When I was a kid the very first video game I played in my house was Atari’s ” Pong ”

When I was a kid, the first video game I played at home was Atari’s “Pong.”

My dad bought the system for “the kids,” but he and his cousin played it before we did, and they got longer game times. That was fine with us because my siblings and I were feral Gen X kids used to being outside until the streetlights came on.

“Pong” was too slow for us, and so were the Atari games that followed.

I liked to play pinball, and I was good at it, so it was a long time before I got into home video game systems. My Atari embargo lasted until the 1990s, when my kids asked for a Nintendo game system for Christmas. Initially, I wasn’t crazy about the idea, so they asked my brother for one—and OF COURSE he got it for them and a bunch of games to boot.

Once we got it, me, the boys, and their dad really got into playing Nintendo. However, our favorite family game was “Zelda.

We spent a lot of time playing that Zelda, and I think in part my sons loved it because their dad had been reading the “Lord of the Rings” books since they were toddlers, so going on a quest really appealed to them.

I think the last system we had in the house was the Nintendo 64. We liked the Donkey Kong games like Donkey Kong Country (we were amazed by the graphics), and of course, Zelda was there too.

It’s not like we couldn’t have kept upgrading our game system, but the boys were growing up, were out and about, and we didn’t do much in the way of family game time anymore, so we fell away from that universe.

Nowadays, my granddaughter and her friends like games they can play on their tablets, and she can play with friends who aren’t even in the same house as her.

I think that’s a little sad, because even when the Atari system came out, the idea was to enjoy it together with your friends in the same room. Today’s games aren’t like that at all.

I think that is sad- even sadder than the graphics for  “Pong”.