XMas gamer part one / Orig posted 12/13/04

I wasn't sure how to start this. When you think about it, Christmas creates an avalanche of memories about so many different moments in a persons life. Some good. Some bad. An engagement announcement. A loved one's death. Family dinners. Shaking presents.
Wrapping presents (ugh). Travel crowds. Shopping crowds. Reliving old stories-where you don't come off so well-again and again. The smell of the tree. The needles they shed (do they breed after they fall off?). Discussing religion. Having egg nog with rum. Arguing about religion. Vacation from school. A Christmas Story. Waking up at 5:00 am on Christmas morning because you're to juiced up to sleep. Running downstairs (I didn't really have a down stairs. It just paints a better picture than 'running down the short L-shaped hallway) looking down upon the overflowing (again, painting)
presents under the tree. Playing basketball with your dad using wadded up wrapping and a paper bag. But as a kid, there was always one thing on your mind. The perfect toy. Which is where our story begins....

he year is 1976. The Bicentenial is almost over.
Kiss is huge and I am a ten year old preteen growing up in Los Angeles.
A ten year who loves the arcade. Pinball? Ok. Air Hockey? Alright. Pong?
What do you think? I played this as much as a child could, pushing
the patience button of my parents all the while. "We have to go now. C'mon Mom! One more game!
No....NOW!" I think my favorite arcade experience was when I was walking out of my local arcade. I had spent the measly $1.50. on pinball, Night Driver and Pong. (That's only one play on some games today - sigh) As I shuffled past the pinball machines-all blinking and beeping-with my head down I spotted it. Wedged underneath a leg of one of the machines was a twenty dollar bill. Bitchin' (it is '76 y'know) I said under my breath. I look around, see nothing suspicious, and slowly bend down to pick it up. That day I played games for about an hour, bought about a dozen corn dogs and almost got up the nerve to go into the head shop next door. All in all, a good day. This really has nothing to do with Christmas. I just like that story. Now where was I......Oh yes. With Christmas just around the corner I was pumping my parents for information regarding what my gift and/or gifts could possibly be. Tight lipped and slightly annoyed at the constant barrage of questions, (and suggestions) my mom shot down every angle I tried. I just had to wait. When Christmas day finally came, I could not control myself. Ripping open box after box in search of the elusive perfect toy. Payday. I'll play it later. Hot Wheels. Not right now. And so it went. (One thing to know. Every year my dad would play the ol' "Why don't you check around the couch. Make sure nothing got pushed back there" trick. He used to hide all the eggs in the same spots every Easter too. He kills me.) So I pull out the box from behind the couch and go to town on it. As shreds of paper waft down onto the carpet I see it. It's what I've been waiting for. Sears Tele-Games Super Pong IV it reads. A moment passes...nothing heard but my own heartbeat rapidly increasing with every breath. Seriously.......really.......no painting at all. Ok, a little. A few hours and two familiy arguments later S U P E R!..super P O N G!...pong F O U R!...four....is ready to go. With four paddles the entire family can play, and we do. For a while everyone is having fun. 4-play tennis goes over very well. As does two player basketball. Then one by one there's only me. Twisting the paddle back and forth, all the while learning how to angle the "ball" a certain way. Honing my "skillz" if you will. I don't know it then but from that moment forward a video game system was always present in my home.

