We had a nook in the wall of the basement, which served as our play room, growing up. In this nook all the board games were kept. I remember staring at those shelves trying to decide which game to play; we had the basics: Monopoly (takes too long), Clue (need more people to play). Then we had the weird ones we never really played like the Uncle Wiggily game
or the Secret of Nimh game that I received as a gift, although I still have never seen that movie.
Once in a while we'd get out Waterworks - but I don't know if I ever quite got it (my drama teacher would later give me the nickname "Waterworks" in high school). I mean who came up with the idea to have a game about repairing leaky water pipes with miniature wrenches?
When I was by myself I would sometimes play Park and Shop - yeah all by myself, I'd play as two people.
When we felt ambitious we'd play Mystery Mansion - an awesome game where you put rooms of a mansion together and find hidden treasure.
Possibly Careers, although that could get long too.
My favorite games when I was a young kid were Husker Du and Candyland.
I remember my Dad would play Candyland with me on his bed while he watched the evening news. 
To this day one of my favorite games is Battleship. I loved the red and blue boxes, with the blue glassy screens.
Also on the game shelf sat Spirograph, where you could create a multitude of cool patterns. 
One of the best things on the shelf were the Fashion Plates, belonging to my oldest sister. You picked a face, a torso, legs, and shoes. Then you could also pick from different patterns to give the clothes texture and finally you could color them. They were great, the girls were pretty. Perfect girl toy.
I was just going to have board game reflections today, but then I started thinking about the Atari games we played. One of the most exciting Christmas gifts we ever got was the Atari 2600. We all wanted it so much and we actually got it! We had/have a ton of games. I wish I could go home and play it tonight (but alas it's in Utah at my parents').
We had a lot of weird games that I never quite figured out like Riddle of the Sphinx
Sort of lame ones like Wabbit
But there were so many awesome games. Maybe my favorite is Maze Craze - it's simple, but so fun to race to that finish line and there were a billion different levels/variations.
There was Space Invaders - obviously
Jungle Hunt - sort of repetitive
Montezuma's Revenge - always got to a point where I couldn't figure out what else to do,
Asteroids
Vanguard
Berzerk
Sea Hunt
Enduro
Atlantis
Combat always made us laugh pretty hard - it was so much fun to continually blast people into oblivion - tanks or planes, either way.
Oh, man this next one was so weird - Sorcerer. The music from this game will be emblazened in my head for all time, I think. If you wanna hear it go here. Hearing that makes me laugh. That site is pretty fun - and you can hear and play a lot of the games, fyi. The sounds are seriously making me laugh like crazy.
I keep posting this and then finding more Atari games on this site that I totally forgot about and need to add, like Shark Attack, it was scary:
I strangely got really into the game Taz. You were the Tasmanian Devil and you had to not eat dynamite, but eat food - many different levels of different foods - I would spend a lot of time with that game - I would get so very far, until it sped up so very very fast.
Playstation, Nintendo, Xbox, Wii - none of them will ever take the place in my heart of the Atari 2600.
Good times.
What are some of your favorite gaming memories?
2 comments:
I loved seeing the old games we had. I was addicted to Enduro. I remember my hand and thumb just aching. I was really proud of myself for getting so far, one of the few games I was good at. The fashion plates were awesome. I remember I had the Kimberly fashion plates too. Those fashions weren't as great though. Mystery Mansion was so cool.
I remember the Atari aches in my hand as well. I knew we had some other sort of fashion plates, but couldn't remember what they were.
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