Flashback: Early 1980′s Video Games

Both of my son’s are like millions of people around the globe and are addicted to modern video games.
Although they live a thousand miles apart, they can play each other online, any time of the day or night. They play a modern warfare game called “Battlefield 3” which has animation and digital effects so realistic you swear you are watching a movie.

I myself don’t play video games…

any more….

Flashback to High School in the early 1980′s in Salem, Oregon.

I flunked High School Algebra.

I got a big fat “F“…… the only “F” that I would get during my entire High School career.

It wasn’t so much that I was a Math Idiot, as much as it was a problem with a slight addiction issue I had going on at the time.

You see, Yes, I was an addict.

I was addicted to….

Asteroids.

The video game.

The video game who’s closest machine was located at the local Mall, about a mile away from the school. This game, located in the Video Arcade of the Mall, was my home for an hour of the school day in which my idiot butt was SUPPOSED TO BE in Algebra class.

Everything I never learned about Algebra, I blame on “The Electric Palace” in Lancaster Mall…..Salem, Oregon.

Some friends and I used this hour to skip school, nearly every day, so that we could head to the deserted mall, in order to play video games.

My parents always thought that I had flunked because of my total lack of Math skills…

Nope.

I was a Video Game Junkie.

Asteroids was my drug of choice. I could literally spend hours, and bags of quarters, hunched over that glorious game.

I also liked other classics of the early 1980′s era, such as “Donkey Kong“, “Galaga“, and “Pac Man“, among dozens of other classics, but to me, “Asteroids” was king!

In the summer of 1984 I thought I had died and gone to heaven. I had just been hired as a Cave Guide at the Oregon Caves National Monument. The guides lived in a small building brilliantly named “The Guide Shack“. The Guide Shack included a small game room for the guides and other employees to lounge around in when not working. In that room, was a pool table, a couple pinball machines, and……

An ASTEROIDS game!

Not only that….but they had rigged that sucker so that you did NOT need to use quarters!!! You could play all day and all night long….. for FREE!!

(That “F” in Algebra was totally worth it!)

That ……was Heaven!

It’s been a long time since I have seen an original ASTEROIDS game out in public use. I have seen the modern versions that you can play on some of the current gaming systems, but it was just not the same as standing hunched over that old console for hours on end.

As you know, we go to Red River, New Mexico on vacation each summer. The town has a facility called “The Playhouse” which contains a number of classic games from the 80′s. My wife, who has been going to Red River since the 1970′s, says these are still the original games and these consoles have been sitting in this playhouse for all these decades.

They don’t have Asteroids, but they do have a surviving GALAGA game which I frequent every summer. The games from the 80′s were cheesy, the graphics were childishly simple, the sound effects were horrendous, and everything about those games are laughable by today’s standards…. but I still love them.

Santa Claus…..if you happen to read this…..

Please add…

“ONE MINT CONDITION ORIGINAL ASTEROIDS GAME CONSOLE” to the Idiot’s Christmas list…….

Preferably, one that does not take quarters….

I’ve gotten to be real cheap in my old age ya know….

Thanks!

Sincerely,

The Idiot