hristmas the next few years was all about the Blip. That little red line that adorned just about every handheld game at the time. I remember playing just about all of them. Mattel Football, Basketball, Hockey, Soccer, Baseball, Football II (with passing), Battlestar Galactica (aka Missile Attack), Merlin, Coleco's Head to Head Series, Simon, Microvision (this one was strange), Digital Derby and many many others. Laying on the grass in my backyard scoring touchdown after touchdown. Until the sun shone down through the branches completely obliterating my little dash-ing quarterback. These games were very tough too. Dropped, thrown and sat on, they still came on bright as day when asked. I remember playing with a low battery would sometimes create some interesting visual and audio glitches. My friends and I would treat these games like trading cards. On the bus. In the car. In school. Everywhere. The arcade scene was starting to spread as well.Space Invaders hit the scene, but I never played it as much as I did Asteroids. I remember it was at Shakey's Pizza with some friends I first learned the 'leave one small slow rock on the screen' trick. At the movie theater we played the Atari football trackball game while waiting to see Superman The Movie. Those battles were always heated and intense due to the frantic rolling of the trackball. Inevitably someone always got pinched. From 1978 to around 1990 arcade companies somehow managed to keep me coming back to play games despite what was to come next for me. By August of 1979 I had moved to Northen California and I hadn't touched my SuperPong IV in over a year.

ittle did I know that Christmas of '79 was to be my last real one as a kid. Because after that...well...mom got sick and died during the holidays a few years later. That forever altered my perceptions of every Christmas that followed. So many things change so fast you hardly have time to see them as they're happening. But for the moment I'm still a somewhat introverted but happy-go-lucky kid. Now. I already knew the Atari 2600 (as well as many, many knockoffs. Hmmm......foreshadowing?) had been out for a while, but moving costs among other things kept me from obtaining....the perfect toy. But this was the year, I felt it. Only two things could ruin this Christmas. No Atari and my sister's boyfriend. (Give me a break...I'm a kid. It's not like my problems are that deep) He was the biggest buttmunch on the earth. But I swore to myself this is the day I obtain......the perfect toy. I guess you know what came next? "Hey buddy...check behind the bookcase for anything else." Is that a choir I hear singing just for me alone? I can almost make it out......Aaaahhhhhhhtaaaaarrrrriiiii. After 30 minutes and only one family argument, we fire it up. Oh joy. It's all it could be and more. Tanks, planes, curving bullets, invisible bullets, dragons, racing, sports, missles, bats, alligators, gold, bombs, some guy named Yar and a little alien everyone would like to forget.

I even played some games against the 'boyfriend'. Perfecting my joystick ablilities with every mashing of the button. Thinking back, the Atari was birth to many of my gaming firsts. The first time I ever openly swore in front of my parents just happened to be while I was playing Pitfall. The first time I threw a joystick in frustration. The first trash-talking of a friend. Christmas and gaming were slowly merging into one. So for me, one always meant the other. All was well in the gaming world. By 1983 arcades were my bread and butter. A few more systems came out too. Vetrex, Colecovision, Atari 5200 and a few others. Computers had the releases of the Apple III and Commodore 64. My parents were not the type to shell out for every new system that came out, so the early computer age I only chanced a few glimpses into that world through the eyes of other neighborhood kids. But the arcades is where I mostly dwelled. Did anyone ever see that movie Brainstorm, and the part where Christopher Walken is watching Louise Fletcher's pre-recorded heart attack and subsequent death, and all the images and feelings come surging back transformed into a giant wave of emotion? It's a tad like that. The early to late 80's were the heyday for arcade games, but if I continue on this path, this will turn into a blog about arcade games. I only emphasize this point because in the mid-80's the bottom fell out of the home gaming industry in America. The arcades were my crutch. Now, I hadn't obtained a new home system since my 2600, by then untouched for two years. What was I going to do for home gaming? Enter 1986. The rebuilding year.

hen Christmas of 1986 arrived, many things had changed. My mother had died. My father had re-married. My sister divorced.
I realized that Christmas and gaming were never going to be as they once were. Already gone was the traditional new system under the tree. If that was to continue for me, it would have to be by me, and me alone. Gone was the family argument while trying to hook up said system. It was becoming a pastime. Something to look back on with reverence. It was hard to let it go. Then it all changed in December of '86. What was once thought of as a childhood hobby started to take on a life of it's own. Thus began my new transformation from player to gamer. I was growing up, but so was gaming. Next Part II