Oh, You Had An Atari!

[8Ways2Tuesday]

I'll apologize right from the start because this is fairly... not-good. But it's a story I've always wanted to share with someone who might appreciate it!
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Some of my earliest memories involve playing a math-related video game in the mid-1980's. I'm not sure if I ever learned anything from it, but I did decide that I liked blue more than yellow and since that was an age where having a favorite color was vital, it seemed like major progress.

The game system stuck around for a few years and my family ended up with Pac-Man, something that was probably a variant on Asteroids, and a game with little mice being chased around a maze by cats.

And then, some time in the early-1990's, the thing stopped working entirely. I never gave it much thought, especially not after receiving a brand new Super Nintendo for Christmas one year.

Years later, when I realized that all my other toys were being remade for the current generation, I started wondering what that game system actually was, if only to answer my own question.

I tried explaining the set up to a few of my friends at work and the moment I said 'joysticks and cartridges', they always said: "Oh, you had an Atari!"

I was fairly sure that I would have remembered the name 'Atari'. In fact, I was mostly sure it was more of a computer than a game system.

"Oh, you had an Atari," someone else would say. "You're getting confused with something else."

I really didn't think it had been an Atari, but I accepted it and continued building my current video game collection.

I hadn't yet decided to join any internet communities dedicated just to gaming and wasn't sure how to search for 'I really don't think it was an Atari' when I found a book on Amazon detailing just about every game system from the 1970's to the present.

Within days I'd discovered that I'd wasted countless joyful hours of my childhood with a TI99/4a, which my father confirmed upon seeing the picture with "Hey, that's that thing we used to have!"

I never have had an Atari.

[Dire 51]

Good story.

Some people, I swear. Well, obviously if it had a joystick and cartridges it HAD to be an Atari, right? There's no way it could have been any other system because everyone knows Atari was the only one with joysticks and cartridges. They're as bad as the people that think if a song parody exists, it had to have been done by "Weird Al" Yankovic, because everyone knows he's the only musician in the history of music that's ever done parodies.

[vintagegamecrazy]

Decent story, I really liked it. It was layed out well and it was unique from most others posted here.