ChrisBellini.com

Thirty years ago, Atari unleashed the VCS (aka: Atari 2600) on the world.

My parents bought me an Atari 2600 for my sixth birthday. I hung out in arcades a lot at that age and developed an affinity toward this new video game “fad”. The Atari 2600 promised to bring arcade action into the living room, and it did…sorta.

My cousin Andrew had an Atari 2600 when he was a teenager and since he was a smart kid (he now goes by “Dr. Bellini”), my parents figured it would be a good idea for my birthday present back in 1982. I can’t remember every game I had, but a few come to mind:

• Adventure: my first RPG
• Berzerk: I used to love the “pop” sound that the robots made when they walked into the walls
• Breakout: my mom bought this for me for getting a good report card in grade two
• Combat: packed-in game
• Defender
• Donkey Kong
• Donkey Kong Junior
• Enduro: my cousin Paul loved the “can you endure enduro?” commercial and used to repeat it while picking me up and threatening to crash me into our Christmas tree…weird childhood memory
• E.T.: infamous for its suckage, I traded this with someone whom I can’t remember at the moment
• Keystone Kapers: got this from Joey Barrett but I can’t remember what I traded away
• Missile Command
• Pac-Man: lame arcade port that disappointed me, even at that young age
• Phoenix
• Pitfall
• Q*bert
• RealSports Baseball: ran my own league complete with a schedule and tracked stats
• Smurfs: Rescue in Gargamel’s Castle: the first game I ever got - I found it a few days before my parents actually gave me the Atari 2600 console
• Space Cavern: a post-video game crash of 1983 title - got it for like $3 at K-Mart in the Timmins Square
• Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back
• Yars’ Revenge
• Vanguard

I wasn’t a geeky youngster - I played hockey and baseball and was quite active. My parents weren’t up on technology - I didn’t get a computer (let alone know how to use one until I was in grade twelve). So I must credit the Atari 2600 for getting me interested in science and technology. First it started with being the only one in the house capable of setting the time on a digital clock, then came dismantling the family VCR to figure out how it worked, next was recording all my NES and SNES games’ endings on VHS, then a Computer Science degree. And finally, gainfully employed as a software engineer. Thank you, Atari