Back In My Day ..................

[Halgar]

A short list of things that youngsters today wouldn't know about or understand.

8-track tapes
rotary phones
phone booths
dial up internet/external modems
work ethic
arcades
life without cell phones, social media

[juicedcoupe]

A short list of things that youngsters today wouldn't know about or understand.

8-track tapes
rotary phones
phone booths
dial up internet/external modems
work ethic
arcades
life without cell phones, social media

I'm 46 and I barely remember 8 tracks still being around as a kid. Cassettes came out in the early 60's but weren't popularized for music until the 70's. CD's came out in the early 80's but cassettes remained popular into the 00's.

Nobody misses rotary phones (especially dialing long distance), phone booths (we still have the remnants of a few in town), or dial up.

Arcades weren't really a thing here. They had them at the mall but that was two towns away.

And I had a cell phone in high school, in the mid 90's. Motorola wedge phone. My mom stopped home health and went back to the hospital, no longer needed the phone.

[Halgar]

I can do you one better than an 8-track that I bet VERY few people know about, and that is an 8-track to cassette adapter. Plug it into an 8-track deck to play cassettes. Frankly, I only know about it because the family business was repairing instrument clusters, clocks, and radios. We did the majority of the warranty work for all car dealers. At the time we were the only AC Delco distributor in the area. At any rate, 8-track wasn't around for very long before cassettes became vogue and to fill the gap the adapter was created. It worked, but it was terrible . . . Just like 8-track was!

[juicedcoupe]

I can do you one better than an 8-track that I bet VERY few people know about, and that is an 8-track to cassette adapter. Plug it into an 8-track deck to play cassettes. Frankly, I only know about it because the family business was repairing instrument clusters, clocks, and radios. We did the majority of the warranty work for all car dealers. At the time we were the only AC Delco distributor in the area. At any rate, 8-track wasn't around for very long before cassettes became vogue and to fill the gap the adapter was created. It worked, but it was terrible . . . Just like 8-track was!

My brothers first car was a mid 70's Mercury Comet. It had an AM radio with 8 track. He also had the cassette adapter. He got a knob style Pioneer Super Tuner after that.

[morrisey0]

At 50, I can honestly say that I never used an 8-track player. My parent's stereo had 8-track, and I think there were a half dozen or so tapes sitting around, but I can't say I ever heard them play.

I don't recall having a rotary phone in the house, although I am sure we did when I was young. I do remember a wall-hanger phone we had in the basement, and it looked like a rotary, but didn't have the dial. It only received incoming calls, and you couldn't call out. As I type that out, and the fact that it was in our basement, sounds super creepy, but it was in a game room!

At one point in my dad's collection, we had a full album 33 RPM console "jukebox." It was stylish piece of furniture much like early household console stereos. You made the album selection via rotary dial, just like the phone.

We had a later Seeburg jukebox in the basement gameroom that played 45s. The selection was split in two, with a top section and a lower section. My parent's got the top, and my brother and I got the bottom. I really did love going to "Peaches" (local record store) and getting a new selection of 45s, and printing out the labels for the jukebox.

Arcades .......... my main one was the local bowling alley. My parents would drop us off for a couple of hours and we wouldn't bowl, we just hung out in the arcade. This would have been a little later, say 12-14yo, and before that was the skating rink, "Golden Skate World." The problem with going to the skating rink for the arcade was that you had to pay to get in, whereas the bowling alley was free to get in. But in the 10-12yo range, the cool spot was the rink!!!

[Lowgear]

The house I was born and grew up in had a den that was called the 'rec room' which is considered an old timey term these days. Anyway, it was the play room for us kids. One entire wall had orange shelves that contained all of my toys. Right in the middle on the top shelf we had an 8-track/record player combo unit. I also had a small record player that was built into a case. I still have all the records for both players. My grandmother had a bar in her basement which contained an 8-track player as well. She also had a rotary phone on the bar too. I think that's where I learned to use one. I then acquired a bit more understanding of public phone systems then your average person in the '90s due to being into phone phreaking with one of my best friends.

I spent an immeasurable amount of time in arcades with video games being a mainstream big deal back then. It felt like at least one or two machines were in every establishment at the peak. All throughout the '80s and '90s our family vacations were spent in Wildwood NJ. I wasn't all that big into going on rides so I lived for the arcades! It translated into a personal hobby which I took part in for years until it was no longer sustainable due to the cost, room needed, and lack of parts support. I was even an arcade repair technician for a short period in the '00s that would travel to peoples homes to work on them.

[R6cowboy]

Back in my day I was working a paper route, Monday thru Saturday at 6AM on my bike, from 10 years old until I turned 16. In rain, snow and stormy conditions.

Also, riding my bike to the convenient store down the street to buy my dad cigarettes at the age of 6 and 7. Awesome.

[R6cowboy]

My main back in my day thing was riding my bike everywhere. Miles from my house, no helmet or reflectors. Especially to vhs rental places to get horror movies. Oh, and buying throwing stars from Cutlery World in the mall at 12.

Yes, this exactly. We (my bmx crew) made multiple homemade bmx tracks around and outside of town in wooded areas. Had six total that I can remember. Sometimes my brother and I would ride out to the family farm 7 miles outside of town, which our mom did not approve of. And always bought throwing stars from some dude when the carnival came to town.

