Kids today have it so easy.

Just the other day, I saw a little boy in a doctor's office waiting room with his mother. He looked to be around seven years old and was obviously too young to stay home by himself--so he had to tag along with his mom while she dragged him all over the place on a bunch of boring errands.

For a minute, my heart went out to the child. I remember being that age and spending plenty of horrific afternoons with my mother while she shopped for bed sheets and socks at the local J.C. Penny store. No child should have to endure the mind-numbing torture of spending the afternoon with his mom. But upon taking a closer look at this particular kid, I noticed that he was busily playing a GameBoy Advanced--and seemed to be enjoying himself. I never had that kind of luxury. My mother would have told me to sit still and be quiet while she read a magazine. And I would have just sat there, bored out of my skull.

Yeah, kids today have it made.

Granted, it's a totally different world today than it was when I was growing up twenty years ago. Sure, it was the same in some ways... we even had our own Saddam Hussein to worry about, except his name was Quadaffi. But as far as technology goes, the 80's seem almost quaint by today's standards. The internet was around, but nobody was on it. Nobody carried cell phones or pagers unless they were doctors (or corrupt politicians). There were no DVD players or Playstation 2 systems. Having more than one television set or telephone line in a house was almost unheard of. Hell, we didn't even have call waiting, caller ID or voicemail... or much of anything else. Even cable TV was somewhat of a luxury.

It's facts like these that make it possible to sound like an embittered old man before the age of thirty. It makes me want to confront a bunch of teenagers and start ranting:

"BAH! You kids today have never wanted for anything! In my day, we didn't have 'Grand Theft Auto' and 'Final Fantasy' games. 'DONKEY KONG' WAS WHAT WE PLAYED, AND WE LIKED IT THAT WAY! And we didn't have internet porn, either! We had to steal dirty magazines from the party store just to get a look at naked women! That's all we had, and WE WERE THANKFUL TO HAVE IT!!!"

Kids today have the benefit of their PS2 and GameCube games when they get bored. These games are amazing--they look incredible, they're realistic, they're violent, complex... but it wasn't ALWAYS this way. Home video game systems have been around since the 70's and they've come a lo-o-o-ng way. So, for those of you old enough to remember, allow me to present;

THE TOP FIVE "OLD SCHOOL" HOME VIDEO GAME SYSTEMS

5) PONG Year of Release: 1975

Killer Games: Well, er..... Pong.

Imagine it if you will--in a gaming industry hitherto dominated by pinball machines, some wacky new-fangled company called Atari gets an idea. The premise? To create an electronic version of table tennis and produce an entirely new kind of game.

Pong begins life as an arcade stand-up and is
ingenious in its simplicity--you have a plain, black screen with a dotted line down the middle. On opposite ends, you have two rectangles (or paddles) which opposing players can operate. The object of the game is to avoid missing the ball (or the "plot statement", for those of you that remember BASIC) by using your paddles to volley it back and forth
across the screen. The player with the highest score wins.

That's the whole game. No, really, it is.

It sounds ridiculously stupid now, but believe me, back in the day Pong was THE SHIT. Especially when Atari made a deal with Sears to produce a home version which could work on any standard TV set. It turned out to be a stroke of genius. The game was already a smash in arcades, but now people could play it at home, too. And plenty of homes ended up getting a Pong system in the late 70's--my own included.

Before I continue, consider the following; Pong was strictly in black and white--no color. It had no real variations of game play and, in fact, the earliest versions of the system didn't even keep score for you. You couldn't buy other games for the system... it ONLY played Pong. Atari didn't even take the time to produce sound effects, instead relying on sounds already present in the circuitry of the game.

Despite these shortcomings, Pong was surprisingly fun and addictive, leading to drunken Pong tournaments in houses all over the nation. Sure, it's easy to laugh at Pong today--but this baby was the grand daddy of ALL the modern game systems. So the next time you're enjoying a game of "Grand Theft Auto: Vice City", please take the time to offer a silent prayer of thanks to one of the all-time greats: PONG.

4) INTELLIVISION Year of Release: 1980

Killer Games: Major League Baseball, TRON Deadly Discs, Q-Bert, Horse Racing, Beauty and the Beast, Bump 'n Jump, Diner, Demon Attack, Dungeons and Dragons

By this point, just about everybody had an Atari VCS (which I'll get to later). But the Atari system was already three years old--and even back then, that was more than enough time for something to become hopelessly obsolete. Atari didn't seem to give a shit, though--other manufacturers had tried to compete with their own systems, but Atari still had the
stranglehold on the industry and was, for all intents and purposes, the only game in town.... and business was booming.

Mattel, best known as the toy company behind Barbie, decides to enter the fray with a rather ballsy move. They plan to introduce a new game system which is better than Atari and go after some of that moolah themselves.

