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When i was a kid in the early 70s, my neighbor Wally owned an arcade on the boardwalk in Coney Island. On weekends, my dad and i would ride our bikes up the boardwalk, and we'd always stop at that arcade (Wally's Fascination). Wally always gave us tokens to play skee-ball and pinball, on the condition we not cash in any tickets we won for prizes. It was a good deal, and i became a fair to middling skee-baller. Then one day, there was this new game... a "video game" before there were any video games. Before PONG even. Before Atari. It was called COMPUTER SPACE. You controlled a single rocketship, and a pair of flying saucers would "shoot" at you (they would fire a single dot at you). The controls were similar to ASTEROIDS... rotate left and right, with rocket boosters to move across the screen. and a trigger to fire your own dots at the saucers. There might have been a hyperdrive button too, for fast movement, or i might be misremembering.
Anyway, the game was a screen atop a tall narrow cabinet, with controls at hand level. I stared up at that screen for years until it was suddenly at eye level. By that point, PONG was big, and Atari home systems started appearing in my richer friends' homes. And after i went to college, all of these here fancy schmancy games you're all talking about started appearing at arcades and in home gaming systems.
But this baby was the first. And i was right there, son. On the Boardwalk at Coney, growing up in front of a black-and-white screen blinking with dots.
PacMan? please.
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