Nostalgia filled me as I whiled away the afternoon hours.  Christmas Eve was here again, and I wanted to drift back in time.  I am never happier than when I think back to the early 80s, and how wonderful and perfect Christmas Eve was.  Now, so many of us are gone.  Uncle Paul and Grandma have left us, and Aunt Maria is not well enough for Christmas anymore.  By mid-afternoon on Christmas Eve back in 1981, or 82, or 83…I’d be anxious to the point of explosion, waiting to get things started!  We had to kill time, am eternity of time.  Or so it seemed.  What was really a few hours felt like days.  So we’d go down to the basement and try to stave off the combination of boredom and anxiety, by playing Atari 2600.  Meanwhile upstairs, Mom would be furiously preparing for the arrival of guests, while dad sometimes worked or sometimes flipped channels between March of the Wooden Soldiers and A Christmas Carol.

The old Atari 2600 still works, but it’s at the lake awaiting next summer’s fun.  Emulators capture most of the experience, minus the joystick.  And so I cued up some games.  Things that would remind me of the past… the competitive past with Dr. Kathryn, playing the classics.

Time-appropriate music was necessary.  I chose the Brian May Starfleet box set.  Even though I’d not been aware of Brian May or the album back in 1983 when it came out, listening to new music was also a Christmas Eve tradition, and disc two of the set is fresh to me.  The combination worked.

I started out with an old Uncle Paul favourite:  Activision’s River Raid.  Either due to being years out of practice, or the lack of a joystick, I fared poorly.  I remembered all my old strategies, such as slowing down to refuel, but I couldn’t even get past the second bridge.  Let’s try something more fun.

The second game I played was an old “M Network” cartridge, now emulated online, called Frogs and Flies.  It wasn’t rated highly by us back then, but it is strangely playable.  The object is to jump your frog, and catch more flies with your tongue than your opponent (or computer player).  There are only two controls:  one to jump and one to flick out your tongue.  The graphics, featuring the frogs jumping on lilypads in a pond, capture the transition from morning to night.  The game is on a time limit, and once it is night, it ends.  Top score wins.  (I won.)  Well, that was fun.

Brian May and Eddie Van Halen solo’d together as I tried the old Star Wars:  Return of the Jedi – Death Star Battle game.  This is not a game that we owned, but we did rent it at least once (in the summer, actually).  I remembered it being really cool, but I did not destroy the Death Star in 2025.  Unusually for games of the time, it was a two-stage game.  First, you (the Millennium Falcon) must battle TIE Fighters and Imperial Shuttles as you wait for a hole in the Death Star’s shield to appear.  Once through the shield, you must now destroy the Death Star by shooting out blocks, creating a clear shot to the main reactor.  This while being attacked by fighters and the Death Star’s superlaser itself.  I did not do well.  The strategy here is to move to the far right or left, and lure the laser’s sights as far from the center as possible.  Then, zip to the middle and take shots at the Death Star for as long as you can before the superlaser is locked on you again.  You only have a few seconds.  I found this un-fun and only tried a couple times before quitting.  The Empire wins this time.  (No sequel trilogy.)

I searched around for a few games.  I tried Pitfall, considered one of the best games on the console, but bored quickly of repetitive scenes.  I played Vanguard, but it took me over 10 lives just to kill the first Gond.  Then Freeway…chickens literally crossing a road.

Before I knew it, it was just about time to depart and get merry.  I probably spent more time searching for a game that I wanted to play, than actually playing.  Just like the old days.

Pac-Man.  Haunted House.  Frogger!  Damn Frogger, that one had me going all Christmas Day when it came out.  I thought it was the best Atari game ever made.  It may well have been.  Those were indeed the days.  Monopolizing the TV to play Frogger all day.  Food?  A distraction!  Taking away from our Atari time!

Christmas Eve ended with a new set of Uno games.  Something I probably also received from Uncle Paul one Christmas Eve back in the 1980s.

Full circle.  The more things change, the more they stay the same, and that is a comforting sentiment.