365 Days of Awesome Things - Day 15

Old School Video Games

I love hitting question mark-adorned boxes with my head without fear of concussion and earning coins in the process. I love jumping down massive green pipes and ending up three towns away. I love leaping on platforms and firing my Mega Buster at one of Dr. Wily's evil creations. I love knocking the stuffing out of Piston Honda, Soda Popinski, and Super Macho Man on my way to an epic showdown with Mike Tyson. I love running across screen after screen of alligators and pits, swinging on a vine, and picking up huge pieces of gold in the process. I love just randomly saying "Up-Up-Down-Down-Left-Right-Left-Right B, A, Start" and seeing who reacts.

In short, I love old school video games. I adore them. The Atari 2600, while not played nearly as often as my Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) or Super Nintendo (SNES), still has a place of honor in my collection. After all, chintzy graphics aside, the Atari 2600 offered some incredibly addictive titles. Pitfall, Pitfall II, Montezuma's Revenge (Possibly one of the most sophisticated games produced for the 2600 console, along with Pitfall II), Keystone Kapers, Mountain King, and many others. In fact they produced so many fun titles that they can almost be forgiven for E.T., which nearly single-handedly destroyed the video game market in 1983.

What's great is that you can even find a lot of these classic games on eBay at extremely reasonable prices. eBay is where I bought my SNES Super Star Wars a couple of years ago, one of the most enjoyable games I've ever played.

I also love the simplicity of the controls of these old school systems. Nothing could be simpler than the classic Atari joystick - one button. Today's controllers make me want to cry. Buttons on the front, top, back, and sides? That requires a level of coordination I could never hope to posses. I also don't need my games to look like real life. I'm playing video games to get away from real life. In fact Pitfall Harry already looks eerily similar enough to a real person to me (my anorexic cousin Patti).