My First 3 Video Game Experiences

👾 Retro Story: What was gaming like in the late seventies and early eighties? Did we have fun with those awful black-and-white graphics?

Do you remember the first time you played a video game? Was it at a friend's house? Or maybe even in the arcades?

Well, I do remember! It was sometime in the late seventies, probably 1977 or 1978. We visited my mother's friend and went to see the movie "Jungle Book” with their two boys. It was a small and sort of filthy movie theatre. However, something special happened afterward, which made me forget that lousy theatre in an instant:

1. Atari Pong Home Console | Not Owned

The original Atari Pong home console (C-100). It was released in the U.S. through Sears in 1975

When we returned to their house, they showed us an intriguing device hooked up to their TV set. We started playing: a game called Pong. Unfortunately, I can't recall the console itself, but I am pretty sure now that it was the Atari Pong home console (model C-100).

I loved this new experience. It was so different from playing with Legos or action figures. Big Jim from Mattel, anyone?

Okay, back to Pong! While we had a blast, I wasn’t really good at it, because it it was the first time in my life I played a video game.

Before releasing the home console, Atari developed and distributed the Pong arcade machine. Just recently, I found some fascinating facts about it:

3 Fascinating Facts:

1. Developed as a Training Exercise: Pong was initially created by Atari co-founder Allan Alcorn as a training exercise. He designed the game to learn video game development, not knowing it would become a massive hit.

2. Expensive Yet Popular: Playing a game of Pong cost 25 cents, which was relatively expensive at the time. For a quarter, a player could get three full games on a pinball machine, but Pong's unique gameplay drew people in despite the higher cost.

3. Defect: The very first Pong test machine at a local bar encountered a surprising defect. It stopped working, leaving everyone puzzled. Upon inspection, they discovered the unexpected cause: the machine was overflowing with quarters. It was just too popular!

A friend of mine recently told me that he still has an original Atari Pong console from the 1970s. I asked him if I could film him trying to hook it up to an old CRT. I will definitely do this and make a separate newsletter about it.

2. Atari VCS 2600 | Not Owned

In 1982, I sometimes had the opportunity to play with the Atari VCS 2600 at a classmate's house. It was such an exciting experience:

• Games had impressive graphics for its time, and they were in color!

• Playing real Arcade games like Pac-Man or Donkey Kong at home was fantastic!

• The swappable game cartridges were so cool!

I was somehow jealous because I didn't have one myself, as it was too expensive here in Germany at the time. Or maybe I wasn't allowed to have one. Well, it kind of comes down to the same thing, doesn’t it?

Is anyone here who does NOT remember the Pac-Man sound?

I remember a small photography store near our house that I could walk to in 10 minutes. The store owner also sold other electronics, and he had a VCS 2600 in the shop window. Almost every evening, I went there and stared through the window, wishing I could buy one.

‘Poor little Michael!’

The Atari VCS 2600 was a big hit in the gaming world in the early eighties, even in Germany. Playing different games on the same system via the swappable cartridges was huge at the time.

AI created: I couldn’t find a photo of a department store with Atari consoles from the 1980s. It's not 100%, but it does capture the vibe.

The only other way for me to play on an Atari console at that time was in department stores. They put a couple of televisions on shelves with the consoles connected to them. We often spent whole afternoons playing there. You always had to look up, and sometimes, playing made your neck a little stiff.

Did you know? The Fairchild Channel F was actually the first console to use cartridges, paving the way for systems like the Atari VCS. Later, Atari themselves faced competition from other companies like Mattel, which released the Intellivision, and the ColecoVision from Coleco. I remember when the ColecoVision was released, it had much better graphics than the VCS 2600. However, it wasn’t as nearly successful as the Atari console. 

The Atari console was the closest thing many of us had to an arcade experience without spending hoards of coins.

River Raid by Activision. Founded in 1979, they continue to publish video games as of today.

Playing those games on the Atari VCS in the early eighties was a magical experience. I remember the excitement of bringing the arcade into a home. Games like "Space Invaders" and "Pac-Man" were exactly like the ones we played at the arcade.

The graphics are horrible by today's standards, but they were incredible for that time.

