If they were truly yours...
I love video games and I mean that in the truest, saddest sense of the word. My memories are inextricably tied to what I playing at the time. Primary School was the BBC B with Brian Clough's Football Fortunes, Starship Command and Elite. Boarding School was Street Fighter 2:CE, the Sonic collection and Micro Machines 98. University was GoldenEye, Mario Kart 64 and Lylat Wars. I've had the Xbox 360, Wii and PS3 since their respective launches and my spare room is populated with a Mega Drive, a SNES, DreamCast, N64, Game Gear, Mega CD, Saturn and a few others.

But the very first console I had was the Atari VCS, complete with two joysticks and two paddle controllers. I spent more hours with my brother playing Circus, Tank, Breakout, Space Invaders and Pac-Man than it took to put man on the moon. Then (and stop me if you've heard this one before) my mother got rid of it, donating it to some relatives. Do not be too hard on her, this is one of only two known acts of cruelty by my mother. But naturally the loss of my original console has always left a hole inside that no amount of ultra HD graphics nor violent sadism could ever truly fill.

Flash forward to last Christmas. My aunt and uncle come over with their children and we do the traditional family things, playing on the Wii, falling asleep at inopportune moments. After the meal, my aunt announces she has an extra little present for me. The uncle comes back into the house with a huge box and plays down my expectations, insisting it's just a minor thing. I unwrap the cardboard and there, inside the battered and heavily taped original box is my Atari VCS. I think I managed not to cry.

It still worked and we played it for five, maybe ten minutes before deciding that the memory cheats and the games were awful (especially Pac-Man - I thought it was arcade perfect; not so much) but that didn't matter, I love that machine from its rubber joysticks to its wood finish and even though I let it go, it came back to me.
(johnson, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 15:21, 3 replies)

good yarn!
*click*
(bazmorningstar efil4nat3b, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 15:32, closed)

To quote...
...some cheesy picture on my nan's old wall:

"If you love something, let it go, if it loves you it will come back to you"
(dchurch bah, Mon 18 Aug 2008, 15:38, closed)

Starship Command!
OMFG! I spent HOURS playing that!
( Noeli overtheshoulderboulderholderthingstraplatchboobs, Thu 21 Aug 2008, 11:55, closed)