I'd like my media project for the year include video games, or games in general, but they just doesn't work because video games are so new and what came before them isn't so interesting that they could take up months of free time. But let me back up. What is my media project for the year? It's to go through human history in twelve parts. This is September and I'm in the 1970s, finally a decade that includes video games. If I had made gaming match the project, I would've been stuck with board/card games for eight months of the year. That isn't going to happen, not even for one month. Truth be told, I couldn't even spend a whole month on 70s video games. Only by the 80s are there enough video games to keep me going for a month.

I've thought of ways around this. What if I played video games set in the time period I was studying instead of playing games played in those times. Otherwise I'd be playing chess and backgammon for months as I went through medieval times and the Renaissance. However, it just doesn't quite feel right and I have so much I want to get to in video games month to month. So, I've been doing the video game project differently to my general media project. They don't match up at all and it's disconcerting.

But, to pretend a little bit, since I'm doing the 70s in reading and film this month, how about those games.

I played my first video game in 1976 with Radio Shack's TV Scoreboard, a console my dad bought for us kids.

This is pong with some variations. One of my sisters and I played it together. Fun, but not for very long.

Next was 1978's Mattel's Electronic Baseball. This was a LED device, very simple but engaging.

I was playing little league baseball at the time and this was my off the field distraction. One of my neighbors and their kids (my friends) played an obsessive amount of the Football version. I joined in from time to time. I also occasionally played the Hockey version at another neighbor's place. Us kids were often at various neighbor's houses when not at school.

Finally there was the Atari 2600, the four-switch model from 1980, the year my dad got one at Christmas for us kids, now becoming teenagers.

1970s released games I played on it were: Combat, Air-Sea Battle, Basketball, Breakout, Hangman, Outlaw, Bowling, Canyon Bomber, Human Cannonball, Sky Diver, and Superman. I still play Breakout, Bowling, and Sky Diver.

The arcade was a thing too, although, I probably spent more time there in the 80s. Such 70s titles I played were: Asteroids, Galaxian, Indy 800, Lunar Lander and, of course, Space Invaders.

Lunar Lander was my favorite at the time. Since then Lunar Rescue, a kind of variation on Space Invaders by Taito, has become my favorite.

Board games were a big thing in the 70s for me. All the classics were played like Monopoly, Risk, Clue, and Scrabble, my sisters and I, neighborhood friends, parents, everybody. I got into war games like Squad Leader and Victory at Sea, sports games like All-Star Baseball (a strat-o-matic style spinner game), oddities like Charge It! and London Cabbie, and a table top game, Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, the 1977 expansion of the original 1974 game.

I'd like to add Pinball but I didn't really play pinball back then even though it was around. Maybe a few times in the 80s at an arcade that had them alongside video games.

So, those were my games in the 70s. I could probably spend a week revisiting what I could, but not a whole month. A month isn't near enough for all the books and films I'd want to explore though, which is why I'm doing it this month.