It’s amazing how videogames these days can cost tens of millions of dollars, require large teams of artists and programmers and take years to develop, yet a game like Atari’s Combat, with its simple gameplay and graphics, can be just as fun and competitive when played with a friend, even after all these years.

And just like my alter-ego mentioned in the previous strip, I’m more of an Intellivision guy myself, as that’s the console my parents bought me when I was a kid. But my next door neighbor had an Atari 2600, and I cannot tell you how many hours she and I spent playing Combat, Night Driver, Pitfall!, SupermanRiver Raid, and yes, even the infamous E.T., among others. I still have all those sounds catalogued in my head, and either hearing those bleeps and bloops or seeing those visuals takes me back to that time instantaneously.