New to RetroPie

These games were so risque for the time that you'd have to ask the clerk for a copy from behind the counter. The packaging even had a cheap little lock and key to act as an early form of parental control.

Kaveman42

@mediamogul

Wow, would love to see a pic of that. I couldn't find it on google. I had the Atari 7800, which was when I was probably 7 so I don't remember much. The NES was what I truly grew up on. What's crazy is that if I remember correctly, the games were about $50 back then to purchase and games now are still roughly the same price. If the games sucked you were SOL , which was very common.

mediamogul

@Kaveman42

the games were about $50 back then to purchase and games now are still roughly the same price.

Adjusting for inflation, they were quite a bit more.

If the games sucked you were SOL , which was very common.

Exactly, and out of a handful of reasons attributed to the video game crash of 1983, that might be the biggest when you consider how much garbage was being released. The odds were just not in favor of a positive consumer experience.

backstander

I remember going with my dad to Walmart to pick up an Atari 5200 when I was like 6 years old. It must had just came out because there was a lot of people looking at them. Back then we didn't have YouTube and the internet to read reviews of games to find out if they're any good.

mediamogul

@backstander

Do you remember what games you had for the 5200? It had some pretty good ones. The 5200 version of 'Berzerk' was the definitive home console port. It still amazes me that they were able to pull off the voice samples.

backstander

I literately had a shoe box full of 5200 games because I would store them in a shoe box.

Here's what I remember having:
Breakout
Centipede
Defender
Dig Dug
Frogger
Galaxian (I think?)
Missile Command
Pac-Man
Pole Position
Popeye
Q*bert
Qix
Star Wars - The Arcade Game

I might be missing a couple that I can't think of right now.

To this day I still think Defender has the coolest sound effects!

mediamogul

@backstander

Those were all top-notch conversions. You and your dad basically had your own private arcade. Did he play much?

backstander

@mediamogul

Did he play much?

He did at first but he wasn't that much of a gamer. I think we picked those games out because they where arcade games and we'd played/heard of them before (plus he probably paid for a majority of those and we didn't buy all those at once). I do remember playing a few NES games with him like River City Ransom and also my whole family would compete for high score in the Gameboy version of Tetris (my mom got pretty good at that game).

mediamogul

@backstander

That's great. My family never really played games together. My Mom and Dad weren't interested and brother and I would just shove each other out of the way for whatever one player game we wanted to play. It was basically the exact opposite of Atari's marketing.

atari