Episode 17: GenX Sports Video Games: Part 1.

🎙 Welcome to GenX Classic Sports—the podcast that takes you back to the golden age of sports and nostalgia! If you grew up in the ‘70s, ‘80s, or ‘90s, this is your home for reliving the greatest moments in sports history.

Today, we’re diving into classic GenX sports video games—the legendary titles that shaped our childhoods. From Atari 2600 classics like Home Run and Football, to Intellivision’s MLB Baseball and NFL Football, and of course, the Nintendo era with Tecmo Bowl and Baseball Stars—we’re reliving the games that defined a generation.

We’ll break down the best sports video games of the '70s, ‘80s and ‘90s, share our memories, and talk about how these games paved the way for today’s sports gaming industry.

Hit those Like and Subscribe buttons so you never miss an episode of GenX Classic Sports—where the past comes alive!

Now, let’s press start and jump into some retro gaming nostalgia!

Production Credits:

Intro and outro music: Mason Enis

Narrator: Haylee Wolf

Copyright @ PineStreetProductions 2024. Any illegal reproduction of this content will result in immediate legal action.

Transcript

welcome sports fans to Gen X classic Sports where we bring the Nostalgia of our Sports filled you into the present

day grab your favorite retro jersey crab open a cold one and let's stroll down memory lane together we're here to

discuss iconic Sports moments teams and athletes from our generation this is Gen

X classic sports sports talk for Gen xers by gen xers yeah so welcome welcome

to the podcast guys I actually know for once what number we're doing and this is going to be episode 17 and part two of

it will be episode 18 I'm sure we'll get two episodes out of it I'm Sean my partners in crime are David and Casey

we're missing one of the founding fathers tonight but we'll catch him on another episode um

tonight we're going to talk about uh Gen X video games and how we grew up uh with

those and I just want to mention that um in today's um today's era you get a lot of

people who say well that's all kids do is play video games games and I got to thinking man if we do a podcast about

all the video games we played people are going to think we didn't do anything else since we haven't really talked about our hooping days and whiffle ball

days and all that so much so I just want everybody to know that this is what we did when you finally got tired of

hooping or it was raining or whatever and we weren't out in the yard playing whiffle ball about the only thing we

could do at night was uh shoot hoops which we did do that until midnight many many times and and after

true and uh we could play later on we could play pool after dark right and

we'll maybe we'll talk about that someday but when we got tired of all of that and we ended up in the house this

is what we did if we weren't watching uh 80s action movies and standup Comics so

all right so the first thing on our list is actually the first thing that I actually remember which was the old

handhelds uh by Mattel and we got really lucky with this podcast guys there's a lot of good pictures of this stuff

that'll be on YouTube uh because I realized this stuff's so old all the rights have diminished and everything's

in like the open uh what do you call it uh domain public domain a lot of the

pictures of these products so we got lucky so yeah I sent y'all pictures of these handhelds by Mattel from the 70s

the notes say in 1977 they they came out with Mattel football and Mattel baseball

and uh guys David I know you got these uh back then and uh Casey and I

certainly did too so what do y'all remember about those David go ahead and go first uh at the time that was one of the

greatest inventions ever you know for a kid who loves sports and and it was

Unreal many many hour playing that yeah yeah top top of the line at the

time great time Killers right I mean better than phon as good as a cell phone

is today and for those just listening and if you don't have a chance to see pictures if you'll remember they were

the small handheld the baseball one was in a brown plastic case and it had the the image of the baseball field the

football one is white and has the image of the the football field on it and both

of them had the red dots that run around that you know that's it just you just go up down with red dots or swing or

whatever and we wasted hours and hours and hours with these things and David I

remember you having them before us but we eventually got our birth birthdays and Christmases and finally rounded a

couple of them up do you remember which ones you got or you have the the football first and probably I don't know

a couple years later maybe got the baseball actually I got the idea from our neighbors down the street over the

hill and down the street they had it first who did the uh

Chris and Steve oh Chris and Steve Grafton okay well so obviously according to the uh

the information I have that was around 1977 when they when everybody had a

chance to get them so they must have gotten them right around then and then you followed eventually it would had to

been yeah 79 probably at the earliest they may not they may not have

got it when it first came out I don't know right well I would say the late 70s

uh Casey you were a punk kid then man for sure do you remember uh us having

those I remember those original ones and I played I think baseball was my favorite

one yeah and I know a couple years ago those things kind of got popular again somebody I guess it was the same company

