When I was your age...
The skinny kids were the video game nerds, and the fat kids were the football players.
The video game geeks actually knew how a video game worked.
You grew out of video games when you discovered girls. Or at least you kept the hobby closeted from that point forward.
There was no 'vintage' video game. We were first generation, baby!
The storyline was a secondary in a video game. We didn't need a storyline to distract us, the video game was the distraction!
In 1981, when Pac-Man was all the rage, my family threw a Pac-Man themed birthday party. They made the Pac-Man cake, and I think a Pac-Man poster and Pac-Man balloons. Maybe that's because we were poor (it was the 80s - we'd just gotten through the oil crisis of the 70s, inflation was through the roof, unemployment was following it, and the auto recession was in full swing). But I think it was more because the media hadn't yet learned how to artificially produce fandom-type hysteria through merchandising. Movie-themed and video-game themed merchandise started out as a response to demand; now clever marketers manufacture the demand for us - merchandise for the next hit animated feature (from costumes to napkins to action figures) is available before a title is even released.
You can take a trip back in time too, with the Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga Arcade.
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