Texas Instruments released this early home computer mid-1981 for the pricey sum of $525. The system made use of expansion modules which increased the functionality of the computer, such as a 5¼ inch floppy drive, a thermal printer, and a cassette tape drive.

Though primarily a learning computer, our TI had several games which saw continued use in my household. One of the more interesting was a game called Alpiner.

The goal of Alpiner was to climb famous mountains while avoiding obstacles like trees, brush fires, snakes, bears, skunks, and even an abominable snowman. The game made use of one of the TI’s most interesting features -- the speech synthesis module.

Whenever you failed, the system’s speech synthesizer would say, “Did you mean to do that?” Almost mocking in tone, it added insult to injury!

The other notable games played on the TI were the Zork text-based adventure games (The Great Underground Empire, The Wizard of Frobozz, and The Dungeon Master.) On the TI, the games were loaded from the take deck and save games were also recorded to cassette.

I spent a lot of time with the Zork series taking notes, drawing maps, and cursing the screen every time I became infested with chiggers. Fond memories, indeed.

The Vectrex

Released at the tail end of 1982, the Vectrex was an unusual system. No other home console, either before or since, has ever really been like it.

The system utilized vector graphics like those used by many popular arcade games of the time. The controller input also invoked arcade machines by having a left-sided joystick and four large buttons in a single row.

The Vectrex had an integrated monitor, a feature that has not been seen outside of handheld systems. Also unlike other systems, the Vectrex shipped with a preinstalled game -- Minestorm, an Asteroids clone.

A few of the games I really enjoyed playing were Armor Attack, Berserk, Scramble, and Star Castle. Berserk was particularly fun -- a game which charged the player with navigating simple mazes filled with crazed robots out for humanoid blood.

The machine was monochrome but came with graphical overlays to provide some color to games -- examples of which can be seen here.

And from what I can find out, the Vectrex as earned a cult following and a dedicated homebrew scene active to this day.

The Atari 600XL

Instead of the wildly popular Atari 2600, we had one of the home computer Atari systems. I rescued a 600XL, released in 1983 to replace the Atari 400/800 systems, from a trip to the dump.

We had many of the classics associated with Atari consoles in my house -- Defender, Frogger, Gauntlet, Missile Command, Pac-Man, and Q*bert -- but we also had a few quirky games I still find endearing.

I remember playing E.T. Phone Home, which will be forever overshadowed by its stupendously horrifying predecessor. E.T. Phone Home used a similar concept -- find and collect phone parts for E.T to phone home -- but is actually playable.

Taking the role of Elliot, players had to make use of stealth to slip past scientists and government agents to find phone part and return them home. Players could run; however, doing so would cause Elliot to drop any part he was currently carrying.

Another was Journey to the Planets, which put players in the role of a space-faring explorer. You’d have to travel to distant planets in search of prizes while avoiding obstacles and solving puzzles. An unusual game for the time.

One last game I really enjoyed on the 600XL was Zaxxon. The game was a side-scrolling shooter in an isometric view, tilting the player’s view upwards and to the right. The player controlled a ship with the goal of shooting down oncoming enemy fighters to reach the end of the level.

End of the Ride

I’d like to make one special mention for the Magnavox Odyssey 100.  I didn’t find one, but through the uncovering of the aforementioned systems, my Dad let me know about the one he had.

Released in 1975, the Odyssey 100 was the follow-up to the world’s first video game system, the Magnavox Odyssey; however, it was step-backwards in a number of ways.

The system played only two games -- Tennis and Hockey -- which were simple adaptations of Pong. The Odyssey 100 also lacked removable controllers, which I imagine made playing games with another person awkward.

I give my Dad credit for solving that problem by modding the system to remove the controller knobs from case and make them portable, connecting them back with ¼ inch guitar cord jacks.

With these systems back in my house, I look forward to hooking everything up and educating the little one of video game history!