Most people, if you probe deeply enough, have a defining context. Some thing or series of things that happened to them relatively early in life that shapes who they are, how they function, and what they do in particular situations. For some people, this context comes from a nurturing and warm place - people whose parents cared deeply for them and spent time teaching and playing with them. For others, their context is darker, more sinister.
My own context, I feel, comes from both these places. Why, you ask? How can that be, when we all know that the Goddess's parents are good and loving people, who always provided for her and gave her the best possible start in life? Who were supportive, and committed to her every happiness?
This is all true and then some. My parents deserve a huge shout-out in recognition of all their work. They absolutely made their kids the priority while also taking time for themselves - really excellent role models. They spent time helping with homework, driving us to various lessons, and playing with us, and in particular this week I'm thinking of my father, who really got a kick out of playing games with my sister and me.
But - and here's the sinister part - he cheated.
Well, "cheated" may be a strong word here. Let's just say that in terms of early video games my Dad could find and exploit certain… shortcomings (or as we like to call them now "glaring bugs") in the system. Whether or not this has led to my own success in the software quality assurance industry I shall leave as an mental exercise to the reader, but suffice it to say that when we got our first video game console my Dad... took liberties.
I bring this up because of a conversation I had earlier this week that led me to the web in search of information on this early game console. My husband and I were talking about the Atari game system and I mentioned that we never had an Atari at my house. In true daughters-of-a-high-tech-worker fashion, my sister and I received a brand spanking new Magnavox Odysssey2 game console for Christmas 1979. The Odyssey system had a built-in keyboard and, in a very limited way, could be programmed. In assembly. Which, for an 8-year-old, wasn't going to happen. But the console had a number of game cartridges available for purchase, and over time my family collected a few of them. By far, my favorite was called "Football!" Yes, it included the exclamation point at the end of the title. No, I don't know why.
"Football!"'s tag line was "You captain a team of realistic electronic superstars!" This could not have been further from the truth in hindsight. But the box was really exciting, what with the exclamation point, so who wouldn't have been hyped up to captain this team!?
If you have a modern video game console, think of the graphics. And if you don't have a modern video game console… well, you'll still see what I mean. This is what "Football!" delivered:
Not so realistic. You only had 9 plays to choose from, and they were all laid out in the booklet that came with the cartridge, so like, no sneak attacks against your opponent or anything. There was a highly limited number of things you could actually do in this game. In fact, in later years, I've heard playing this particular game compared to watching an ant farm. However, at the time it was hot stuff, and my father and I played it for hours.
In the picture above, can you see the gold guy way out in front on the right hand side who has a white speck in his arms? Yeah, me neither. But that's the guy with the football. The football is the white speck. And that picture is what I would see over and over again as my father kicked my 8-year-old butt at "Football!". That guy way out in front can, under no circumstances, be caught - if you know how to set up the play. And my father knew how to set up the play.
He called it "Zee Play" because the guy with the ball ran in a "Z" shaped pattern to avoid being tackled (which, given these graphics, simply meant running your man into your opponent's man). Once you'd broken out of the boxy little pack, you were home free, and as I watched helplessly, my father would call out in glee "It's ZEE PLAY!". Thus our games would end with scores like 58 to 3, and I'd feel pretty damn grateful for my three points.
Now you have to understand that I adore my father. Always have, always will, and the fact that he mopped up the floor with my ass at this video game did not upset the balance of my love. At 8 years old, I understood that my father knew everything, and therefore it was obvious to me that he should know how to play a video game so well that there was no way to beat him. Until I started playing the game against my little sister, who, at 3 years old, had no hope of beating me even though I didn't know "Zee Play". And it was then that I started to understand that there was one play... Zee Play... that you could select and you would always - always - get a touchdown.
I didn't know it at the time, but I'd found my first software bug.
From then on, it was the Battle of Zee Play as the games I played with my father deteriorated into an attempt by me to run Zee Play more times than him in any given game. While this was entertaining for a while, we eventually moved on because there's only so many times you can yell out triumphantly, "It's ZEE PLAY!!!" before your mother comes upstairs and tells you to knock it off. Then your father looks sheepish because he taught you that in the first place, and so he makes you go finish your homework, which is not the thrilling end anyone wants to their football game.
In a stunning irony, I myself was accused - unjustly - of cheating at a different game. One of the cartridges we owned was for educational purposes (which, I suspect, explains why we had an Odyssey2 in our house and not a (non-educational) Atari) and it had a spelling game and a Hangman game. One evening my parents and sister and I were playing Hangman and it was my turn to guess. I tucked my head below my arms, and turned away from the TV. Once the word had been punched into the console, I was told to take a look.
A ten letter word. For an eight year old.
"Disneyland," I guessed immediately.
When you're unjustly accused of something as a kid, it can stay with you a long time. I'm 31 years old now and I still remember how upset I was when my parents accused me of having looked at that word. I was right, of course - the word was "Disneyland". But think about it. How many 10 letter words does an 8-year-old know? And beyond that, given my family's penchant for all things Disney (I don't get this obsession from the ground, you know - my parents went to Disneyland for their honeymoon!) it was about the only possibility for Hangman. So I protested and cried a little, and we resolved the dispute by not counting the round at all, which still sort of bugs me because I think I lost the next round and I was really proud of myself for getting the Disneyland round!
Yes, I'm a Libra. I'm really obsessed by justice and sometimes it just sticks with me for far longer than it should. Let's keep going, shall we?
There were other games, too, of course. There was "Take the Money and Run", a game that to this day I have no idea how to play. The fact that it was the buggiest thing to come out of a software release cycle in the history of human existence MAY have had something to do with that. The official rules for this game are posted here and if you can make any sense out of them, you deserve a medal. The game looked like this:
All I remember is that it was a two person game, and you played both against the other person and against these brain damaged robots within the game. There was something about getting bags of money, but the game was so buggy that you often wound up running into the walls of the maze in a sort of electronic epileptic fit that was difficult, if not impossible, to break out of. It might have been a clever idea as a game, but so poorly implemented that we quickly grew frustrated.
So yeah, the Odyssey2 was buggy. True, it had crappy graphics. And it absolutely left much to be desired in the long-term entertainment department. But after Christmas of 1979? That game console left me with a lot of really wonderful memories of times with my family.
And since I also received a Kodak camera that year for Christmas, I have images to go with the memories. Love ya, Dad...
- KNP May 3, 2003
