For me it was Christmas 1977 when me and my little brother got an Atari 2600 console. We spent almost the entire day (except for taking a break for meals) playing all the variations of Combat.
Later, in 1980, I bought Adventure with my paper route money and I had hours of fun playing that and trying to figure it out. When I finally found the Warren Robinette-created easter egg, I was ecstatic. Unfortunately, even though I was a huge fan of Adventure, it is the type of action-adventure game that when you solve the quest you quickly lose interest.
1980 was probably peak Atari 2600. By 1982, with the release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the game was so terrible and rushed to market so quickly and was so obviously shovelware that I moved on from the platorm.
I miss those days though. More than anything else the Atari 2600 was what got me into learning BASIC a few years later on the TRS-80 and the IBM PC.
Funny you should mention ET. It was indeed shovelware, Howard's group was challenged to get a movie-tie-in game out in 12 weeks and he volunteered. Worked like a slave to get something that looked like a game, had at least one play mechanic, titles and animation! All with a tiny processor with negligible memory that had to turn the electron beam on and off in timing loops. Still proud that he got anything at all that worked. Proud of the notoriety as well, Howard is like that!
Now he's a family counselor, a good one too. I see him a couple times a month at Movie Night, another old friend hosts those and we get good attendance even though we haven't worked together for forty years.
Later, in 1980, I bought Adventure with my paper route money and I had hours of fun playing that and trying to figure it out. When I finally found the Warren Robinette-created easter egg, I was ecstatic. Unfortunately, even though I was a huge fan of Adventure, it is the type of action-adventure game that when you solve the quest you quickly lose interest.
1980 was probably peak Atari 2600. By 1982, with the release of E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, the game was so terrible and rushed to market so quickly and was so obviously shovelware that I moved on from the platorm.
I miss those days though. More than anything else the Atari 2600 was what got me into learning BASIC a few years later on the TRS-80 and the IBM PC.