33 years ago my cousin, who lived with us and was the eternal bachelor / electrical gadget guy, bought the Atari PONG home game console for our 1975 Christmas. I remember we hooked it up to the 3000 lb Magnavox super-wooden console (which harbored a record turntable, cassette deck and quad speakers). If Chris Matthews gets a tingle up his leg at the speeches of Obama, then what I felt was pure sex before I knew what the feeling was at age 11. We played that game for hours and, as men, knew our lives would never be the same again. Christmas 1975 turned out to be a banner season for Sears and PONG with customers lined up for new shipments of the game to arrive. The first consoles retailed at $100. We soon moved onto Mattel’s Intellivision in 1978, the Sinclair ZX81, Nintendo's NES, Super NES and N64 to satisfy our jones. Between 1996 and 2008 I did not buy video game consoles. I routinely played TETRIS on the NES system throughout my adult life as that is the true and love of my life video game. But this year my wife and I purchased the Xbox 360 with Rockband 2 for our family…….the feeling is the same, but the experience is a whole lot different. This year I will be jamming to Oasis and Journey and Boston and Van Halen as I pound massive guitar licks and watch my 5 year old beat the drums and my 7 year old weave the magic on the microphone like the Lizard King himself. Cool.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Having an Xbox Christmas w/ memories of Pong ones past
33 years ago my cousin, who lived with us and was the eternal bachelor / electrical gadget guy, bought the Atari PONG home game console for our 1975 Christmas. I remember we hooked it up to the 3000 lb Magnavox super-wooden console (which harbored a record turntable, cassette deck and quad speakers). If Chris Matthews gets a tingle up his leg at the speeches of Obama, then what I felt was pure sex before I knew what the feeling was at age 11. We played that game for hours and, as men, knew our lives would never be the same again. Christmas 1975 turned out to be a banner season for Sears and PONG with customers lined up for new shipments of the game to arrive. The first consoles retailed at $100. We soon moved onto Mattel’s Intellivision in 1978, the Sinclair ZX81, Nintendo's NES, Super NES and N64 to satisfy our jones. Between 1996 and 2008 I did not buy video game consoles. I routinely played TETRIS on the NES system throughout my adult life as that is the true and love of my life video game. But this year my wife and I purchased the Xbox 360 with Rockband 2 for our family…….the feeling is the same, but the experience is a whole lot different. This year I will be jamming to Oasis and Journey and Boston and Van Halen as I pound massive guitar licks and watch my 5 year old beat the drums and my 7 year old weave the magic on the microphone like the Lizard King himself. Cool.
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