The history of in-home video game systems

Most members of the classic retro video gaming culture of today know about the Nintendo, Sega and Playstation of the past, but here's a website that goes even beyond that. Time Magazine does a blast from the past to recap even earlier additions to the video game world prior to the video game crash of 1983, which nearly killed the video game in-home console industry in its wake.

http://content.time.com/time/interactive/0,31813,2029221,00.html

I remember playing the Intelivision at my cousins place, but couldn't for the life of me put a name to what the system was called. I used to play the sports montage on it, namely the baseball game. You'd put the game card inside the controller, and based on the icon on the card designating the player you'd want to throw the ball to or control, you'd push the button underneath the 'game card'. It was a neat idea in my opinion.

Like many families in middle-class America, my parents owned an Atari 2600 system with a variety of game cartridges. Man, how games used to be is amazing to say the least. We used to be satisfied and even thrilled with the Burger-Time or Donkey Kong style graphics made up of VERY noticeable pixels. Your character was a series of squares put together in some semblance of order, with different clashing colors to denote clothes and such. Ah, the good ol' days.

Then came the Nintendo Entertainment System into our home. We thought we were in heaven with games like Super Mario Brothers and Duck Hunt (although often times I lost bullets on the next round from trying to shoot the dog for laughing at me), Legend of Zelda, Bomberman and Duck Tales. I even now sometimes go back to play Super Mario Brothers and realize just how freaking hard that game was! How could I play is so well and even beat the entire game as a kid?

Well, Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis came after, and from then on I tended to have enough spending cash to buy both systems. That was the only way back then to get the best games, as some games were only made on Sega, and others only on Nintendo.  Alas, to think that we now describe Super Nintendo and the Genesis as "retro games" and I was a teenager when those two systems were in their prime.

This site does well in going even further back than my own lifetime and experience to some of the predecessors even to the Playstation and Nintendo even.  We've all heard of Pong, but there was actually video game life prior to Pong!

Feel free to post any comments, negative positive or otherwise on this blog. All additions are welcome, and feel free to feed this blog to your other friends who used to live in the closet of Nintendo video gamers of the "retro age."