I remember that when Intellivision was first released, Mattel launched this huge advertising campaign in which they slammed the Atari's graphics and basically told all of America that Atari sucked. Maybe it was a little underhanded, but I'll tell you this--it worked. My brother and I, who up until this point had been begging my parents for an Atari, promptly started begging for an Intellivision. Incidentally, we didn't get one.

I had a friend at the time named Matt Finfrock and he hooked me up. We spent many a happy hour playing Intellivision at his house with almost no parental interruptions. (I think his parents were hippies.) The game we wasted the most time playing was Q-Bert--which, if you'll recall, was a pretty fucked up game. I can just imagine the designers coming up for the concept while smoking a few fatties;

DESIGNER: (through a thick cloud of smoke) "Dude... why don't we make a video game character that looks like an orange megaphone with eyes.... and...and... um.... legs?"

DESIGNER 2: "What's a MEGA-phone? Like a really big telephone?"

(Seven minutes of hysterical, stoned laughter.)

DESIGNER: " No, wait, wait.... we can have him hop up and down on a giant pyramid made of cubes...."

DESIGNER 2: (Eyes starting to glaze over) "Whoa...."

DESIGNER: "... and every time he jumps on a cube, it changes color!"

DESIGNER 2: " Colors! Fuck yeah!"

DESIGNER: "And we'll have purple snakes attacking him!"

DESIGNER 2: (Taking a long drag) "Now THAT is a damn fine idea..." (More laughter)

The one thing I didn't like about Intellivision was the controllers. For one thing, they were wired right into the system--which means you couldn't even buy back-up controllers if one broke. (And who HASN'T shattered a controller in a fit of rage?) Plus, it wasn't even a joystick. It was this little gold disc that you'd press in the direction you wanted your video game guy to go. It was truly a pain in the ass to master this--my first few games of Q-Bert involved me repeatedly committing suicide by leaping off the pyramid and into the abyss. I didn't mean to do this... I just sucked at using the controller. Even Matt's mother was better at it than I was.

But this is a small complaint. The gameplay more than made up for any controller issues--I especially dug playing the Horse Racing game and betting on horses. The game even allowed you to place crooked bets... how cool is that??? They should have printed this on the box; "HEY KIDS, WANNA LEARN HOW TO BE A FILTHY GAMBLER?"

To this day, the Intellivision is still remembered fondly by game afficionados--Playstation even released an Intellivison compilation several years back. And yep, INTELLIVISION LIVES.

3) COLECOVISION Year of Release: 1982

Killer Games: Donkey Kong, Lady Bug, Zaxxon, Smurf Rescue in Gargamel's Castle, Tarzan, Venture, Turbo, Mr. Do!, Carnival, Super Action Baseball

Considered the "Holy Grail" of video game systems when it was released, Colecovision referred to themselves as the "third wave" system of the future. They even had the balls to proclaim they would set the standards for graphics and game design--which they did.

Coleco was also smart enough to realize that they needed something special to launch their system. What they decided on was to include a free Donkey Kong cartridge--which made me happy, because that just happened to be my favorite game. I sucked at Pac-Man (the other big arcade game at the time) and I never really liked it much, anyway. Power pellets and ghosts weren't my speed--but Donkey Kong had Mario trying to rescue a chick from an ape. Obviously, Mario was trying to get laid and I could appreciate that.

LITTLE KNOWN FACT:
In the original Japanese version of the game, there was no real name for Mario--he was called simply "Jumpman." The "Mario" moniker didn't come along until until the game was brought here to the states, and even then it was little more than an afterthought. More than twenty years and many, many games later, I can't calculate the endless hours of my life I've wasted controlling this mustachioed little bastard in various games and incarnations. Anyway, getting back to the column....

Video game graphics were extremely primitive in 1982, even at the arcades. And when a home system released a ranslation of an arcade game, it almost never looked ANYTHING like the real thing. (Anybody remember Atari's piece-of-shit version of Pac-Man?) That's why the Colecovision kicked so much ass--their translation of Donkey Kong actually LOOKED like Donkey Kong. It sounded like Donkey Kong--and once me and my brother Kevin got a look at Colecovision's commercial on TV, we about creamed ourselves.

I didn't think we had much of a shot at getting one. My parents had ignored our previous pleas for Atari and Intellivision, so we had no reason to think they'd cave this time. Besides, the system went for $200 and games were up to $50 apiece--which was a lot of money at my house, especially since most of the disposable income went toward replenishing the old man's weed stash.

I'll never forget that Christmas morning in '82. We'd opened what we thought were the last our our presents and there was no Colecovision to be had--and suddenly, my dad emerged from the basement holding one in his arms. To this day, it's the coolest present I ever got. I have no idea what I had for lunch yesterday, but I'll never forget the sheer joy of playing Donkey Kong and Zaxxon that Christmas morning in 1982. We were the only ones on the block who had Colecovision--and for this reason alone, I was willing to forgive my father for years of shoddy, half-assed parenting. (Let this be a lesson to all of you who were stupid enough to become parents yourselves... you want your kids to like you? BUY THEM OFF!)

