My parents were part of a church bowling league in the 70’s-80’s, and every Sunday afternoon we went to a different bowling alley in various towns in our state, so over the course of a decade I got to watch as pinball was slowly replaced by the first minimal video games (Pong, Breakout) then began to take off with new (still minimal) games being introduced every year (Space Invaders, Asteroids), finally going color with games that seemed almost like movies to me (Donkey Kong.) Meanwhile home video games evolved from being electromechanical toys (there were a number of Mattel games that were not “video” at all, like a racing game that had an actual 2-D scrolling road you had to slide a car back and forth over) to being little more than blinking LEDs (Electronic Quarterback, Merlin) to finally the Atari 2600, which reigned supreme for what seemed like years.
I got to watch all this grow, and it kind of boggles my mind now how quickly it all happened.
