Surveying the Gen X landscape and the origins of geek
Count me in. The closest I ever got to anything like this was a rusty red rocket in a public park that smelled like urine. I can’t remember the last time I saw a playground of any kind.
EDIT (1/10/12): Lefty Limbo has discovered Rocketship Park in Torrance, California. I’d forgotten about the slide, but the “stages”… My God, what a clusterfuck that was.
I remember the commercial, and I remember seeing the game in stores and wanting it, but I don’t think I ever played it. All the money my friends and I spent on D&D went to the rather pricey game books and modules.
Jesus, I forgot how abrasive the death knell is on this thing.
You got it. As I watch and rewatch every single available episode of Starcade, I’m going to post pics of all the cool prizes on offer. I never had ColecoVision, but I remember befriending the annoying rich kid in my neighborhood so I could give it a try. I just love those coiled controller cords.
These early cordless phones never worked. But the cobra graphic rocks.
What the hell did this thing do again?
Uh-huh. What the hell did this thing do again?
Where was I when this show was airing? Did I get knocked unconscious after falling into a ravine while looking for my stupid little brother, and wake up 30 years later to find that everyone else has aged but me? I hereby (retroactively) declare it the greatest show ever to appear on television. Here are a few reasons why:
1. The show aired from 1982 to 1983. Contestants play the greatest video games ever designed, and win anything from little Casio keyboards and handheld Pac-Mans to ColecoVision, Texas Instruments home computers, and full cabinet versions of the greatest video games ever designed.
2. In the first few episodes at least, little boys and girls are pitted against creepy, unemployed old men, one of whom refers to himself as a “magician.”
3. The first host, Mark Richards, knows absolutely nothing about these games or how one might play them, so it’s pretty funny watching him try to talk his way through the show.
4. The prize advertisements are almost as awesome as getting to see all these games again.
You can get the complete history of Starcade here, and you can watch most of the episodes for free here.
Easily the greatest video gaming experience of my life, I first played the full environmental cabinet of DoT at Disneyland’s Starcade. Enveloped in black light and stereophonic sound, I was there, on the gaming grid of the mainframe, until I died playing (i.e. ran out of quarters).
The Starcade opened in 1977, a few years before Tron came out, and I almost always spent a couple of hours there. I remember mostly the slew of Tron games (both the original with the light cycles and DoT) and rows of pristine air hockey tables.
For the opening of the really sillyTron: Legacy, Disney opened a replica of Flynn’s Arcade and filled it with old school games, including the original Tron and a newly released Space Paranoids designed to look like the game Flynn played in the original movie. No DoT to be found, sadly, at least not in the video teaser below.
Hopefully these beauties were moved to the Starcade, which is something of a cultural landmark in itself, though it has been neglected for many years, the top floor closed off (that’s where my DoT was), two tired air hockey machines and that stupid basketball toss game on the ground floor.
UPDATE (1/10/12): I don’t know how long it will last, but you can play Discs of Tron and Classic Tron at the Disney Game Site.
Speaking of BSG, I had the Viper before that kid choked on the red missile and they were recalled and reissued with a missile that popped out only about half an inch, like a sad, tiny boner. The original Cylon Raider was even cooler because it had two shooting missiles. That was the last time we saw shooting parts on anything, which really sucked when we finally received our emasculated Boba Fetts in the mail.
Read more about the Battlestar Galactica toy death at the Star Wars Collectors Archive.
See also: Mattel’s ‘Missile Toy’ Recall.
2 Warps to Neptune 