03 October 2006

buying back a slice of my childhood

as previously mentioned, one of my finds at the kane county fairgrounds this past weekend was a big box o' atari. actually, it's an atari knockoff made by sears, called tele-games. still plays atari games, which is all that matters. i took it home, beaming.

then, not owning a tv from 1978, i couldn't figure out how to hook it up. that's where the internets come in handy. i looked up how to hook one of these bad boys up to a modern coax tv, ran out to radioshack, and voilĂ ...



if you'll excuse me, i think i hear some blocky, tinny-sounding blackjack calling my name.

13 comments:

smussyolay said...

i'm jealous. we hated the fact that we had generic 'odyssey' instead of atari, but i'd be lovin' some of that shit now.

i never thought about not being able to hook it up to modern tv.

what other games did you get?

geekgrrl said...

when we saw it came with a bunch of games, the first thing we asked was, 'is 'haunted house' in there??' it was not. :( but i did come away with blackjack, space invaders, target fun, pacman, jungle hunt (a pitfall ripoff) and a bunch of others i haven't gone thru yet. i'd love to pick up HH at some point.. scared the crap out of me as a kid.

smussyolay said...

i heart pitfall.

geekgrrl said...

i never got thru the fuckin' thing. i don't even think i realized the entire point.. didn't play it that far.

geekgrrl said...

i just scoped an old haunted house screenshot.. those blank, square eyes STILL scare the bejeezus out of me. i'm 27, this should not be happening. wtf.

Anonymous said...

Atari games are just a few bucks on ebay. :)

I liked pitfall, space invaders, missile command, and defender. I bet there were others I just don't remember. Was frogger on the 2600?

I don't think I ever finished pitfall. I wonder what happens at the end. Tell me if you find out. ;)

Anonymous said...

Umm... I think you've misspelt 'smartypants' in your ABOUT section. A typo, I'm sure, but the irony is just too mordant to not correct it.

smussyolay said...

misspelled, you mean, right? :)

Anonymous said...

And come to think of it, I do remember reading your ad on CL, which went a lot like your profile writeup on your blog (some of the word play stayed in my mind, I guess) but why I did not reply then to it beats me.

Anonymous said...

Nope, I had meant misspelt, which is an alternate way to spell mispelled.

geekgrrl said...

eh.. chalk it up to creative license. :d 'smartypants' does look better, though.

Anonymous said...

there IS no end to Pitfall. at least, that was always my understanding. though I did discover that you could start out going to the left, instead of going to the right. man I loved that game.

Tankboy said...

Awesome.

Sort of makes me want to dig out my ol' Atari 2600 or mail my grandfater asking him to send up his original Pong console.

The one system I never haad that I really wanted though?


Colecovision.