Ahhh…80s night…

I’ll admit I’ve had bad luck choosing social games ever since I started on Facebook back in 2009. Seems like every game I choose folds up after a few months or years—“goes offline”—and then, of course, if you were dumb enough to get suckered into spending real-world money, you don’t get a refund, but your game and your virtual “products” are gone.

The most recent crash and burn is Disney Hidden Worlds by Playdom (Playdom and Playfish are notorious for just shutting down games after taking people’s money). It was during a discussion with some FB friends about how ridiculous this all is that we all began to reminisce about the good old days: when you bought your play unit and your games, and you had them, essentially, forever, or until they broke. Those of us in the conversation then also realized we all had Atari Flashback units or real, working Ataris (I have one friend who lives near me who has an original in mint condition with many of the cartridges). We all thought that sticking with our Ataris—and our microwave popcorn—was probably the better choice going forward. Here was my first return to the past.