Beech Tree News Network

With the release of the movie Pixels this weekend, I figured this to be a good time to walk down video game memory lane.  The first popular arcade games were things such as shooting galleries, ball-toss games(my favorite) at amusement parks.  Whenever I go to Beech Bend, I always go straight for the ball-toss.  Fortune-tellers and strength tester machines are also popular. 
The short levels that comprise video games rise in difficulty with each level.  I remember playing arcade games at Pizza Hut, Wal Mart and Uncle Lee’s when I was a kid.  My favorite arcade games were always the fighting games.  Typical little boy, right? WWF Wrestling Superstars Challenge was always a favorite, as was Bad Dudes and later, Street Fighter. When they converted those games to Nintendo, I was all over them.  I did beat the Bad Dudes game, by the way.  There’s a certain feeling of accomplishment and glory when you defeat a video game.
Another of my favorites was Mike Tyson’s Punchout! It took a while but I eventually beat that game.  I beat that game at home on my system.  I don’t know if I ever beat a game at the arcade.  The main reason being that I eventually ran out of quarters.  I was all over the Mario games. 
1967 was the first noted console, simply called The Brown Box.  It was a bulky, rectangular, brown wooden box.  There were six games for the console: ping-pong, tennis, handball, volleyball, chases games and a light-gun game. 
The Magnavox Odyssey debuted two systems in 1972.  Graphics, controls and on-screen scoring was better but the games were the same.  The Magnavox Odyssey 100 and 200 were in ’75.  Coleco Telstar was in ’76. 
They continued on and on.  My first console I recall playing was the Atari 2600 in 1977.  Yes, I was born in ’79.  Maybe it was gotten a few years after release at a lower price, I don’t know.  There were three more systems around that time.  North America saw the first Nintendo in 1985.  The Super NES went from ’90-’03.  The Nintendo 64 was from ’96-03. GameCube, which I didn’t get into, went from ’01-’07.  The Wii debuted in December of 2006 and was discontinued in 2013.  If I remember correctly, we got our Wii in ’07. 
I read the opening line of the IMDB description of the movie Pixels, “As kids in the ‘80’s”.  That’s it.  I thought, “I was one of those”.  In the movie, intergalactic aliens misinterpret video feeds of classic arcade games as a declaration of war against them and attack the earth using the games as models for their various assaults. 
The first clip of the movie was, in fact, a picture of Pac-man to celebrate Pac-man’s 35th birthday.  Does it sound like I’ll go see this movie? Yeah, buddy!