atari age

i've known about atari age for a while now, but somehow i didn't put 2 and 2 together until just the other day. you see, almost 2 years ago i finally decided to put my own atari lot up for sale. it was a little bittersweet for although i sure didn't need the boxes of consoles and cartridges taking up space in the garage anymore, and had mostly had my fun and was done, my ebay auction didn't yield the result i was hoping for. in fact, to be honest i really lost money on the deal which was the biggest disappointment.

time goes by. sometimes i would hear a song or see an ad in an old comic book that reminded me of those days in the early 80's when i would go over to my best friend's house and play atari for hours. and i missed that a little. so while browsing the atari age website the other day, i was a little surprised to come across an emulator for my mac, and an astonishing collection of roms for the 2600. and the download folders for these take up so little memory. so in no time i had not only replaced every single title i had basically given away in the ebay auction, but was playing games i'd never even heard of.

and in addition to having access to all these fabulous game experiences, atari age is the definitive resource for everything else you would ever want to know about the system including scans of all the ephemera, the instruction booklets, packaging, ads and even a marvel comic series called "atari force". and now i am able to tap into a little bit of that feeling, the memories of long gone days when life just seemed simpler. at my uncle's house in arizona on vacations we would swim all day until we got tired, and then came in and played asteroids or space invaders or missile command until we got the urge to jump back in the pool. and now i'm floating in an 8 bit sea again.