My crazy retro Christmas!

[Lord Thag]

Merry Christmas everyone!

 

This xmas has been crazy! I hope you all have been as lucky as I have!

 

Let me start at the beginning. A long time ago, I bought the core of my original 2600 collection off of my cousin Kevin, who has (rather loudly) regretted it ever since. He goes so far as to come over fairly often to play Atari (twice a month or more even). So I figured I'd hook him up this year with a refurbished 2600 and about 30 games. Heh. He was grinning like a five year old when he opened it, too.

 

Ok, here is the point. Apparently, folks, when you give the gift of Atari, you get it in return. Now normally, I *might* manage to get an xbox game or so, but most of my family regards my glassic gaming collecting with raised eyebrows and indifferent shrugs. Not this year, though!

 

So I open my first present, and I get one of those cool 5-1 Arcade game controller thingumies. I'm thinking 'sweet! space invaders!'. I figured that was about as far as my luck was gonna hold. So mom hands me the next one. It's kinda small. About the same size as an atari game even. I think 'nah, couldn't be', and I open it.

 

I blink.

 

It's Star Fire for the 2600 from good ol AA! I'm smiling and thinking 'how the heck did my internet challenged parents pull this off?' I tell the folks thanks and open the next, slightly bigger box.

 

!!?

 

This time it's Thrust+. I'm grinning like the cheshire cat now. This is crazy! No one EVER gets me atari stuff, and now I have two of the new homebrews. I figure by now that this has just got to be it, but mom hands me this really big, heavy box next. I figure there's no way this is going to be Atari stuff, and as it turns out, I'm right. I must have stared at it for at least a minute.

 

It's a friggin' VECTREX!! With like 10 games!!!

 

I am now, officially, in shock. A Vectrex and half the games in one fell swoop. I've never even so much as SEEN one in the wild before. They got me Fortress of Narzod even! Not to mention two of the most fun 2600 games I've played in YEARS (great job guys!), and an arcade stick to boot! A merry retro xmas indeed!

[sandmountainslim]

I am right there with ya, not only did I get X3volux for Xmas the wife got me one of those Atari/jaxx pacific paddle game setups to boot, wonder how many folks got Atari related gifts this year?

[Tickled_Pink]

It's a friggin' VECTREX!! With like 10 games!!!

 

I am now, officially, in shock. A Vectrex and half the games in one fell swoop. I've never even so much as SEEN one in the wild before. They got me Fortress of Narzod even!

 

And then there's my girlfriend. Totally retro-phobic. She's even had the temerity to suggest to me that I sell my Veccy!?

 

FoN is a pretty cool game, huh (there is a bug, by the way, which gives you 255 lives or something - done it a few times)? You got Webwarp? Excellent game but I don't think it's possible to collect ALL the creatures.

 

Looks like you've got some pretty clued up folks there.

[Lord Thag]

Yeah, my folks did good this year. I must have been *cough* 'good' or something

 

Yeah, Narzod is fun, and I like cosmic chasm a lot. Webwarp is on the short list of Veccy stuff to get, along with those John Dondozilla homebrews. My next project is going to be printing up some overlays on transparancy sheets.

 

I still can't get over the quality of Thrust and Star Fire though. It's been awhile since I've played a 2600 game for hours like I have today. Any of you who haven't tried either of these out owe it to yourself to do just that. Both of them are at the top of my 'play' pile. Impressive stuff!

[bjk7382]

Any of you who haven't tried either of these out owe it to yourself to do just that.

 

You owe it to yourself to not stop playing thrust until you beat it (I predict it would take a month or so if you play it every day )

[MaximRecoil]

I got an Atari 7800 on Christmas Eve but it was specifically a Christmas present, though it might as well have been. My mother who lives about 45 minutes away had been given the thing last summer from a co-worker who figured that some of the kids that frequent my mother's house might be interested in playing it. Well, one of the kids looked at it I guess and told her it was missing something to hook it up so she just forgot about it. She never told me that she had it since she didn't know I was interested in old game consoles.

 

My nephew who lives across the driveway comes over here a lot to play games and knows I like the old stuff. So he was at my mother's house and saw the 7800 and told me about it. I called her up and told her I wanted it. I was worried that it mught be missing the power supply with the proprietary connector but it wasn't missing anything to hook it up other than the RCA cable that comes with them to go from the console to the RF switchbox. It actually had a pair of standard A/V cables in the box that would have worked but apparently the kid who looked at it at my mother's house didn't know that. I use a RG6 coax cable with a F-Type to RCA adapter on one end for most old consoles anyway so this wasn't an issue.

 

It played 2600 games perfectly but there were problems with it going B&W on 7800 games which I have since fixed (as discussed in another thread I made on the subject) so it is all working great now for everything though the pair of ProLines are pretty well shot (they still work fine, they are just sloppy from lots of use). I am currently using a Sega Genesis controller for 2600 games and 7800 games that only use 1 button and making due with the functional but well-worn ProLines for the games that use 2 buttons.

