Let’s talk about childhood, growing up...The feeling of freedom. When your only stress was what you were going to eat next, and what was on tv. It was all about, Saturday morning cartoons and hanging out with your friends-at their house and, depending on what decade you grew up in, at the skating rink, at the mall and...at THE ARCADE.
NN-"When I think of an arcade, that is the first thing that comes to mind...Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Pacman and Pinball, and, you know, definitely some loud 80's music going on haha."
On this episode of Pop Culture Icons, let’s take it back to that glorious era of: ARCADES.
(intro)
The year: 1972. The birth of a catalyst of the arcade, and, really, video games in general. Described as the first commercially successful video game, Pong was released. Designed by Atari engineer Allan Alcorn, it was table tennis or ping pong, put on screen. Players would use the paddles to hit a ball back and forth. You would get points when one fails to return the ball to the other, the goal being to reach eleven points before your opponent. It was basically some dotted lines and a ricocheting dot...By today's technological standards, Pong was primitive, but it sparked a video game race so to speak, and led to classic games like Breakout in 1976, Space Invaders in 1978, Asteroids in 1979, and all the games from the glorious 80’s and beyond.
DA- Well, um, I loved Pacman. And I loved Tetris, Tetris was always great. Yeah, those are probably my favorite ones. And the one with the gorilla...what was the gorilla, was that King Kong?
You mean Donkey Kong?
DA- Donkey Kong! There we go! Yes, oh my god Donkey Kong!
You're on a roll, don't stop now. Listen to the rest here, or on your favorite app here.