I can't believe I didn't cross post this when I created this playlist last year on 8tracks.
Despite the tech industry totally misunderstanding the point of Ready Player One and wanting to turn us all into VR vegetables, I liked this book. It contains a lot of touchstones from my childhood that I remember from the late 70s - early to mid 80s. It was a great time back then and video games were considered very advanced.
I believe I received my Atari 2600 sometime in early 1982, not really sure but I did have Pac-man. Since history websites state that Pac-Man was released for the 2600 in March 82, it had to have been around that time. Maybe I got it for Easter that year. Even though the price for the console had come down, it was still considered pricey at about $150 which would equal about $380 dollars now. Not only that the price of the cartridges were about $30 ($75 today) to $50 ($125 today) dollars a piece.
Truthfully I remember liking the games a lot. But it never really turned into an obsession. After the Atari craze, the game system was taken off the main TV set and attached to a rinky dinky black and white TV set in our basement rec room. Then fell into oblivion. My family never purchased the next latest and greatest video machine. The next video set I owned was Playstation in the early 2000s and subsequently Playstation 2. I got into WOW over the consoles and never felt the need to get an extra machine. Truthfully first person shooters never interested me. They make me nervous.
But that time in Spring to end of 1982 was fun for a kid. I remember hanging out with friends and fighting over who would play the next round. I had Pac-Man, Pong, Missile Command, Asteroids, Centipede, Casino, Atlantis, Barnstorming, Demon Attack, Frogger, Night Drive, Adventure, ET (What an awful game), Raiders of the Lost Ark and of course Pitfall. I think I had a few more titles but the ones listed are the ones I remember the most. It is Pitfall that was the most popular. Because we played so often, the game noises and 8 bit soundtrack became psychologically disturbing. So we would mute the sound and listen to the radio. For the rest of my life I will always associate Duran Duran's Hungry Like the Wolf with Pitfall.
That song is in my playlist along with other songs from late 70s to mid 80s that remind me of the early era of video games. Most of the music listed in the book didn't resonate with me. But on this playlist, it takes me way back, way, way back.
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