[yuppicide]

I wish I got all that cool stuff for x-mas. I got other cool stuff, but no retro cool stuff.

[kencrisis]

I had an amazing retro Xmas this year too! Just got back to DC from my trip home to CA, and my Internet-challenged parents amazingly managed to get me Seawolf and Bump'n'Jump from AtariAge (although my Dad made a point of telling me how upset he was that AA only took PayPal or checks and sent them a nasty note telling them to "join the 21st century" -- does that count as irony?). My Dad got disgusted and gave up on ordering more, but he gave me a check so I could get Star Fire and Space Threat Deluxe -- which I ordered 10 minutes after arriving home. My little brother bought me a NIB copy of Solaris off of eBay.

 

On the non-Atari-related front, I also got the Battleship "board" game from my 'rents and my big brother found me an original working version of Operation new, sealed in-the-box. My sister-in-law went to a flea market and found shrinkwrapped vinyl LPs of The Who's "Who's Next," Kiss's "Dressed to Kill" and Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" albums -- all of which were soundtracks to my Atari-playing when I was a kid.

 

My whole family seemed really excited and into my recent exclamation about how I was trying to recreate my '70s / early '80s childhood and we had a great night pulling out stories of elementary school and games and toys from the era. As a semi-dysfunctional family, it was the one the greatest experiences I've had with them and something I'll remember for the rest of my life (and I really owe it all to Atari). 25 years later, Atari is still bringing families together!

 

I had told my Dad about how people on AA were posting old pictures of themselves playing Atari back in the day and he actually spent 2 days going through slides trying to find some for me! Although he couldn't find any, he's convinced that he can still come up with some. In the mean time, he came up with a bunch of pictures from our days in Indian Guides and spent the time to convert the slides to digital pics. If anyone is interested in seeing them, I've uploaded them at the link below; there are some freaky '70s dads and some really cool sneakers:

 

http://www.sillybirdrecords.com/kamera/guides/

[atari_aaron]

Yeah, I told my wife and my mother I wanted Atari stuff for Christmas. But alas, they see these items as frivolous (sp?) wastes of my time. I got clothes instead... well that and a bunch of Harry Potter stuff. But nothing retro.

 

Aaron

[ozatariprincess]

This year I got another 2600 console, but it has a stella adapter with about 5 games and also one of those spectravideo computmate keyboard. Which I am very pleased with it also had a heap of games both common and some not so common. Most definately that was one of my better presents!!!

[kyle]

I didn't get much atari stuff for xmas this year as i have in the past . But still my wife did pick me up two 2600 games i didn't have Beamrider and Name this Game. She had spent most of her christmas shopping money on a new camcorder for me!

[Curt Vendel]

I got some very cool items on my wish list from my Atariage Secret Santa, so I got some nice retro items for Christmas :-)

 

 

 

Curt

[madmjennifer]

I got my husband an Atari 7800 and Galaga and he got me a Virtual Boy with 9 games, an NES power glove with all the sensors and stuff, and a PS2 Kingdom Hearts game. He also got a Pac Man belt buckle from one of his friends. Pretty nifty Christmas.

Jennifer

[minorleagueguy]

I recieved Baseball and Pinball CIB for my Microvision, and Beef Drop!!

 

minorleagueguy

[Atariboy]

I got a Atari 7800 and some 7800 games, Atari Anthology for the Xbox (Only had been able to play it at a friend's place before), Activision Anthology for the PS2, two Namco Museum disc for the PSOne, and Intellivision Lives! for the Xbox.

[kencrisis]

I'm on a roll. Just got a package from a friend who sent me a ton of manuals he found in his mom's garage. For me, a real high. I love the manuals almost as much as the games (sometimes more) because when I was a kid, my older brother rarely ever let me play the Atari, so I spent many many many hours pouring over all the manuals while I watched him and his friends play.

 

Fond memory: my arm stinging from the punch my brother gave me when I tried to grab the joystick and play a game of Stampede. Tears in my eyes, I grabbed the manual and exclaimed, "OK, I'll just take your manual and you'll never see it again!" I took it to bed that night, slept with it under my pillow and secretly burned it the next day.

 

How many of you can say you've slept with an Atari manual!!??

[deathbysoup]

I've never slept with a manual, but I have slept with a game.

 

This year I recieved:

One of those new-fangled Atari TV games that you hook up to your TV and play. The games on it are: Warlords, Casino, Super Breakout, Night Driver, Steeplechas, Pong, Circus Atari, Street Rae, Video Olympics, Canyon Bomber, Arcade Warlords, Demons To Diamonds and Breakout.

I also got a new joystick and Mario Bros.

It's not much, but seeing your dysfunctional (okay, partly dysfunctional) family gathered around your Atari on Christmas morning is something to smile about.