Last Friday another Nasty Pirates night went off without a hitch. Due to Halloween conflicts we pushed our monthly gathering back a couple of weeks, which worked better for everybody. All five pirates (Jeff, Scott, Andy, Josh and myself) were able to make it last Friday, which meant good times. Depending on schedules, this might end up being the last gathering of the year. Thanksgiving will definitely throw off our normal “last Friday of the month” for November, and December gets real full, real fast. The last Friday of the month works great the first nine months of the year, but not so much as we enter the holiday season.
My plan this month was to entertain the pirates with some old school Atari 2600 action. Unfortunately the power supply on my Atari 2600 seems to have died, so I pulled my Atari Flashback 2 out of the closet and hooked it up. The Atari Flashback 2 looks like a smaller version of the Atari 2600 and contains 20 games built-in. It even has updated versions of the original Atari controllers! Believe it or not, I bought my Flashback at the Dallas vgXpo in 2005 and had never even opened the box, so I decided this was as good a time as any to open it! After opening the box and hooking everything up, I discovered the system is dead. I’m guessing after four years it’s too late to take it back!
As a quick alternative, I drug out (and by “out” I mean “across the room”) my Commodore 64 and hooked it up to the flat panel television. After killing an hour or so watching goofy Youtube videos, we fired up the C64 and the gaming competition began! I don’t remember everything we played, but I know there was some intense River Raid, Mario Bros., Joust, Up N’ Down, B.C.’s Quest for Tires, Way of the Exploding Fist, and Yie-Ar Kung Fu action going on. At one point in the night we noticed that both of my joysticks were having issues, so I ran downstairs and pulled out two brand new ones, still in the box — hey, this packrat thing is starting to pay off!
Next month I may try and put together an actual tournament of sorts with different games and prizes. I’ve had the idea in the back of my head for a while, but just haven’t had the time to put it together yet.
Anyway, another good night was had by all!