The Mutant Pulpit
Where we sound off on anything...
By John Kenneth Muir
If I think too much about it, I realize that the entiriety of my adulthood has simply been an often-blatant attempt to re-capture the glories of my childhood. In my writing career, I've written books about my favorite TV shows as a kid: Space: 1999, Battlestar Galactica, and my favorite movies (those of John Carpenter, Wes Craven and Tobe Hooper). My home office (where I create all my work...) is a testament to this quest too, a huge collection of toys from every sci-fi/outer space franchise from Star Trek to the latest Star Wars.
But now, at long last - in June 2005 - the circle is truly complete. There has been something that I've wanted to own. No, that I've needed to own, to complete my determined journey back to 10-year-old land. No, it's not the third season of Land of the Lost on DVD. I got that last month. No, I'm talking about...the Atari 2600.
I was one of the first kids on my block to get an Atari 2600 as a Christmas present in - if I remember correctly - 1978. I didn't even know what it was when I unwrapped the large, rectangle-shaped box. But I knew soon. My parents popped a little square box (a program cartridge) called SPACE INVADERS into the console slot, and my life has never been the same. God, I loved the Atari 2600 game system, (or rather "video computer system,") and Space Invaders was my favorite game. I remember that I also got MISSILE COMMAND and COMBAT that year, and loved all the games. The following Christmas it was ASTEROIDS, and on it went.
The sturdy and dependable Atari 2600 provided me hours of fun with games like Activision's KABOOM and one of my other faves, WARLORDS, but by 1982 or so, things started to change and the luster wore off. My family bought an Atari 400 computer, and it came with word-processing capabilities, a disc drive for more advanced game play, and its own set of game cartridges, like (STAR RAIDERS). These formative years for me saw the beginning of a long list of video game/computer systems I've owned over my lifetime (Atari 800, a Compaq Presario, A Delll). Today, I own a Nintendo GameCube and just finished playing RESIDENT EVIL IV, a truly amazing and immersive video game with breathtaking graphics. But the point is, I suppose, that along the way - through middle school, high school and college -- I don't even know what ultimately became of my old friend, my Atari 2600. I guess it was sold (along with the games...) at a yard sale. It was outdated, it was behind-the-times, and I let it go without even a casual thought...
Yet the memory of the fun hours (in my basement...) racking up high scores on SPACE INVADERS has been with my for more than twenty years now. It has something I have thought more and more about in my adulthood, as I contemplate having children of my own. The simplicity of those 2600 games, the agony of Atari's thumb, the sheer joy in the repetition of those basic adventures. It was just a fantastic game system, and a great toy for a kid.
Anyway, I realized recently that I wanted my Atari 2600 back. Or any Atari 2600. I just had to have one, and I knew from my excursions on the Web that they are out there. There are always a few selling on E-Bay. But I could never take the jump. What if I bought a lemon? What if the power pack didn't work? Or the joysticks? Or the games? It seemed like a big gamble to get one online, sight unseen. Then, on the weekend of my tenth wedding anniversary, I mentioned in passing to my parents - crazed flea marketers and yard sale-ers - that I wanted an Atari.
A week later, my parents sprung a surprise. We had just seen Revenge of the Sith together (thus ending another one of my long-time compulsions...) and my wife and I took them out to dinner. They told me around dessert and coffee that they had bought me an Atari. At long last, I had one again. In the box. They paid eight dollars for a game system with box, power pack, two paddle controllers, two joysticks, and five games (in their boxes): Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Frogger, Combat and Super-Break Out. Holy Crap!
I just hooked up my Atari 2600 this week, and I'm happy to report that all my dreams have come true. The games are as simple - and elegant - as I remember them, and the game play is searingly addictive. SPACE INVADERS is every bit as fun (and compelling) as I recall, and I have the feeling it will consume me in no time. Must... get...high score. I remember when I was a kid, my Dad would play the game with me and he would say that I "would fly like a butterfly and sting like a bee." Yes, I was a maestro of SPACE INVADERS and hope to reclaim the title.
I wrote in my blog recently that I felt "nostalgia was the most useless of emotions." I still do. But goddamn it feels fantastic to blast Space Invaders again, almost thirty years later.
And the old Atari Thumb feels great!
Copyright The Lulu Show, LLC 2005