Experience Points Level 1 – I Discover Video Games

Experience Points – Memories of a Lifelong Gamer is a series of blog posts that I’ve undertaken to record some of my fondest memories of nearly 40 years of gaming.

The Golden Age of Arcades

As hard as I may try, I just cannot remember the first video game I ever played. All I can say was that it was definitely an arcade game, and most likely in the concession area of a Hill’s Department Store, sometime in 1982, give or take a year or so.

On the radio you could hear the new hits “I Love Rock N’ Roll” by Joan Jett, “Rosanna” by Toto, and “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” by Pat Benetar. Dallas, Three’s Company, M*A*S*H* and The A-Team were the hot TV shows. Return of the Jedi was one year away and E.T. The Extra Terrestrial was the most popular movie. And the domestication of the dog continued unabated (bonus points if you get that reference).

Hill’s, Big Bear, K-Mart and other department stores often had concession areas at the front of the store where they sold popcorn, nachos, hot dogs, soda pop, Slush Puppies, soft pretzels and Orange Julius among other things. In fact, it had a distinct smell. If you experienced this, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m sure these still exist here and there, but closest thing I know of is the area at the front of Sam’s Club stores. But I digress. It was really common for these areas to feature a few arcade cabinets. I think Hill’s had between 4-6 cabinets at the height of the Golden Age of Arcade Games.

And man did I love those nachos.

Sometimes my mom would go into Hills for a quick pickup and my dad, sister and I would wait in the concession area. While we waited, I’d ask my dad for a quarter or two to put in whichever arcade game looked most interesting. I’m guessing this was the sort of circumstance in which I played my first video game. Though I must admit, it is quite possible that the first time I ever “played” a video game, I was simply fiddling with the controls during the demo sequence. I was pretty young after all.

I’m still not sure what the game was, but I can say that it was most probably Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Asteroids or Pole Position. I do distinctly remember Pac-Man and Pole Position being at the Hill’s store. I’m also pretty sure I would have been about 4 years old, probably barely reached the controls, died very quickly and wanted another quarter… which I probably didn’t get, once my dad saw how quickly the first one was used. Remember, in these days, arcade games were designed to extract as many quarters from you as possible, so they were fun, addictive and often brutally difficult.

Arcade games were everywhere in the early 80’s. Sure, there were dedicated arcades, like the Aladdin’s Castle at our local mall, but you didn’t have to go far to find some great arcade action. I can distinctly remember playing Ms. Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Contra and Rampage at the local corner store in my small hometown of only 500 or so people. If you could find an arcade game there, you could find one anywhere. Pizza shops, bowling alleys and skating rinks were arcade game hot-spots. Even a Pizza Hut here and there would have a machine in the waiting area.

Skating rinks were popular birthday party locations in the 80’s. Not only could you roller skate, but there were pool tables, air hockey, foosball, and yes, arcade cabinets. It wasn’t uncommon for a class of students to be invited to a skating party, so I went to a fair number of them. Only problem was, I didn’t skate. I tried, but I just wasn’t interested, so off to the arcade games I went with a pocket full of quarters.

Arcades, or anywhere that had more than a handful of cabinets had a distinct sound. It was an exciting cacophony of game sounds and music. The sounds of chomping Pac-Man mixed with the Donkey Kong jingle, the tractor beams of Galaga, the music of Burgertime and the Pterodactyl in Joust. Arcades of the 90’s came close, but your typical Chucky Cheese or TILT just doesn’t compare. Someone really needs to craft a sample of “80’s Arcade” sounds. It was exciting, fun and full of… potential, that’s what it was. Potential for adventure, excitement and fun.

Most of my arcade game playing in these days was happenstance. I’d always play them when I got the chance. If I had some extra quarters I’d play at the corner store. I’d hit up the cabinets at the skating parties. On a few lucky occasions I got to go into Aladdin’s Castle, where I was almost paralyzed by choice (and by lack of quarters). Mostly, I just didn’t have the money. At this time I was under 10 years old and didn’t exactly have much in the way of savings.

When I did get to play, I loved Pac-Man, Donkey Kong, Pole Position, Galaga or Galaxian, Dig Dug, and later Rampage. I tried many other games too, of course.