Mattel I guess re-released them because I've seen I don't know if it's a newer

it's basically the same thing they had there was some popularity

there for them to come back yeah I don't I remember telling y'all that I found them in Walmart and you said a couple

years ago it's been like 10 or 12 years ago at least

now um and I ended up buying the football one because we must have worn ours out and pitched it in the trash so

I went and I I repurchased the football one which I can see from where I'm sitting and I and I have two of the

baseball ones our original one and then I re purchased it too and the only difference in the games when they came

back out was they swapped out the 9vt for two

doublea's oh otherwise it was the same exact setup and I mean man you talk

about making a car trip much more fun back in the day when there was nothing

before that in a car to do these things came out and there you go right and they had pretty cool sound

effects for the day too yeah but the football game had when you scored a

touchdown I don't remember what it did but it had some little it had some little beeps that yeah yeah and the

baseball game when you hit a home run the whole thing lit up and everything kept flashing yeah and it it the beeps went

crazy in in baseball when you hit a home run and all the lights lit up yeah I

don't know if y'all remember but on the baseball and the there's only four buttons on the whole baseball game and it's like uh there were two levels

though remember you could put it on the harder level and it would pitch it a lot harder

and if you were playing with somebody that didn't play it very often you could slide the lever back for them and it

would pitch slower and then you could ramp it back up again um to pitch it much harder so I always thought that was

funny but do y'all remember that the football one they made a sequel to it

where they added passing and it was in a green plastic case and you could throw the ball on it do y'all remember that

yes yes y I don't know if any of us ended up with that one but it was it

came out with head-to-head one too where you could play it was like the buttons on both sides of the field top and

bottom basically yeah I don't know how you could actually stand there head tohe head and play against each other because

the whole console wasn't very big wasn't much room you'd actually have been head to head I was going to say that's must

be where that term came from your foreheads must have been touching yeah you must yeah according to the notes um

that was $400 million in sales um and I don't know

what that equat to now with inflation and so forth but uh man 400 million

bucks and I have no clue what those things cost I'm gonna say 20 bucks maybe for one of those oh I don't

know and I'm not real sure some of us didn't wear one of them out and get another one that might have been our

second baseball game for all I know I really don't remember but I tell you what to to still be around and working

that the one that we had originally are with the nine volt it still works I mean

that's amazing engineering to me pretty pretty simple Electronics I

would think but you ever noticed how the simpler they are the more addictive they can be because it's you know what I'm

saying like that's the beauty of it really I don't know if you remember playing against somebody else on the

football one but you would hand them the game when they got the ball and it's just like it was in real football and

later on you're like oh man you got just enough time that you're going to score and I want him and then you know when

they would score they'd hand you the game back you can't you don't have enough time to win or whatever it was always pretty cool but the green one we

never owned it it it it let you pass the ball but we never got it that I

remember so this isn't strictly chronologically because I put those

first for a reason but after that while these I guess while those were uh being

sold there was something else going on in the background with this Atari Pong thing um Casey I know will perk up at

the thought of Atari Pong because it came out in 72 but I thought it was

funny that it came out like an arcade console first and that it was put in

bars to bring patrons in and keep keep them ins in the bars I thought that was

hilarious that is funny I didn't know that yeah and in 72 that predates all

the other stuff you think you would think would be in bars like video poker and anything Pac-Man whatever it

predates that I'm going guess at that time only thing in bar might have been a

pinball machine or something I would too yeah yeah and speaking of Simplicity and

addictiveness I mean pong you know uh two I'll have images of it on the YouTube version two uh White Lines

hitting a white uh Square basically back and forth inside a white box so it kind

of looked like tennis it kind of looked like pingpong it kind of looked like racketball it was a little bit all of

that and highly addictive um I don't remember us getting the thing until like

maybe 79 80 somewhere in there Casey because if I'm not mistaken dad won that

thing for from Ford like a sales thing like here's your prize for selling so

much stuff or whatever Atari Pong I didn't know that but yeah I do

remember playing that uh we still have it yeah yeah yeah still got David when

we cleaned mom's CL uh attic out we found it yep got the original I don't know that I've seen

