Friday, June 17, 2005
Maybe I'm Behind the Times...
Since when is Atari not cool?
Last weekend, while at Target to get some supplies, I noticed they had these little Atari consoles on sale for $19.99. Cool, I thought. A little retro video chic for my media room. I was not disappointed. Twenty games like Centipede, Sky Diver, Yar's Revenge and some others (they are all basically the same, you move a digital square up, down or sideways trying to avoid some other digital square.). I remember my brothers and I playing these games for hours and hours back in the 80s. Last time I was back at my brothers house, we dusted off the old Atari 2600 to show my nephew (10). He was unimpressed.
"What's that" he said.
"That is supposed to be a Knight." I replied.
"But it's a yellow square."
"No, it's a knight, this game is called 'Adventure'....see there is a dragon."
"It looks like a duck. Can we hook the X-box back up please"
For the first time in my 35 years of existence, I felt like an adult. Nephew hooked up the X-box, booted up some star wars game (that looked better than the original movies did), put on his X-box live headset and started battling other kids from around the world. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to remember how to solve the mystery in Adventure.
The Fall of Atari
http://money.cnn.com/2005/06/16/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/index.htm?cnn=yes
Atari Adventure
http://www.simmphonic.com/programming/flash.htm
Last weekend, while at Target to get some supplies, I noticed they had these little Atari consoles on sale for $19.99. Cool, I thought. A little retro video chic for my media room. I was not disappointed. Twenty games like Centipede, Sky Diver, Yar's Revenge and some others (they are all basically the same, you move a digital square up, down or sideways trying to avoid some other digital square.). I remember my brothers and I playing these games for hours and hours back in the 80s. Last time I was back at my brothers house, we dusted off the old Atari 2600 to show my nephew (10). He was unimpressed.
"What's that" he said.
"That is supposed to be a Knight." I replied.
"But it's a yellow square."
"No, it's a knight, this game is called 'Adventure'....see there is a dragon."
"It looks like a duck. Can we hook the X-box back up please"
For the first time in my 35 years of existence, I felt like an adult. Nephew hooked up the X-box, booted up some star wars game (that looked better than the original movies did), put on his X-box live headset and started battling other kids from around the world. Meanwhile, I'm still trying to remember how to solve the mystery in Adventure.
The Fall of Atari
http://money.cnn.com/2005/06/16/commentary/game_over/column_gaming/index.htm?cnn=yes
Atari Adventure
http://www.simmphonic.com/programming/flash.htm
