If the Taylor house ever enjoyed an era of peace, that must have come before the Atari 2600 crossed over our threshold. From what I remember (and I was very young at the time), Dad came in one evening from work with the Atari under his arm. In a few moments (he is an electrical engineer after all) he had the unit connected and ready. I don't recall if the unit came with a starter game as is customary in today's marketing practices, but I do remember Combat.
Combat was the deal breaker, the truce wrecker, the polarizer, and the initiator of many vows of revenge. Dad invited Allison to join him in the first series of Combat games. In the short space of 30 minutes we were all addicted. Combat allowed a person to virtually pound a sibling with no threats of parental reprisal.Withdrawal symptoms hit as soon as the TV was turned off. The younger kids were often caught sneaking out of their beds while heading towards the TV. The older kids were too smart to get caught. Time with the Atari was first limited, then granted as an occasional privilege, and then outright banned at times.
Playing the Atari led to an increase in both the frequency and the intensity of pillow fights. The situation was somewhat mitigated when non zero-sum games were added to the collection. When the end goal was refocused on attaining the highest score, the conflict shifted to the equitable allocation of time with the Atari. The sibling poundings (not so virtual this time) increased as we gave into the temptation to exceed our allotted times with the Atari.
The first part of the Atari to wear out were the joysticks. This would be discovered in the middle of a game when all of a sudden you couldn't maneuver in one of the cardinal directions. Seeing an opportunity, the opponent would corner the siblings disabled tank/plane/whatever and give it a good pounding. Even after replacement joysticks were purchased, it became a contest to see if you could lure an unsuspecting sibling into a seemingly evenly matched game of Combat only for them to discover you had disguised an old broken joystick with the new joystick handle. This often resulted in more poundings and man-to-man combat.
I don't recall Dad joining us on the Atari after the initial games we played with him the night he brought the Atari 2600 home. I also don't recall whether his mantra "Don't get revenge" had been invented before or because the Atari joined our household. Whichever it was, I often think of how ironic it was that he brought home a game titled "Combat".
