Recently walking with a friend I found a Sylvania 20" TV ("6420FE") waiting for trash pickup - I had been thinking of looking on FB Marketplace for a CRT TV for my Atari 2600...
Its excellent picture kind of revitalized my interest in the Atari. I had a Harmony Cartridge that lets you put as many ROMs as you want on an SD card and play them on the Atari, and nostalgia led me to recreate the collection of games I grew up with.
(My parents managed to get a lot of closeout games during the crash (a lot of overstock was being dumped to their Salvation Army employers) so I had a relatively huge collection, and that was my main system even as it all became pretty "retro")
I went through Wikipedia's List of Atari 2600 Games (Oh, look, technically I am on Wikipedia, via my homebrew JoustPong! Just not enough to have my own page yet, sigh) and assembled the list of games I had - amazing how easy it was to do that by memory, these games have really stuck with me.
I angtsted for a bit on how to sort the games on the cart - no one wants to scroll through a list of ~120 titles - and realized "by publisher" was what made the most sense - that's how I would organize them with physical carts (many of which I still have!) since each manufacturer had a distinct look and feel.
Atari: Adventure, Asteroids, Basketball, Battlezone, Berzerk, Breakout, Centipede, Combat, Crystal Castles, Defender, Dig Dug, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Galaxian, Haunted House, Indy 500, Joust, Jr. Pac-Man, Jungle Hunt, Kangaroo, Krull, Mario Bros., Missile Command, Moon Patrol, Ms. Pac-Man, Othello, Pac-Man, Pele's Soccer, Pengo, Phoenix, Pole Position, Space Invaders, Space War, Star Raiders, Stargate, Super Breakout, Vanguard, Video Olympics, Video Pinball, Warlords, Yars' Revenge
Activision: Boxing, Chopper Command, Commando, Crackpots, Dolphin, Dragster, Enduro, Fishing Derby, Grand Prix, H.E.R.O., Ice Hockey, Kaboom!, Keystone Kapers, Laser Blast, Pitfall II, Pitfall!, Pressure Cooker, River Raid II, River Raid, Robot Tank, Seaquest, Sky Jinks, Spider Fighter, Tennis
Parker Bros: Amidar, Frogger, Gyruss, Popeye, Q-bert, Reactor, Return of the Jedi - Death Star Battle, Spider-Man, Star Wars - The Empire Strikes Back, Super Cobra, Tutankham
M-Network: Adventures of Tron, Armor Ambush, Bump n Jump, Burgertime, Dark Cavern, Frogs And Flies, Lock 'n' Chase, Super Challenge Baseball, Super Challenge Football, Tron - Deadly Discs
Imagic: Atlantis, Cosmic Ark, Demon Attack, Dragonfire, Fire Fighter, No Escape!, Riddle of the Sphinx, Star Voyager
CBS: Blue Print, Gorf, Mountain King, Wizard of Wor
Coleco: Donkey Kong, Donkey Kong Junior, Front Line, Venture
Sega: Buck Rogers - Planet of Zoom, Spy Hunter, Star Trek - Strategic Operations Simulator, Tac Scan
US Games: Entombed, Gopher, Name This Game, Sneak 'n Peek, Space Box, Squeeze Box
20th Century Fox: Deadly Duck, M.A.S.H, Worm War I
Xonox: Ghost Manor, Spike's Peak
Apollo:
Lost Luggage
Finally, I decided to complete the nostalgia trip by thinking on what games from this pile really mattered to me, and why:
SIGNIFICANT TO MY STORY GAMES
- Frogger - my first game - I remember a ritual I invented with my buddy Robert of standing and saying "plbbt plbbt" at the mind point and end of the song.
- Moon Patrol - I stole the 12 bar bassline of this, and call it "Space Cadet", and have played it with hundreds of different musicians
- Joust - Love the physics of this, and obvious influence for my own homebrew "JoustPong"
- Pengo - I remember storyboarding a commercial for this, with a song (something something something, something "full of ice / Pengo doesn't like it / but the Sno-Bees think it's nice"
- Reactor - I'd program a lot of "particles bouncing around" toys in BASIC, maybe influenced by this
- Adventure - finding out from a book how to get the easter egg, the first in a long series of not being afraid to use FAQs and Walkthroughs...
- Donkey Kong Junior - Between this and the cartoon, I was weirdly into this character and dressed for him as halloween. My mom assured me I needed the off-brand gorilla mask for it, otherwise I was just dressing "cute". (She was too polite to say "like a dork")
- Battlezone - a "true" 3D world model, with two enemies at once, and gorgeous - I remember begging my cousin John to score me a copy like he had and he came through
- Gyruss - the music was astounding, a rocking version of "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor"
- Tron: Deadly Discs - I love how you feel like the same kind of player as the 3 enemies
- Cosmic Ark - loved the little "beasties" running around, programmed Cosmikatamari Damacy with them...
- Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back - the "David vs Goliath" feel of taking down AT-ATs in a snowspeeder
- Crackpots - found this late, but the game design impresses
- Spider Fighter - fast action, and a cool "stop enemies from stealing" mechanic
- Entombed - there's a mystery about this game's maze generation...
- Ice Hockey - endless rounds of this Activision game was the heart of the 3-member "Tufts Geek Club" in Hodgdon Hall
- Warlords - especially when I could get 4 players going... but the lower right corner always had this weird advantage of geometry...
- Pressure Cooker
- (Atari 7800 Games - especially One on One against my hallmate, Robotron, and Food Fight)
- Burgertime
- Ms. Pac-Man
- Missile Command
- Pole Position
- (Also Pengo I think, at least a little)
- Armor Ambush - loved how this was tank fighting better than Combat (which I didn't have growing up much, oddly)
- Frogs And Flies - great game for kids, both in the easy and hard modes. And with good AI!
- Super Challenge Baseball - I remember being able to beat my older cousin Scott at this
- Boxing
- Laser Blast - loved getting into the fire, move, fire, move rhythm
- Dragonfire - I remember the Columbia Game of the Month club poster for this. Also great swooping action on the second screen.
- Grand Prix - I played this racer a LOT
- Mountain King - enjoyed the "mystery area" above the playfield
- Donkey Kong - my friend Robert and I liked making DK dance ("playing with monkey")
- Dig Dug
- Kangaroo
- River Raid
- Blue Print
Last night some friends and I had a Zoom/NetflixParty to watch Michelle Obama's "Becoming" - it talked about her father - a man who never had opportunities to equal his intellect - and who was a lover of Jazz. Last night I line in a dream, something like "Most Jazz is like a 747, it will fly you there ok, but Bebop is like one of those F-17 Fighter Jets..."