that one uh remade or or that would be interesting well I tell you what I did

find out and I do remember it now if I'm not mistaken when they came out later with

the 2600 that we all most people had they had a game for it just called pong

and you could put the cartridge in but what was funny to me about pong the one that ended up coming out where you could

pick tennis or doubles or whatever all it did was change like the lines like

the white line might go dotted across the middle of the screen and they'd call that ping pong and the other one would

be solid and they'd call that tennis didn't change anything really they just called it something different it changed

the graphics like barely I mean it played exact the

same wouldn't the game speed up yeah yeah yeah while you're playing I

thought So eventually eventually it'd be hitting Rockets across there man to to try to

get the point over with for somebody you know and for those listening who don't know it really was two white lines

hitting a white square back and forth at each other that was later on they had the double paddles remember that they

were stacked like this you'd hit it back and I don't know what that was that may have been bad mitt or something for all

I know but um you could technically technically score against yourself for that you hit the back paddle on the

right angle it would hit the front paddle and then kick it back in your own goal yeah that's correct which actually

reminds me I guess the old air hockey would have been a precursor to video games back in the day the tabletop air

hockey that people played that precursor that's a precursor to all of this that's

true um so yeah so the notes I found and I don't know it was hopefully not Wikipedia but

it said that uh pong was considered the first video game and I didn't send it to

y'all but I later found a picture of an actual upright console with the screen

in it like they had in the bars and then from there they ended up making the tabletop ones where you sit at a

table knowing the the era I'm sure that was so you could put your ashtray on it somewhere and your beer and hit the ball

back you know and it didn't interfere with you playing the game against somebody but so they had the console

upright and they ended up with the tabletop version too um and these notes

said that the the console that they had in the bars is on permanent uh display in the Smithsonian Museum that's

interesting because it's considered the first arcade game in that regard so um I

guess that's the significance of it and I guess there's obviously a few that have survived all this time so later on

I know they they included the concept of pong ended up in other games cartridge

games so it lived on and golly that game it had the round di instead of a

joystick you had a round dial and there'll be pictures of this on YouTube it had a round dial that to to move the

paddle up and down so and I don't know if it ever the picture that I'm looking

at that I sent you guys it shows four paddles on this set so that's the set that we had and I'm assuming that means

you could play doubles that way so two on each side trying to keep the ball

alive just the concept of that is hilarious you're looking at um four

white lines and one white square and hitting it back and forth that is high fun big time fun in the 1979 era

1980 so Casey and I had that one David you never own pong did you no never had

a PA T and and something else I ran into

while looking all this up is that for some reason a talk this is interesting to me cuz I thought I remembered this

and then I talked myself out of it some of these things were marked with sears's with the the Sears logo or the Sears

wording on some of these consoles and things because Sears had a deal with Atari and they were their major

distributor so you might I don't know if it's pong exactly but I know the Atari

2600 that we'll talk about in a minute I know that it was stamped with Sears you know kind of like they did uh TVs and

microwaves and washers and dryers um they put their logo on one that somebody

else manufactured so I I'm not an expert in this but that means to me there's

there's games and consoles out there with Sears on them instead of Atari or Sears along with Atari which I thought

was interesting they're probably worth more money right I would think so probably not as

common yeah so I don't doubt David remembers playing that at our house but we had

that when we lived in what I call the old house for sure and case I remember that I don't remember playing pong like

that did did Casey when we found it at Mom's did we did we get it out and didn't we plug it up to an old black and

white TV yeah hooked it up and it worked that's the beauty of pong you don't need a color TV cuz it's not in color anyway

there's no cartridges just it's just built in yeah we showed uh Casey's kids who

were teenagers and they I'm sure thought it was the most lame thing they'd ever seen in their lives

but I don't know what was more lame us playing it and laughing about it or us playing it on a black and white

television was it hard to play in your older years it seemed hard to get the timing

down yeah it seemed crazy slow at the beginning but like you said I think as

games progress it speeds up or something so I'm it wasn't the most um stable

thing to be I I think we had to hold the wire just right to get it to work on that black and white TV anyway

so okay so that moves us up into the first really big one the the first one that really took the World by storm was

