After T.V. console sets, the next step in gamer evolution was the hand-held. The only arcade game I could stand (like George "Can't Stands Ya" Constanza) was Frogger. The rest seemed accurately designed to milk as many quarters as possible from the player. As a kid, that gets frustrating, especially when game after game ends in under 30 seconds. Where's the fun in that? GAME OVER!
My brothers had their hand-held games, too. The best was Mattel's Electronic Football: a simple black screen with red dash marks. You started at one end of the screen to work your way towards the "end zone", which was the other side of the screen. After awhile, I got the hang of it. Basically, after one or two moves forward onto the field with a up or down direction thrown in as a feint, you used the "up" arrow key to position the mark representing your player to the very top of the screen, then used the right arrow key to move forward, which dodged all the other marks, to get you into the end zone for a touchdown.
It became a flawless formula, satisfying in the same way as solving a Rubix cube. But once learned, those games lost their luster fast, becoming so much plastic fodder for the garbage dump, where I'm sure they still are, since this was pre-recycling days. Computer games replaced arcades and hand-held games, which is an article for another day. Suffice to say, I'm back to playing hand-held games on, you guessed it, my iPhone. So what am I playing now, with all these tech advances? Tetris. And it's still so, so good. Current high score: 637,767.
Let the games begin.
