old school gaming

This series was largely inspired by a movie I caught at Sundance called Chasing Ghosts. It was also during this weekend that I played the original Donkey Kong arcade game for this first time in ages. By the time I was hitting the arcades, DK was pretty antiquated, but I'd dropped a few quarters in it before. Sure, I'd dodged enough barrels to rescue the ever-in-distress damsel, Pauline (yep, I'd always that she was Princess Peach, too). Our heroic plummer has quite a history.

But back to the movie, which was quite good (and I imagine pretty enjoyable even for non-gamers). Lincoln Ruchti, the director, does a fantastic job retracing the lives of the 1982 Video Game World Champions from a group photograph they had in Life Magazine. Through interviews with a number of them, he brings us into the present -- men who have for the most part put down their joysticks, but still relish remembering the glory days. They really were ahead of their time, gaming long before the likes of Thresh and Fatal1ty came along and made lucrative careers with their l33t skillz. The movie runs just a bit too long, but it'd be a fantastic purchase (or download) for that special gamer in your life. Oh yes, it's a mighty geeky film, but it knows it. You'll be loling, you'll see.

Ok, enough of the plugging, I'm not even getting compensated for it.
On with the headers:

Pac-Man: Even my dad knows this one.

Donkey Kong: I get the "Kong" part, but "Donkey"? Does this make sense to anyone?

Joust: They're rocs? Still looks like an ostrich to me. Steve's a big fan of this game, but he also likes Halo CTF.

Q*bert: What's more romantic than getting flowers, chocolates, and dinner for your significant other? Making a reddit logo with his/her favorite video game. +20 points to me. w00t.

Space Invaders: You knew this one was coming. How else do you think our mascot got here?

Frogger: Well, it turns out that I actually hated this game, but I finally got my revenge on all those cars when GTA3 came out.

Kid Icarus: Not an arcade game, I know, but I'd totally forgotten it was Valentine's day here in the States. I usually remember it because it's the day right after Dick Cheney shoots an old man in the face.

Asteroids: Yes, that typo was intentional. After all the chatter about the Google header from the day before, I thought we could use one fewer "d". Guess everyone just assumed we couldn't spell to begin with (hence, "reddit"). For the record, it's not like "Google" is spelled correctly anyway.

PONG: Thank you for starting it all (and for finishing this entry).

*And a tip of the hat to Adam (yes, that Adam) for suggesting the Pong logo.