1975 Hashed plus Atari Tourney
Okay, 1975 stuff, almost as an after thought, but I'll put it first because it is short.
Sears Telegames PONG by Atari
Magnavox Odyssey 100
Magnavox Odyssey 200
And that's IT. If you wanted to play video games you were going to get most of your action outside of the home at the arcades.
Someday, when I play a Sears Telegames PONG unit or a Magnavox Odyssey 200, I will record them on their appropriate days.
Atari 2600 Tourney at Alamo Drafthouse Austin Downtown
Well, last night's Atari 2600 Tourney was fun even if the Original Atari PONG console was a no-show. I was Breakout champion! I'm not going to reveal my high score, because it was pretty low, but out of the people who's scores qualified, I emerged Breakout King.
Lessee, the tournament consisted of six games played on six different machines (some of them emulators) for the first hour and six more games on the second hour.
The games were: Circus Atari, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, Centipede, Asteroids and Breakout - then for the second hour: Missile Command, Donkey Kong Jr., Q-bert, Gravitar and Super Breakout. Hmm. I'm forgeting one of the games. Oh well. I'd never played Gravitar before. I think I'll have to now. Lots.
You couldn't be a semi-finalist for more than one game, so even though I was tied for second high score for Breakout, the person with the highest had high score on Circus Atari and the person I tied with, had high score on Missle Command. So, yeah, lame way to become Breakout King, but I take the kudos when I can get them.
Asteroids was a poor choice for tournament play due to the number of people who could play the chosen game setting, like, FOREVER!!! They had some kind of challenge for the Asteroid champs that I was not privy to. Something like declaring the person champ who could cut the most flesh off of themselves with a rusty utility knife. I was getting a beer and missed most of that.
The people with high scores for each of the games went on to the semi finals where they each had to play Yars' Revenge. My Yars' Revenge experience is limited, so, I did . . . poorly.
The top three Yars' Revenge scorers then played the surprise game, Journey: The Escape on the Big Movie Screen. Apparently NONE of them had ever played it before. One guy got lucky because he happened to run over a smiley face instead of a camera or a love-struck groupie. He won the coveted Atari Joystick Trophy. It was not an intense Tourney, which is for the best. It was just a bunch of t-shirt wearing, beer drinking, grown-ups playing a dozen Atari games. It was actually the most fun I'd had out of my house in a long time, which is actually a pretty depressing thing to realize.
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