Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0

talesfromweirdland:

Computers of days gone by.

The SHARP MZ-80K (1979); the COMMODORE 64 (1982); the XEROX STAR 8010 (1981). Below: the first IBM (1981), and an ATARI 2600 (1977).

Though they were still quite rare back then, I grew up with computers around me. Computers, you have to realize, weren’t always household items, they were for nerds, accountants, bank employees. The most frivolous thing a computer had to offer was chess.

My father owned a chain of electronics stores. I well remember him sitting in his study at night, hunched over this strange, forbidding machine, typing with one finger and squinting at the screen every time he had pressed a key, then back at the keyboard, seemingly caught up in a tense political game. I learned not to interrupt him.

My uncle was a bank accountant and owned one of the first PCs. It always struck me how little he knew about computers though. The bulky apparatus was mainly used by my annoying cousin, who played illegally copied games on it: KING’S QUEST, POLICE QUEST, ALLEY CAT, SABOTEUR. I liked LEISURE SUIT LARRY: in what other game do you have to buy condoms? I thought it was so funny and edgy.

My brother was a nerd. An authentic one, with oversized glasses, a big digital watch that displayed all the moon phases, and a short temper. He was scarily tech-savvy; as a kid, he once shut down the escalator system at the local mall, then turned it on again just to see how it worked. He later became a geek (his definition was, “A geek is a nerd who knows he is a nerd”), and because of him, we got our first game console, the Atari 2600, followed by the Commodore 64, the Amiga, and a whole lot of PCs. Each time we progressed to a new computer, I was amazed at how much the graphics had advanced, but my brother wasn’t: he was always thinking of the future, whereas I was (and am) always thinking of the past.

My brother naturally beat me at every game we ever tried; he used to say annoyed, “Just leave the controller alone, you’ll have a better chance.” He played flight simulators and text adventure games with utmost concentration, like he was splitting atoms. I learned not to interrupt him.

One day I was sitting in the schoolyard when Gino, the local hoodlum, showed up with his cronies. The whole schoolyard cleared, it was like Moses parting the Red Sea. Gino had a wild mullet, a black jacket, and big black eyes like a crazy person. They walked up to me, eyes fixed on me as they approached. I prepared myself for trouble. Gino directed his finger at me and said:

“I heard you own “Space Invaders”? Can I borrow it sometime?”