1977's Atari 2600 now David did you own a

2600 no I did not okay I know we're getting to the one you owned here next I didn't know own any of hard okay that I

recall that's what I thought so Casey and I I did definitely did not get it in

77 when it came out Casey it was probably closer to 80 before we finally got one wasn't it yeah probably 80 or

81 yeah what do you remember about that uh Christmas because it was it was the

Christmas as as as tends to happen with a lot of these things in the catalog era and not the internet era it it took two

or three years for a lot of people to own these things and so yeah it was probably around 8

um what do you remember about that uh just sort of the marketing and so forth

anything because you were nine all of four years old so probably not I remember the marketing or anything but I

I just remember how much better the games looked and how much more you could do versus you know

like we were talking about the single lines and the P pong and the and just the ball going back and forth um I'm

trying to remember I don't I don't remember what uh what games we got originally with it

well there's a little bit of a story behind that so basically we asked for Atari 2600 for Christmas and and nothing

else I mean that was every kid I knew our age that's what they wanted that so

I'm assuming half of America got Atari in like 1980 but anyway Casey and I

wanted it so badly well back then we did grandparents uh Christmas Eve did the

grandparent visits on Christmas Eve so Casey and I went to uh dad's side

of the family and we got these Atari games we got Donkey Kong yeah we got

Donkey Kong and like Space Invaders and really one of the things that pushed this was Space Invaders and asteroids

type games because they were so big in the arcades so Atari was smart enough to know when they roll these out they're

better be something out of these arcades right that something that they're used to going and playing so Casey and I are

opening gifts and we've got Donkey Kong and nothing to play it on yeah and we

had like Space Invaders and nothing to play it on Defender nothing to play it on and pretty yeah and pretty soon dad's

like hey uh you may have the games but uh you're not going to get the console

if you don't act right the rest of the day and all this you know Santa won't bring you the console and so okay whatever just it's

such I just remember that being such a weird thing I was nine or or whatever so that night we go to the second set of

grandparents we start opening gifts there's another video game there's another video game there's everybody has

gotten Us atar games and Casey and I are looking at each other like what the heck

dude we don't have an Atari and that's how dumb I was okay I was not a bright

nine-year-old obviously and um uh dad kept on with the

hey you know it's just Christmas Eve night you got time to screw this deal up you better act right I know that's what

y'all want from Santa but you can still mess it up you know so needless to say the next morning we were very happy to

see Atari 2600 under the tree so we could play all these new games so I

don't remember what sports games we got I sent y'all a couple of one picture of their football game that is pitiful it's

three on three football it is it is bad I loved it um ones it it was it it was

well we had we had more fun playing that against each other we did that was the start of the competition right there man

I'm sure I'm sure I was nine getting my butt kicked by a foury old so that's

probably f you f foury old it didn't help things um I do remember the arcade

style games Space Invaders Donkey Kong asteroid Defender I've already mentioned those Pac-Man and then Pac-Man hit um

somewhere in the early 880s Pac-Man hit and it just sold even more Atari 2600s

and um we had that uh we had Pitfall which which was where you jumped

over the swung the vine over the alligators and all that but we definitely owned football and

baseball um the yeah the football game was three on three I don't remember the

baseball being anything but a green green uh a diamond green with four white

uh squares on it for bases and that's and maybe three players even in

baseball but Casey and I played the heck out of that oh and by the way the folks who are trying to picture it in their

head or remember at the the Atari football game scrolled vertically so you

were looking from The End Zone to play the game which is looking back that is super odd so but Casey and I played that

one a million times um they're not known even today with all

the new stuff as being very good at sports games back then they you know there their sports game now keep in mind

this is eight eight bite game so they had color that was better than pong but

not much else the sound was horrible the graphics were horrible and so forth

um this says they had football baseball boxing soccer tennis volleyball and

basketball I just remember football basketball baseball I don't I don't remember any of the others David even

though you didn't own it do you remember playing that horrible scrolling vertical football game I do but I don't I just

remember it not being good even back then I didn't think it was good and I don't remember the baseball though I

remember pitball of course and and SP Invaders Donkey Kong course Pacman on

Donkey Kong and all that I've remember playing all that more than this football I think I dislike the football so much

that whenever I was with somebody who had the game I'd suggest playing something else besides football there we

even played we played those tank commander type games too on Atari 20 Missile Command and tank something or

another um yeah they were not known for those but Casey and I that's where the feud started man right there on that

stupid those those three guys look like the the creatures that fall out of the

sky on Space Invaders is what their football men ended up looking like it's pretty pathetic but yeah um

