Childhood games

[MrBland]

My first electronic game was a bowling game. I actually stopped in the middle of writing this to see if I could find it in the "Museum". Took a bit of looking but sure enough there it was:
http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Misc/VanityFairBowling.htm

I was totally fascinated by this game as a kid. A mechanical strip of LEDs would go back and forth, when you pushed the big grey button the LEDs would light up one by one down the strip simulating the ball and would "hit" the LED "pins". You could do curve balls by letting up on the grey button and the strip would start moving again Angling the "ball". That was also the first game I opened up, I just had to see how that thing worked

Around the same time I got Microvision and Mattel's football, also a lot of fun. My neighbor had some tabletop arcades that I thought were the "coolest". Let's see he had Ms. Pacman, Popeye and a white game that from what I remember reminds me of defender, but I didn't get to play those much.

The next games that I really got excited about were the Gameboy and GameGear, I worked for months mowing lawns so I could get the GameGear I bought Lemmings and Shinobi with it, I obsessively played those games many happy hours:)

I started collecting not too long ago, I took my boys to Play & Trade (a used game store) to look for a Wii game for them when I saw a pristine original Gameboy for sale. Snatching that Gameboy up I was flooded with nostalgia and smiles. I had the bug

The system I have gotten most into is the Atari Lynx. I never had a Lynx as a kid, in fact I had never heard of it until I was reading the wikipedia page on the Gameboy I had just bought. I read that the Lynx had the first backlit color LCD, I love firsts so I had to buy it to check it out. That system is fantastic, it has many of the arcades I use to play in the Rainbow Arcade as a kid (they later shut that Arcade down because of the negative influence on the community ) I recently completed my collection of Lynx games. The Lynx gets more play time from my boys and I than he Wii!

I think I would like to collect tabletop arcades next. I like the looks of the tabletops like this:
http://www.handheldmuseum.com/Coleco/DK.htm

Now I just have to figure out a good way to store/display them.... turn the sewing into a gameroom maybe