I had an Intellivision 2. Loved that system. Used to pick up games from Odd Lot for a couple of buck after Mattel Electronics shut down.

My thumb hurts just looking at that disc.

Yeah controllers mean a lot to me. Those things were awful.

I have a PS3 and my sister has an X Box. The controllers are inferior, and that makes a huge difference in the overall experience. Playstation controllers are really perfect.

never touched the stuff. I was a first generation Atari kid, and got my video game fix outside the house after I outgrew Atari. No question the Intellivision graphics look superior, but wasn't the Atari joystick better than that keypad-dial contraption? How'd you even work that thing?

I had one of the first video games made for home use. An Odyssey I think it was called. They used to give it out as a special prize on Wonderama. It claimed to have something like 32 games, but really it could only play pong. The different so-called games were 32 acetates with different themes. When you taped the Haunted House Acetate over your TV and proceeded to play Pong through the acetate they claimed that was a different game. We still thought it was cool. Eventually we upgraded to the system you had.

[5] Pong. Ha. My Dad and I would play pong. It was the only "game system" I ever had. I remember a friend coded a pong game on his Commodor 64 when we were in High School. I thought it was kinda cool - but geeky to the extreme. I just never got in games like that - nor computers (and now look at me).

Good Lord I feel old.

My kids have a Wii and I admit it is a pretty amazing piece of technology, but I'd rather watch and laugh at them then play myself. Give me a putter and a couple balls to knock around on the carpet instead. Or whatever.

Can I be an old fart at 44?

we had freaking Telstar. man, that thing sucked, haha! then, commodore vic 20. a little better, but still no baseball. a neighbor of mine, 3 doors down to the left, had Intellivision and we used to play that baseball game on it all the time.

fast forward several years, and i went to a neighbor a few doors down on the right, and we played nintendo baseball all the time.

MLB 2010 for PlayStation (the one Mauer does the promos for) takes your breath away with the realism.

Unfortunately, I have a Wii, and that MLB game for that is comparatively lacking visually.

I was a Pac-Man fanatic back in the day, and even had one of these ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfG8I-qNo2U

Intellivision was my shit! I used to play Astrosmash for hours, not to mention NHL Hockey, Horse Racing, Auto Racing, Boxing, etc. This post is bringing me back!

[5] The Odyssey game was made by Magnavox and the second generation of the game (Odyssey 2) was a lot better. My brother and I had dozens of the game cartridges (the baseball game was somewhere between the Atari and the Intellivision versions pictured above) and we played that thing for years. Then I got a Commodore 64 for Christmas and couldn't believe what you could do with it. It was truly ahead of its time.

for your history trip
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console

[8] That's MLB The Show. I played the 07 on the PS2 and the 09 version on the PS3. Really a great game, but I don't think I'll get it this year. It exhausts me.

Which was the one with the joystick/controller thing with the spinner on it? I remember a football game where you'd spin the spinner to throw the ball: slow for a short pass, fast for a long one. That was a pretty sophisticated system, as I recall, and I think they had baseball, too. Not just the spinner, but a bunch of different colored buttons.

[10] Yes, Astrosmash for hours. I wonder how well I'd do now?

[11] My first computer was a Commodore Vic 20. I could only do one thing on it. Write the program for counting: 1. Let x = x + 1 2. print x 3. go to 1 and watch it go. I think there was some kind of Snafu or Pong on there too.

Intellivision forever.