I in the course of researching this I ended up on atari.com and you can still buy all this stuff through Atari I don't

know what it costs I didn't get that far but you can still buy a console that has the games pre-programmed into it so um

kind of like that reissue the of the Mattel handheld games you can you can go

back in Nostalgia and get you some Atari 2600 action if you want Plug and Play

type thing now is it all in the joystick HDMI connection HDMI connection yeah um yeah I don't

know what happened Casey and I found our Atari 2600 and our joysticks but there must have been a whole box or sack of

games that got uh thrown away because we didn't find those did we no no games but

I have run across some and flea markets and different things and um I haven't I

haven't bought any but I I think I need to well um so it's safe to say that

David Mar and whoever weren't coming over playing this terrible three Onre football with us because that didn't

exactly get anybody fired up except you and myself because we were definitely we were definitely fighting

during that game Lov it and and you were four or five years old how did you even

know what was going on is what I want to know I don't know he must have been beating you that's why he loveed me so

anytime I won I loved it oh I'm sure you laughed and he got

mad dude all can say is Atari joysticks were tough because they got thrown a

lot how would you feel if you were the older one and could never beat the younger one at video games of any kind

ever I mean yeah that would yeah okay and so then came so anything

else about the 2600 y'all want to mention case what else what other games do you remember on there before I move

to the next one no I think you covered that's what I was trying to remember I think like the Space Invaders Missile

Command asteroids and we played those a lot more and and enjoyed them a lot more than yeah the baseball one was

especially horrible I just remember that so we tended to play the football one yeah um but it was it was good at arcade

stuff horrible at sports games and that's really kind of their legacy then in 1979 Mattel who had done

the handheld games that we love so much came out with in television and David

you had one of those for sure yes yes that was

way better than the Tor way better yeah the first note I found on

that said that uh in television was known for more realistic sports games

and strategy games and as an added bonus for this episode I got a surprise in

television football tevision football basketball I don't remember the NBA one I don't ever remember the NFL

and baseball I don't remember they had any license

stuff and I've got the system now as of last weekend my

wife uh bought them at an estate sale for me so I've got the in television and like 12

games cool I didn't know they were ever licensed by any of the major

sports yeah uh that was the first company that managed to get a license out of the NFL Major League Baseball and

NBA is't that weird and they have I didn't bring it in in here but I have PGA golf

too uh didn't know I thought somebody else I thought Nintendo was the first

baseball well to be licensed I didn't know any in television was yep so that came out in 79 do you

have any idea about when you got yours um I would say probably about 82

maybe the Christmas of 82 okay I was thinking I was in high school

I do remember on Fridays during football season when we had a game in town some

of the boys that lived out of town would come over to the house before you know instead of driving out the country and

coming around coming back for the game they would hang out at the house and and they did the same with you when you came

through but uh we were playing a lot of in television at that time A lot of it was football of course

yeah and okay so I sent you the SC by the way for those listening who don't know can't place it in your head and

there will be pics on YouTube but and television had the instead of a joystick it had like a pad that looked like a

calculator with a with a pigtail cord on it it had the squiggly cord like a phone

and it had like a number pad and then a turning dial instead of a upright

joystick and um it was a wheel you could spin the wheel to move the players around and stuff and for whatever reason

that was kind of revolutionary compared to using a joystick um I sent you guys

screenshots of the game play and for football we went from three guys on the

field with Atari up to Five Guys on the field for in

Television right um and in television had the the

scoreboard down at the bottom and the action scrolled left to right so that's our first game you know of being able to

look at the action from the 50 yard line instead of over the shoulder of the defense or whatever so yeah um it had it

had different colors but if you'll look at the well it's hard to see on what I sent y'all but the men at least you can

see arms and legs and a head on them that's about all I can say about the graphics they're they're Advanced over

