| The funny thing is that half of the folks who read this node have never played, let alone seen, an Atari 2600.
We didn't own one, unfortunately. We had one of those Pong machines with four wonderous games on it. My friend did own one, luckily, and we went over there to play as often as we could.
My favorite game was Pitfall. I had the timing down perfectly, and we were mapping out every single scene. Looking back on it, the graphics were awful and the gameplay was astoundingly limited, but it was great to play games sans the quarter slot. I actually ended up being very good at it, and gave anyone who challenged me a run for their money.
My second fave was Reactor, but not many folks knew about it. Apparently it did not get released all over the US, and copies were exceedingly rare. At least, nobody I've talked to in recent memory has ever heard of it.
My third fave was Steroids. To remind those few old farts who owned one, the booklet that came with the first batch of Asteroids cartridges had a typo. I enjoyed it better than the arcade version.
Rumour had it that when Atari went kaput, they dumped 1.5 million cartridges in a dump and covered it with dirt. I'd like to hear what the archeologists say when they uncover that silicon-and-plastic mine in a thousand years.
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