After my brother enjoyed punishing me for a year or so on the Hanimex game console, We noted new, better, color games appearing. These units were at the local milk-bar. The first table I recall was Space Invaders. It was 20c to play, and you got 3 “lifes”.
httpv://youtu.be/28lv3K0pje0It was a gigantic leap forward from the pinball machines we were playing previously. There was also another game table out at that time, some yellow thing called PacMan that ate stuff. It was not anywhere as near as cool as shooting aliens though!
httpv://youtu.be/DHaQ3XSyaXk
The fire in me was well and truly lit. I was hooked. Video games were the greatest things in the world to me. In 1978 I heard about a new game console called Atari.
I started seeing them in the mail out catalogs from K-Mart. The games looked great! The first time I saw one in the flesh was my cousin….again. We played “Combat”. We each had a tank, and the object of the game was to shoot each other, which I thought was awesome. Because I had never played one before, and he owned the unit, he too took great enjoyment at thrashing me. I didn’t mind though. This was the coolest thing I had ever seen. Because it was hooked up to their color TV, this one really was in color.
httpv://youtu.be/4Ri37_KhsRw
This was the beginning of the golden age of video games for me, and the beginning of a very long and enjoyable relationship with the Atari 2600.