Enter the Atari 2600

The Atari 2600 had been out since Fall of 1977, over a year before I was born. But I didn’t know about it until sometime in about 1983. I had no idea such a thing even existed until a family friend named Lisa started babysitting my sister and I. The family had a couple of sons our age and we got along well, especially her son Ricky and I, who were the same age. Most of the time we played outside, but one rainy day they set up what would become a marvel to me: a wood-grain Atari 2600 with several games. They had Missile Command, Combat, and several others, but one stood out as my favorite: Defender.

Defender drew me in like no other game did at the time. Piloting a ship and firing at a variety of alien space ships who are attacking Earth and abducting humans. I could play this for hours, blasting aliens and rescuing humans. I especially enjoyed killing the aliens who were lifting the humans up to the top of the screen, where they would become Mutants if I didn’t rescue them. If you shot the ship just right, the human would start falling. You could rescue them and land them safely back on Earth for big points. Very satisfying.

A year or so later we had become closer friends with this family so I occasionally spent the night there. On one of these occasions my mom called and told me that she wanted me to spend another night or two, as both my dad and sister had come down with a nasty flu and she didn’t want me to get it as well. I don’t remember for sure, but I think this resulted in me staying another three nights. This is actually a rather fond memory from my childhood. These were very kind people who gladly kept me comfortable under their roof while my dad and sister got better.

• 

So boy did I ever get a heavy dose of Atari games. Now, don’t go thinking that’s all we did for three days. Remember in these days, most homes still had only one TV. It was usually a floor model with a handful of channels. Kids didn’t get to play video games all day because the grown ups had their things they wanted to watch, and we kids gladly turned off the Atari to watch our favorite cartoons. Mornings were usually time for breakfast and cartoons, followed by playing outside for hours, then maybe some Atari in the afternoon before dinner or a bit in the evening. If it rained, we definitely played Atari more.

I feel like we had a good balance of video game time in those days. Very rare was the 4 to 6 hour (or more) binge. Even the games, as fun as they were, were easier to walk away from. They were simple and addictive, easy to pick up and play and not too hard to put down. There was no saving, long quests, leveling up and building characters, long sports seasons or in-depth story modes. It was definitely easier to walk away from an Atari game and go enjoy the outdoors with friends.

It was during this extended stay with my friends that I discovered what would go on to be one of my all time favorite games: Pitfall. Pitfall could very well be considered the first 2D platformer where the primary mechanics were running, jumping and collecting treasures. In fact, the point of the game was to collect all of the treasures in less than 20 minutes with three lives. This wasn’t easy, however. There are 256 screens in Pitfall, and 20 minutes isn’t enough time to explore them all. Each screen has an upper and a lower path and the secret is finding the lower paths that you can use as a shortcut to skip screens. I did not achieve this until 2016.

At this point I also have to mention that the author of Pitfall and Pitfall 2, David Crane, answered a question I had on Twitter about the first video games to feature the Jump mechanic. Was it Donkey Kong or Pitfall? Turns out they both did it simultaneously.

Another game that I discovered in this time was Star Raiders. My friend also had an old 8-bit Atari computer, most likely an Atari 800. Yes, for those who aren’t aware, Atari was a player in the 8 and 16 bit home computer era beginning with the 400/800 models in the late 70’s and ending with the Atari ST series and the Falcon in the early 90’s. Star Raiders was an amazing game that in my opinion was well ahead of its time and is still fun today.

Star Raiders is a first person space shooter where the goal is to clear the galaxy of Xylons and protect your Federation Planet. It featured simulated 3D space environments, resource management where fuel/energy is needed for many tasks, such as shields and moving into hyperspace, a detailed ship damage system where individual parts can be lost (such as shields, your blaster, navigation systems, etc), and a complex scoring/ranking system. It is very challenging and quite a bit of fun.

This was my gaming life for the first 9 years of my life. Occasional arcade games and playing Atari when I visited friends. I discovered a lot of fun games, and loved every minute of it when I got the chance. Like many others, I still did not have a video game system of my own.

Then something happened in 1987 that changed everything. That will be the subject of my next post.

Please feel free to comment on your favorite video gaming memories from the Golden Age of Arcade Games, the early Atari 2600 period or Joan Jett.