Arcade Overflow

So, during the (well, my) arcade boom of 2013-14, my craigslist wheeling and dealing wasn't confined to only the big arcade cabinets. As I've said before, I didn't really set out to have a home arcade. I was just using craigslist to trade surplus baby/kid stuff for things that sounded like fun to me. (free hoarding!)

The flip side of arcade gaming in the 70s & 80s was the home console, or "home computer" which was a game console with a keyboard attached to make parents feel better about it. ("It's educational!") In the former category, my allegiance, along with 80% of the country, was to the ATARI 2600 (commonly just "the atari"). Later on, after making a play-for-pay deal with my Dad, the Commodore 64 became the preferred way to get my game on. (though it did also teach me BASIC programming, so maybe they were right about that educational stuff...)

Anyway, surplus kid stuff, craigslist, yadda yadda yadda, and here's another, slightly different path the room that became the Arcade could've taken...

clockwise from bottom left:

C64, ATARI 2600, ATARI 400, Intellivision, TI-99/4a, VIC-20

Actually, even after the arcade theme of the room became clear, I was still intending to find a place in there for this stuff...

1. ATARI 2600 console with about 35 game cartridges (my actual console, bought by my parents way back when)
2. ATARI 400 home computer & 410 program recorder (cassette drive) with about 12 game cartridges and another 30 or so games on cassette
3. Intellivision console with about 12 game cartridges
4. TI-99/4a home computer & program recorder (cassette drive) with about 5 game cartridges and another 10 or so games on cassette
5. Commodore VIC-20 home computer & 1530 datasette (cassette drive) with about 10 game cartridges
6. Commodore 64 home computer & 1541 disk drive with about 75 floppy disks (the big 5 1/4" ones) full of hundreds of games

For now, it's mostly all boxed up in the closet because I haven't had enough free time to really get into any of it. Not sure how long it'll stay that way though. The peanut gallery has taken notice and made requests...

Yeah, that's PONG.

Oh, and craigslist-wise, I'm still in the black!