Videogames were an important facet of my life back in the early 1980s (I was in grade school), and between my network of friends, I had access to all the major home systems of the day. Friend #1 had the Atari 2600 (1977), the old, reliable workhorse, a system so popular and ubiquitous that its joystick controller became a de facto symbol of the gaming industry itself.
