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Comment by MegaDeKay | Hacker News Reader

You might have felt differently if you hadn't started out with a Colecovision, the games for which were miles ahead of the VCS. When the 2600 was about the only thing going, people didn't have much to compare against until the Intellivision came along. We just had Atari and we liked it.

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Just listening to the sounds from this Myst remake brought back some core memories of playing our neighbor's state of the art Atari 2600, and it was a fun way to spend a cold winter afternoon. I can definitely believe that those that didn't grow up with it would find the graphics (and sound) lacking, but if it was your first home video game console, it was amazing.

The 2600 was also my first game console. I played it a lot, even after the Spectrum 128K arrived home. But, as much fun as I had with it, I have a similar issue with it now: I would happily play a SNES game now, but I have zero interest in playing an Atari 2600 game. I mean, I would play Qbert, but the graphics/sound would put me off enough to try the Commodore 64 version instead, and I have never touched a C64.

In fact, I have the same problem with the NES. For me the SNES is exactly the sweet spot.

This is a fair point and probably a big reason for how I feel. Another factor may be that I never played Atari games socially; I didn’t really have play dates at that age (~7-8), or if I did we pretty much strictly played outside. Also, I was an only child. I did however play NES and then SNES with cousins and school friends.

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