On this day in 1972 Nolan Bushnell started a company that aided and abetted the beginnings of video games. Today Atari is thirty-four year of age.

I remember, at the age of thirteen, coveting a friend’s VCS (or 2600, as it is also known), after seeing and playing both Space Invaders and Defender (Defender is still one of my all-time favourite games). I’m reasonably sure he showed me his semi-inflated willy, too, which shows just how much he must have enjoyed the console.

A few years later, I kind of fell in love with another friend’s Atari 400, in particular the game Qix (pronounced kiks). I found out years later that this saxaphone-playing friend was gay. I didn’t admit this desire (for Atari), not even to myself, since I had a Commodore 64. Anyone who knows about computers understands the bitter rivalry that ensued between the fanboys of these two companies, so my faithfulness to Commodore kept me from showing any emotions I might have had for my friend’s computer.

Despite having never owned an Atari, until my retro-phase a few years ago, where I bought some ten or fifteen consoles on ebay, my love for them is true. They were are company that succeeded in spite of themselves. There are many, many books and articles that show Atari as being radical and incompetent, yet they still managed to become the fastest growing company in the world up to (and beyond) that time. So it is with fondness that I say “Happy Birthday, Atari, even though you are a shadow of what you once were!)

N.B. Despite having two Atari friends who exhibited homosexual tendancies, it would be wrong of me to suggest there is any correlation.

I have always been under the impression that signing up to endure newsletters (in particular, music-related folderol) being sent to me would give me a certain edge when it came to being in the know about events and concerts; it appears I am woefully naïve.

Play! is a symphonic reconstruction of videogame music (stop smirking at the back) that has been touring America with some succuess. This prosperity (or, perhaps, lack of funds) led to a Play! newsletter’s proclamation a month or so ago that they were to come to Stockholm in the middle of June.
Receiving said newsletter, I immediately clicked on the enclosed link, sure in the knowledge that I was among the first to be privvy to this tantalising tidbit (illiteration is the lowest form of script, you know). Frantically clicking further with palms sweating, I was confronted by a Swedish booking agency that brazenly apprised me that the concert was sold out.

Psychologists are right: first comes denial, followed by anger; paridoxically, psychologist are wrong: anger is followed by acrimony.

I am seldom remiss in checking my mail. I am quite certain I read the newsletter either when it arrived in my inbox, or when I turned my computer on first thing in the morning (being early, since I am on paternity leave).

So I am baffled by the whole event. I can only gain consolation knowing that it was a crap concert: there was only a fifteen minute standing ovation.