The video games I played (Part 1)

I've been spending a little time recently at the Killer List of Videogames getting all nostalgic. Although I'm more of a pinball guy, I did misspend a lot of time in my youth playing video games, both in the arcade and on my Atari 800 and 800XL computers. Games like these:

Asteroids...I played this occasionally in the arcade, in all its black-and-white glory, but I also had the Atari 800 cartridge, which was in color, combined the features of Asteroids and Asteroids Deluxe (hyperspace and shields), and worked with a one-button joystick instead of five buttons like the arcade game.

Baby Pac-Man...A combination video game/pinball machine, which automatically makes it cool, although the problem is that it's just boring old Pac-Man with the additional challenge of trying to play pinball to earn power pellets, and it's only a half-size pinball game that doesn't have the same "feel" as classic Bally pinball machines (even though it is a Bally pinball machine). The only other game they made like this was called Granny and the Gators, which I don't remember ever seeing in an arcade.

Berzerk...I only remember playing this a few times. This was the first video game with synthesized speech, but I don't remember thinking that was a big deal at the time. Maybe the arcade didn't have the volume turned up high enough.

Boulder Dash...I had this for the computer. See, there's this guy digging quickly (dashing, you might say), trying to get these gems, but there are all these boulders that might fall on him.

Burger Time...A man tries to assemble hamburgers, but is being chased by a fried egg with legs which can be temporarily immobilized by sprinkling pepper on it. They don't make 'em like this anymore, and probably shouldn't.

Centipede...This was one of the two game cartridges my father bought with the Atari 800. It was slightly more fun to play in the arcade because I didn't have the track ball at home, but as long as I was in the arcade anyway and wanted to play a game that involved shooting at various arachnids and other creepy crawling things, I'd play Millipede instead.

Champion Baseball...I played this game all the time in the back room at Papa Louis Pizza in Tampa.

Crystal Castles...This has some of the best background music in any video game. I think. I may be confusing it with Marble Madness. Don't ask me to hum it for you, though.

Defender...I didn't play this one often because I could never catch the humanoids as they were falling back to the planet's surface.

Dig Dug...Just like Boulder Dash, except without the gems and with the added attraction of being able to inflate the bad guys until they popped.

Donkey Kong...The problem with the arcade version was that it was made by Nintendo, which for some reason decided that joysticks should be controlled by the left hand and jump buttons should be controlled by the right hand, a concept that's still in place on the controllers on their home systems, as far as I know. Anyway, the joysticks I had hooked up to the Atari 800 were the American kind, with the button at the upper left. I was used to pressing the button with my left hand and moving the joystick with my right hand, so I was much better at Donkey Kong at home.

Donkey Kong Junior...I don't think I ever played this in the arcade, but I did play it at home, and sometimes I still see the Chains level in my sleep. This was actually a pretty good idea for a sequel, the idea that Mario finally captured Donkey Kong at the end of the last game, and now Donkey Kong Jr. is trying to rescue his father.

Dragon's Lair...I've never played this, but unlike with Berzerk's speech synthesis, I do remember what a big deal it was when this came out. The main reason I never played this? It was the first game to be priced at 50 cents, alone in a world of 25-cent games.

In the next installment: The game with the best background music, which I can still hum.