The Atari 2600 is where gaming truly began for me.
The year was 1979, I was five years old. My mum bought the Atari 2600 from Boans in Perth (which is now Myer department store) as an anniversary present for my dad. I’m not sure how much it cost back then but mum reassures me it was ‘a bloody fortune’. I can remember sitting next to this huge box in a nearby cafe just staring at all the little screens pictured on this wonderful box while my mum and grandmother chatted. How I wished it was for me! I just wanted to go home and see it, what was it? Prior to this, all I knew was Pong. My grandmother had Pong on an old black and white TV. It had two paddles that slid up and down, that was it! Don’t laugh, that was fun back then. I can remember we all had a go. But the Atari, just sitting in the box as it was, fascinated me. It was colourful and all the screens on the box had something different going on, not just two white lines and bouncy square.
From here on I pretty much grew up with the Atari. At first, my time using it was heavily restricted but as time went by I got to use it more often. My parents soon realised they could use it as a potential for punishment, ‘Look, if you don’t behave no Atari!’. I shocked my dad one day who came home from work and saw how well I was doing on Frogger. After I had gone to bed he tried his best to match me, but he couldn’t. I also surprised my uncle when it came to games like Warlords, in how well I could hold my own against the other adults. It became a regular thing on a Saturday for mum and dad to have friends and family over to play. Everyone had to have a go at Combat, my aunty loved Asteroids, my mum’s favourites (even to this very day) are Space Invaders – especially invisible Space Invaders – and Kaboom!; but I loved them all. The first game I ever finished was Defender. I was very sick in bed at the time and mum put the Atari in my room. I guess there is no harm in admitting now that I was in no hurry to get better.
I am very pleased to say that the same machine, with all those wonderful memories attached to it, still works and is still in the family today. Mum still has it in its own custom built box. The original box died years ago, so at the time my Dad (a wood machinist by trade) built his own with special compartments for the console, controllers and games. The Atari, for me, isn’t just a console, it’s a family heirloom. I have my own hand-me-down console from my aunty, and although mine is not the ‘woody’ like our original family console, it does the job just fine.
I’ve played some of the old games on today’s modern systems, such as the PSP and Xbox 360, but trust me on this; you cannot beat the Atari console itself. Games like Kaboom! and Night Driver are both fine examples of when you must use the paddles! But it’s good to see these games getting the exposure they deserve. And it is certainly something to see my kids play games on my old Atari, and enjoy them just as much as I did.
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Sue Lamport
Educator, art lover, gamer. A proud Atarian.
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Arcade Machine Preservation Society [AMPS]
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