Memory Museum: Jonah’s Atari 2600

A featured series on LadiesGamers.com: Memory Museum. Our earliest gaming memories to the backdrop of what was happening in our personal life. Plus, what was happening in the gaming world back then!

It’s the year 1982 in video gaming.In Japan, Koei releases The Dragon and Princess, the earliest known Japanese RPG. The first Star Wars video game is released: The Empire Strikes Back on the Atari 2600. Lots of new gaming titles in what was to be the last year before the industry took a serious blow. 

In Wales, little Jonah is first gets to know the new gaming console in the Davies household

Enter: the Atari 2600

My earliest gaming memories go right back to the early 1980s. In those days, the home console of choice for both family and friends was the Atari 2600. I have such fond memories of playing a selection of titles, even those which are often ridiculed in the gaming press.

The Console and Controller

My family owned the 1st iteration of the console. It had a wooden form factor, some switches on both the top and back, as well as two joystick ports. Some friends owned the 2nd iteration which was much sleeker but lacked the charm of the original model (at least I thought so).

The Atari joystick had an interesting design. It was a nice size, but it was so hard to control. The stick itself was solid, and stiff, so much so that it makes some of today’s worst modern control devices feel revolutionary. Complaints such as button depth or directional clicks meant nothing back then. We merely played with what we had, and that was that. O yes, there was one button, which was used (depending on the game) to fire weapons and such. The jump command was usually assigned to the up direction on the stick itself.

Games

I had the pleasure of playing a whole range of Atari 2600 games. Two titles, in particular, stand out due to their infamous reputation. The first game of note is Pac-Man. Due to being young at the time, I had no issues with the game because it was the only version I knew. According to Wikipedia and other sources, Pac-Man was a four-month rush job. It was slow, looked terrible, suffered from terrible flickering glitches, but I enjoyed it.

Of course, years later I would be introduced to better versions, and then the arcade version, but I still have fond memories of the 2600 version.

The second infamous game I played was E.T. The game itself was terrible, but I didn’t care. I didn’t know what to do apart from avoid huge gaping holes and collect telephone parts, for E.T to phone home.

I played other games too like Pitfall, Space Invaders, Enduro, Centipede etc. To this day, Pitfall for the 2600 remains my favourite version, and Enduro remains a great game. Enduro is a racing title that requires you to reach a checkpoint within a certain time limit while having to avoid other race cars. It even featured weather, light and road condition changes! Pitfall pitted you against a dangerous jungle filled with crocodiles, vines, logs, scorpions and other dangers.

I didn’t particularly enjoy Space Invaders because I enjoyed the likes of Galaxian and Centipede far more. I much preferred arcade shooters in which enemies sped at you from the top of the screen.

It was the Atari that first introduced me to Mario Bros, but I couldn’t get to grips with the controls. Sadly, the game itself controls badly, so even today I consider it to be possibly the worst version I’ve played.

Other top games include maze shoot-em-ups like Berserk and multiplayer games such as Combat.

Game Rentals

How did I manage to play so many games? Well, a few doors from our house was a store that purchased and rented out Atari games. My Dad would often rent video games, and most of the time, we were happy to return titles after a day or two. We did own favourite titles such as Enduro and enjoyed playing a mixture of other games at a friends house too.

Great memories! 😊