New game in town

I've owned only four console in my life. It all started off with the APF TV Fun model 402. I bought the game with my own money (which consisted of ALOT of rolled-up quarters, nickels and dimes) in about 1978. It was a TV Pong game for up to 4 players with a "lightgun" for games like skeet.  Skeet, for the uninitiated, consisted of a small white square that would appear at random locations at a random interval on a totally black screen for a split second and your goal was to try to zap the square with your "lightgun" before it disappeared. I still have the APF TV Fun model 402 btw, and last time I fired it up about 8 years ago it still worked.



Next I moved up to the classic Atari 2600 VCS in the early 80's. The Atari 2600 MADE the TV game console market. No idea how many hours me and friends spent in front on this thing. I still have the Atari 2600 (with the original controllers) and many of the cartridges up in our game room. As of last year the thing was still working fine after a trip to Radio Shack to buy a new TV-RF Converter box.



Sometime in the mid to late 1980s I was given a old Intellivision system by Jar(egg)head. I played with it a bit but the disk&keypad controllers on the Intellivision were always more fragile and subject to failure from use than the sturdy 2600 joysticks. I don't know what happened to the Intellivision, for all I know it is still somewhere in my storage unit.




The last game console I bought was the Super Nintendo in 1991. The game technology was way ahead of the previous systems but for some reason I never had the attachment to the Super Nintendo that I had to my other games. I probably only every owned 3 games for it and it soon fell into disuse. I still have the Super NES up in our gameroom with only the Desert Strike cartridge remaining to give it purpose.  It was also still functional as of last year.

From 1992 onwards I pretty much lost all interest in consoles for gaming with no intention of going back. When it came to gaming, the PC and paper & dice RPGs and board games were my preference.


Fast forward to April 4th, 2009, when I finally broke down and purchased the X-Box 360 Elite. Wasn't sure whether to get the X-Box or the PS3, but as the madAngel so wisely put it "Why pick. Buy one now, then buy the other one later." I have only just started playing with it (work and doing my taxes eating up most of my time) but I am really very pleased with it.  I picked up Left 4 Dead, Halo 3 and Alien vs Monsters as starters.  In comparison to the PC version of Left 4 Dead I've noticed that the X-Box version seems to have smaller/shorter scenarios and the game play is a lot easier. You really have to work for your kill-shots in the PC version, X-Box is more forgiving. Which probably makes sense since it is a console designed for more casual play. Which is the niche it fits well into for me. When I'm annoyed with stupidity at work, I can plop down for a few minutes and have a zombie bloodbath and mentally decompress while the madAngel reads comics or a book. When I have more time to focus seriously on a game I'll fire up the PC or iMac.