I binged a 8-episode show on Amazon Prime yesterday called “UNLOCKED – The World of Video Games, Revealed”. It was a pretty nice history of video games and provided a lot of inside information. One question often asked was “What was your first video game system?” I had to think on that one for awhile, and couldn’t remember the name of mine and the image in my head was pretty vague at this point, but after searching the web for less than a minute there is was!

My first game system was the RCA Studio II. It came with 5 games built-in and that was it. It came out before the Atari VCS (2600), and I’m not sure what made me choose this particular system, but I saw it in the Christmas catalog and chose it as one of my Christmas gift picks one Christmas. I remember it being black and white, coming just after Pong was released, so at the time it was really exciting to have more than just a single game to play on our TV. I didn’t remember any gameplay at all, but I’m sure I got it for Christmas 1977, when I was 14 years old. I thought it was so cool to have more of a “computer” to play with instead of just a game.

I was quickly able to find videos of it on YouTube though–it is SO friggin’ awesome that the whole world is now at our fingertips, isn’t it? Several of the videos dubbed it “History’s Worst Home Console”. I think that’s a bit unfair unless you were actually there, and the reviewers all seemed to be much too young to have actually been born before the release of that system. In one review, the reviewer didn’t know how to play any of the games on the system and it was obvious he didn’t spend any time even trying to understand it or learn to play any of the games, he only reiterated how crappy it was, over and over. So unfair.

Those of us who were there and lived through the Atari 2600 years know it was a great experience and we understand that everything has a starting point and this was it. These were the earliest stages of video games, when gaming was in its infancy. Someone needs to give these old games a fair shake, someone who was there, who experienced it first-hand, in the moment. And that’s where a few of the people in “UNLOCKED” come from. They don’t make fun of or put down these old systems, they understand it’s all a part of the history and they respect it and accept it.

Yeah, I guess I just sound like an old curmudgeon now, spewing the ratchety “Back in MY day…” and “When I was a kid we had to…” but that’s my right, and someone has to preserve history properly and accurately, dammit! Hell, if I even still HAD that old system, I’d get it up and running again and give it a fair and honest review based on my actual experience.

I do like how everything is coming full-circle now though: 8-bit graphics are coming back, blocky is cool again, Minecraft is awesome, and retro gaming is everywhere! Even all of the old games are available everywhere as ROMs now, playable on home-built Raspberry Pi kits, allowing kids and adults to cheaply build their own custom retro gaming systems with hundreds, even thousands, of games built-in. Awesomeness!