphics on this dragon are.... I really did laugh out loud.  
 
When we were playing missile command, I reminded her of the episode in "Chuck" where he had to play missile command to save the world. 
 
Since this game only had a joystick and not the paddle, it was a bit harder to play but I reminded her that on the arcade game, the controller is a rolling ball on missile command and she seemed to think the game was a bit cooler that it was featured on "Chuck" since it is one of our favorite series. Here is a link to that spot on the show. 

 
She was dressed down into her sweats and didn't want me taking pictures of her for the blog being dressed down so I have a picture of her back but she actually did play each of the games with me.

I was a bit surprised to see colors in asteroid as I remembered the game we had was in black and white but maybe I remembered wrong but it was kind of fun to see it in color and perhaps the color version is a newer one than we had. 

We had a fun time and it was good for me to relax with Princess Five doing something that I used to enjoy. 

I told her how funny it is when we look back on life and have such great memories of shows or games and then when we play or watch them years later, they seem so silly and non-exciting because things have changed so much in my lifetime. I don't know that I will play it ever again but it is kinda fun for the kids to see what I had compared to what they have now.