I spent countless hours at my friend’s house playing "Pitfall!" and "River Raid," admiring the detailed environments and fast-paced action. It wasn't just about playing games; it was about experiencing a new world of entertainment at home.

These were the 10 top-selling VCS games:

• Pac-Man [Atari, Inc.], Release: March 16, 1982, Sales: 8,095,586

• Space Invaders [Atari, Inc.], Release: March 1980, Sales: 6,252,229

• Donkey Kong [Coleco], Release: July 1982, Sales: 4,180,523

• Pitfall! [Activision], Release: April 20, 1982, Sales: 4,000,000

• Frogger [Parker Brothers], Release: August 1982, Sales: 4,000,000

• Asteroids [Atari, Inc.], Release: July 1981, Sales: 3,832,886

• Defender [Atari, Inc.], Release: 1982, Sales: 3,040,684

• E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial [Atari, Inc.], Release: December 1982, Sales: 2,740,232

• Ms. Pac-Man [Atari, Inc.], Release: February 1983, Sales: 2,311,428

• Demon Attack [Imagic], Release: March 1982, Sales: 2,000,000

3. Sinclair ZX81 | Owned

Finally, I had my own first ‘gaming system’ I could play with at home! It was a Sinclair ZX81. If I remember correctly, we bought it in 1982.

It was not a gaming console and nowhere near as good for gaming as the Atari VCS. However, it was a real home computer, which I mainly used to play games. It also had BASIC (the programming language) commands printed on the keyboard.

For loading and saving games you had to connect the ZX81 to a standard cassette recorder like this:

Almost any cassette tape worked to save and load games.

Memory: Initially, we had the standard version with 1 kilobyte of memory, but then we quickly bought the 16-kilobyte expansion, which was a tremendous amount of memory back then. Our first thought was: “We are never going to use 16 KB!”

The technical specs:

• Processor: Zilog Z80A CPU at 3.25 MHz

• Memory: 1 KB RAM (expandable to 16 KB)

• Display:

  • Output: Monochrome (black and white)

  • Resolution: 64 x 48 pixels (graphics mode), 32 x 24 characters (text mode)

• Keyboard: Membrane keyboard with 40 keys

• Video Output: RF modulated output for connection to TV

• Storage: External cassette tape recorder

• Programming Language: Built-in Sinclair BASIC

• Size: Compact and lightweight design, making it portable for its time

The Sinclair ZX81 was a simple yet powerful computer for its time. It was known for being affordable, which made it accessible to many people. This little machine could do a lot, even with its limited memory and monochrome graphics with a super low resolution (64x48 pixels!).

ZX81 Games

Having the ZX81 at home was incredibly exciting for me. Despite its basic black-and-white graphics, it opened up a whole new world of possibilities. The fact that we owned a computer felt futuristic and empowering. Only one other guy in my class had a computer.

Playing games on the ZX81 was a different kind of fun compared to the Atari VCS. While the graphics were simpler, the challenge and creativity of some games made them captivating.

I will never forget the breathtaking 3D Monster Maze, which was somehow the first survival horror game that probably existed on a home computer.

The game managed to really ratchet up the tension as you tried to escape from the Tyrannosaurus, with the status line on the screen telling you how close the Tyrannosaurus was. A bit like Doom did over ten years later, the tension while you waited for the monster to appear made the game.

3D Monster Maze was groundbreaking for a machine like the ZX81

Additionally, my brother and I spent hours typing in complete games that were printed in magazines. The thrill of seeing those commands come to life on the screen was unmatched.

Cheap games: Does anyone remember the computer magazines in the 1980s? They often had pages of code to type into your home computer (ZX81, ZX Spectrum, Commodore C64, etc.), and you could actually create a game that way. It was often about 5 or even 10 pages of code, and more than once, the code contained errors that were only corrected a month later in the next issue. So exciting and frustrating at the same time.

This is the best list of ZX81 I found: Games Database

In one of my next newsletters/posts, I will share my experience with

• the ZX Spectrum

• the Commodore 64

• the Commodore Amiga

Please keep in mind that I also write about ‘modern gaming systems’ in case you are not a retro fan, especially about playing with the Steam Deck.

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Have fun,

Michael from Video Game Stories