Ataris but they're still a long way from where we are now obviously yeah and when they ran they'd

actually you could see their stride I mean see L striding was it was a little

bit better graphics for sure um I actually have the football game here and

the play cards are in the game still in the cartridge the instructions and there's little play card there's a

Playbook that came with it oh yeah that

way you knew how to call plays you knew what what they were capable of doing so and I don't remember the game play at

all I got this Saturday and I haven't plugged it in yet um to to try it all out out but I will I I remember David

having it I don't remember playing it but how did you without a joystick how did you

control how do you he's talking about how do you control the game on your

phone you don't you didn't touched the screen on a TV yeah but you touched this wheel and moved your thumb just like you

would on your uh cell phone to play a game oh okay so so it actually was kind of like and I believe the action buttons

were on the side like to throw it or whatever or what is the button those buttons were on the

side of the the little handheld the little so the little dial didn't didn't actually turn you did it was a but and

also you could you you I think David's right you you clicked it trigger style

or something on the side if I'm not mistaken okay okay well it was just on

the button kind of like your volume button on your phone yeah yeah yeah I got now that's what that's what the

action like if you want to throw the ball or if you're playing baseball I guess swing the bat you know you push

the button on the side and the Little Wheel at the bottom was that that was your how you moved the

guy yeah uh look at the screenshot of the boxing it looks pretty good actually

it uh it had pretty good graphics I don't guess I had I don't

remember it look like Rockham sockum robot or it does look like rock

robot so it it was 20 20% of the market now keep in mind Atari 2600 came out big

I mean it was a huge huge product but then in television slid in there and got

20% of the market in the early 80s and it sold almost four million games or

four million consoles I'm sorry 3.75 million consoles and it sold 20 million

games so it had a pretty good little run in the first half of the 80s it it discontinued in 1990 but uh you know I

doubt a ton of households had both you were probably in television was was had

surpassed Atari obviously in technology a little so if you had that you didn't need Atari in so many ways but um

definitely remember being at Davids and playing a lot of the football a lot of

it now was that the one that your dad was so fond of playing that had some military themed games or something

uh no that that would U probably been Nintendo oh okay

okay Contra game on it yeah I knew there was something he liked which is just

funny thinking about that to me just you know we played in televis into my living room all the time what you're probably

think about playing in the den on them all the late night video game sessions we had that was in Nintendo by that

time true um yeah cuz yeah I do remember playing

in the in the uh living room off the kitchen there playing this now Mark I

know Mark's not on this episode but he and I on that television played some

warship game where you had a fleet of different types of ships you had a submarine you had a troop transport you

had aircraft Carri kind of like battleship in a way yeah and it was set up in

a a around this in the ocean around these L Islands I guess you would try to

move your ships basically capture other Port what you were trying to do but that

was pretty fun he and I played that for hours it seemed like on several

occasions I I need to look that one up I'm intrigued I have to look in I don't remember what it's called I do remember

you had a ship that was set mines and of course your opponent couldn't you'd have to remember where you set the mind or

else you you'd hit them yourself but your opponent couldn't see the mines but you also had a m sweeper that was part

of the strategy to try to guess where they had the mines and it was it was pretty interesting especially for that

day it was a lot more fun than like Battleship you know the old game Battleship I could see you

that yeah that sounds like a Missile Command kind of thing almost like yeah that's that's pretty cool um I there was

also a airplane game he flew a like a World War II Type

plane and you fly it and do battle with each other like I do remember if you if

you climb you know flew straight up in the air too long you stall out could catch yourself you know coming down or

you wouldn't be crashed you say World War I or World War II I think it kind of

like if I best I remember they were they weren't Jets almost like th planes oh so

like the red barar in World War I kind of thing kind of like World War I I think best I remember they weren't they

definitely weren't Jets what did what did Snoopy fly the soop with camel yeah

Sal a l okay everybody I think I'm going to stop it right there for this episode and

we will pick back up and a couple of weeks with the conclusion to our discussion about Gen X sports video

games thank you very much for listening and we'll talk again in a couple of weeks thank you for joining us on genx

classic Sports where Nostalgia meets The Thrill of the game tun next time for more insightful discussions and

memorable moments brought to you by Pine Street Productions until then stay passionate about sports and keep the

memories alive