X-Sender: mwalcoff@pop.wam.umd.edu
To: brownde@cs.unc.edu

I think it was my seventh birthday in 1984 when I got an Atari 2600. I had
played Combat, Pole Position and Video Arcade at a friend's house and
couldn't wait for my own system. I spent countless hours in front of that
thing. I had Pac-Man, Pitfall and Carnival, among other games. 

Carnival was this game where you shot moving ducks and other targets.
Unfortunately, on our little TV set, you couldn't see the score! Later, that
TV set would catch on fire, no doubt partly the result of years of Atari play.

There was this other game, a football game. It could only be played by two
players, and my little brother was too young to do anything but eat the
joysticks (they were quite chewy). Another friend of mine had the Blitz game
for his little Ventrex machine. I suppose we thought it was great at the time.

In 1986, my mother married my stepfather, who brought along an Epson
computer. I quickly forgot about the 2600. We had Jumpman, LodeRunner, Agent
USA, Joust, BurgerMan (or something like that -- you dropped patties and
lettuce on evil pizza slices), Tapper and other great action games.

Other favorites included Infidel text adventures. Remember Zork and
Planetfall? How about Deadline? That game was actually pretty advanced in
artificial intelligence -- you could hold conversations with the characters.
Unfortunately, game makers then switched from making intelligent text games
to making flashy graphical ones. 

I wonder if these great 80's games are still available somewhere?

Anyway, in 1988, I think, I got a Nintendo. Damn that was fun. Excitebike,
R.C. Pro-Am, Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, etc. There was this big black book that
told you a lot of the tricks, and the Nintendo Fun Club magazine. 

I never thought to save the old stuff when the newest system came out. It's
good to see someone did. If nothing else, the 80s brought us some great
video games.

Matt Walcoff