Colecovision had it all--great games, good graphics and plenty of expandability. You could get the optional steering wheel add-on, which came with a pretty decent version of the arcade racing game Turbo. They even had an adapter you could buy which allowed you to play Atari games on your Colecovision! In other words, once you had one of these babies you didn't need ANYTHING else. It was the system of choice during its short, two year reign--and had the entire video game industry not taken a dump in 1984, it may have become a dominate force. But this never happened... and frankly, it pisses me off that hardly anybody even remembers this system today. People remember Atari and Intellivision--but mention Colecovision to somebody and you'll likely get a blank look in return.

Some of us haven't forgotten, though--and thanks to eBay, we never have to.

2) ATARI VCS (later renamed Atari 2600)
Year of release: Late 1977

Killer Games: Combat, River Raid, Yar's Revenge, Pitfall, Asteroids, Space Invaders, Pitfall 2, Spider Fighter, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Kaboom!, Frogger, Circus Atari, Ms. Pac Man

Although Atari wasn't the first cartridge-driven system (the Magnavox "Odyssey" takes that honor), it was the first home console to truly capture the imagination of the country. It didn't happen overnight, though--in fact, the company lost money in the first two years the system was on the market. But when Atari released their translation of the hit arcade game Space Invaders, sales went through the roof... and a
legend was born.

Many of the games released for the system became instant classics--and since graphics capabilities were so limited, the games relied heavily on the "fun" factor. And I don't give a shit what anybody says, a lot of these games are STILL fun. I mean, was there ever a game so brilliantly simple and addictive as Asteroids? How about River Raid? Gimmie a "hell yeah!"

The neighbors down the block from me had an Atari, and I went over there every chance I got. I remember thinking that Raiders of the Lost Ark was one of the coolest
fucking games I'd ever played, sort of like an RPG before RPGs even existed. And I could play Pitfall for hours and never get bored.

Of course, my family didn't have an Atari and my parents wouldn't buy it for us. At one point, I was so desperate to get one I had my mom buy me some Cap'n Crunch cereal--which I hated--simply because they were doing a promotion where you could win an Atari. I was so sure I was going to
win... and when I didn't, I was stuck eating that nasty shit every morning for two weeks. That's right around the time where I started to figure out that life wasn't fair.

Show an Atari game to a ten year old kid today and they won't get it. They'd take one look at the shitty graphics and repetitive gameplay and get bored to tears in microseconds. I guess you just had to be there...

1) NINTENDO ENTERTAINMENT SYSTEM
Year of Release: 1985

Killer Games: Super Mario Bros. 1-3, The Legend of Zelda, Mike Tyson's Punchout, R.C. Pro Am, Battletoads, Contra, Metroid. Ninja Gaiden, Pro Wrestling, Metal Gear, Mega Man and many, many more.

What can you say about a system that spawned TV shows, breakfast cereal, its own magazine and even its own movies? The original Nintendo (or NES) changed the face of gaming forever-- which is not too shabby for an 8-bit system. And at its peak, Mario was more recognizable to kids than Mickey Mouse.... no kidding.

LITTLE KNOWN FACTS:
Nintendo began its life over a hundred years ago as a company that manufactured playing cards. The English translation of Nintendo is "work hard, but in the end it's in heaven's hands." (What the fuck does THAT mean, anyway???)

If you're anywhere near my age, you know exactly why this system HAS to rank number one. How could anybody forget that first Super Mario Bros. game, with Mario chowing down on magic mushrooms and throwing fireballs at turtles? Or playing Mike Tyson's Punchout and getting your ass
whooped by King Hippo until you finally figured out how to beat the fat bastard? How about pushing a block in the first Zelda game to reveal a hidden staircase?

Nintendo was the first system to show the potential of what video games could be. That's not meant to imply that ALL the games were great--Nintendo was notorious for releasing just as many clunkers as winners. But when they got it right, the games really hit the mark.

I popped in my Zelda cartridge not long ago and was surprised at how much I remembered about the game... and how hard the fucking thing was. (Those dungeons are a BITCH.) And I was pleasantly surprised to see that I still kicked ass at Super Mario 3. But my best game was always Pro Wrestling. I AM THE GREATEST PRO WRESTLING PLAYER OF ALL TIME. I'm so good at this game, I could beat
the guy who designed it. I could beat your ass even if you were using the NES Advantage controller and I wasn't. That's right, I'm talking some shit... BRING IT ON, BITCH!

The only negative thing I can say about the Nintendo was the
spring-loaded thingy that you inserted the games into. The system had this annoying habit of blinking.... blinking.... blinking when you tried to turn it on. Nintendo later released a top-loading version of the system that worked much better, but these are fairly rare. (Try bidding for one on eBay sometime... for your sake, I hope you're rich.)

All in all though, this was the greatest system of all time. It doesn't compare to your Playstation 2 as far as graphics go--but if it wasn't for Nintendo, there wouldn't BE a Playstation.

And that's all I have to say about that.