50 yrs. ago - The devourer of quarters made its debut

[packman]

[Brother Buzz]

1. My buddy was a math student at UC Santa Cruz and landed a summer job....

writing code for it. Payroll was real sketchy; Nolan Bushnell resorted to barter and trade.

I initially laughed my head off when he told me about this upcoming electronic pinball machine. I had NO idea!

[MineralMan]

2. Around 1990, I bought an original 70s Space Invaders cocktail table coin-op game.

I found it at a garage sale and they were only asking $100 for it. Worked perfectly.

So, I took it home with me, where it sat in the living room to amuse people who were guests at our home. Then, when we rented office space in a local business center, it went there and sat in the reception area for the same purpose. it got played a lot. There was a cup full of quarters always sitting on it. The lock was broken on the door, so...

Finally, in 2004, when we moved to Minnesota I put an ad in the local penny saver paper. I sold it to some guy who was a game collector for $400. It was still working. A good bargain, I think.

[yonder]

3. Remember the ones that you could sit around with friends,

the top of which had enough room for pitchers of beer and glasses? I misspent more than a few hours around those.

Time flies.

[tblue37]

4. 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds. "

[Archae]

5. My first game console was "Pong."

From Sears.

Nowadays I have an XBox 360, XBox One, Playstation 2, Nintendo Switch, and Gamecube.

All still working.

[Mr.Bill]

6. The first Pong game I saw was a table-top unit

on a table in a bar and it cost ten cents. That's the only and last time in my life I played a video game.