Nostalgia is Dumb

Like most computer jerks, I've got boxes of old console systems stored in my parents' basement.  Unlike most computer jerks, I don't actually live in my parents' basement.  Why do I bother hanging onto them?  Because they're my parents and I love them.  As for the systems, I have no idea, and I'm not going to worry about it until I'm forced to confront my issues on national TV (e.g., Hoarders, Intervention).  But of those systems slowly succumbing to time and toxic mold in the basement, one will forever remain conspicuously absent:

My parents were too poor

I first became aware of the Atari when I was three years old, and from the moment of that initial awareness, I begged my parents to buy me one.  They didn't, of course, partly because I was too young, and partly because of the $15,000 price tag.  Instead, my brother and I had to settle for a discontinued Vectrex system (which actually was pretty awesome).  As such, I have no emotional attachment to that particular Atari system.

Nevertheless, this really warms my cockles:

Cockles: getting toasty...

That's right!  It's Halo for the Atari 2600. And just like Halo on the XBox, this game is way too hard for me. Of 64 levels, I've made it all the way to Level 3.  This is not all for lack of skillz, per se, as the controls stick sometimes.  Most of the time my guy gets smoked when he waltzes into an electrified pillar or something (this problem seems to happen less with IE than Firefox, but I may be just imagining things).