[Elkcycles]

-Pizza Hut - Book It
-The Yellow Pages
-Blowing in Nintendo cartridges
-Smoking in restaurants
-Riding your bike 10-15 miles to get into town
-Getting lost in the woods all day with a backpack of sandwiches
-Roll down windows
-Phone booths
-Corelle plates
-Snow
-Iron on patches for pants
-Gumball machines
-Big League Chew and Watermelon Bubblicious
-Marlboro promotions on everything
-"Be Kind. Rewind."
-Rewinding a cassette with a pencil
-MTV playing music

[Halgar]

-Pizza Hut - Book It
-The Yellow Pages
-Blowing in Nintendo cartridges
-Smoking in restaurants
-Riding your bike 10-15 miles to get into town
-Getting lost in the woods all day with a backpack of sandwiches
-Roll down windows
-Phone booths
-Corelle plates
-Snow
-Iron on patches for pants
-Gumball machines
-Big League Chew and Watermelon Bubblicious
-Marlboro promotions on everything
-"Be Kind. Rewind."
-Rewinding a cassette with a pencil
-MTV playing music

Time for your meds, Grandpa, MTV never played music! Those were the day, eh? Back in the 90's a friend of mine had a cabin at Lake Tahoe that I got to use in trade for repair work I did for them on other properties. No stereo in the house, but a TV with cable, so MTV or similar channel was usually on in the background while we played cards or whatever.

I miss the Yellow Pages, sure, you can just google a number for a place IF you know the place you're looking for, but it's nothing like being able to see every store in town for whatever you're looking for.

Overall, great list.

[Halgar]

At one point in my dad's collection, we had a full album 33 RPM console "jukebox." It was stylish piece of furniture much like early household console stereos. You made the album selection via rotary dial, just like the phone.

We had a later Seeburg jukebox in the basement gameroom that played 45s. The selection was split in two, with a top section and a lower section. My parent's got the top, and my brother and I got the bottom. I really did love going to "Peaches" (local record store) and getting a new selection of 45s, and printing out the labels for the jukebox.

Arcades .......... my main one was the local bowling alley. My parents would drop us off for a couple of hours and we wouldn't bowl, we just hung out in the arcade. This would have been a little later, say 12-14yo, and before that was the skating rink, "Golden Skate World." The problem with going to the skating rink for the arcade was that you had to pay to get in, whereas the bowling alley was free to get in. But in the 10-12yo range, the cool spot was the rink!!!

I've always wanted a jukebox, in today's world it would simply be a hard drive full of MP3's, or whatever the current format is. I like having a dedicated device for things, I don't like trying to force a computer to do "non-computing" stuff. Can I play music on my desktop, sure, but it's not easy to access/find/get going. Can I play video games on the desktop, sure, but again, emulators are not created equal, especially when every game seems to need it's own emulator, still not as easy as turning on a console. For this reason, I would enjoy a jukebox and a game room with the various consoles for the games I like or am interested in. Unfortunately, I pretty much need one of every console ever made to play the one game on each of those systems I like, so there's that. While I do like arcade machines, and they do have their place for certain games that were originated and designed for machine play, but since console gaming has taken over, arcade machines really don't serve a good purpose.

[Halgar]

-Pizza Hut - Book It
-The Yellow Pages
-Blowing in Nintendo cartridges
-Smoking in restaurants
-Riding your bike 10-15 miles to get into town
-Getting lost in the woods all day with a backpack of sandwiches
-Roll down windows
-Phone booths
-Corelle plates
-Snow
-Iron on patches for pants
-Gumball machines
-Big League Chew and Watermelon Bubblicious
-Marlboro promotions on everything
-"Be Kind. Rewind."
-Rewinding a cassette with a pencil
-MTV playing music

Time for your meds, Grandpa, MTV never played music! Those were the day, eh? Back in the 90's a friend of mine had a cabin at Lake Tahoe that I got to use in trade for repair work I did for them on other properties. No stereo in the house, but a TV with cable, so MTV or similar channel was usually on in the background while we played cards or whatever.

I miss the Yellow Pages, sure, you can just google a number for a place IF you know the place you're looking for, but it's nothing like being able to see every store in town for whatever you're looking for, which is what I need most often. I'm usually looking for the closest hardware store or material supplier to wherever I'm working that day.

Overall, great list.

[morrisey0]

I would enjoy a jukebox and a game room with the various consoles for the games I like or am interested in. Unfortunately, I pretty much need one of every console ever made to play the one game on each of those systems I like, so there's that. While I do like arcade machines, and they do have their place for certain games that were originated and designed for machine play, but since console gaming has taken over, arcade machines really don't serve a good purpose.

I converted this armoire to a console center many years ago. I never got everything working like I wanted it to, and it rarely gets used. It has the only consoles I really ever used, save an Intellivision. One of these days I will get back into it, one of these days.............. I need to do something with it, or it is just going to go away at some point. It is taking up prime RC real state!!

[Frankentruck]

I converted this armoire to a console center many years ago.

Nice Atari collection!

[Halgar]

I converted this armoire to a console center many years ago. I never got everything working like I wanted it to, and it rarely gets used. It has the only consoles I really ever used, save an Intellivision. One of these days I will get back into it, one of these days.............. I need to do something with it, or it is just going to go away at some point. It is taking up prime RC real state!!

Well, heck! If we were a little closer together I'd come over and help you put all those to good use!

What got me started down the console rabbit hole was in the early 90's a friend loaned me her NES and there was one game that I absolutely loved, I thought it was Ghosts 'n Goblins, which I love, but I've not found the particular game she had ever again. From there I bought my first console, the N64. Another friend bought me the original X-box in '00 with Halo 1 and 2, then we got X-2 for Halo 3 and 4. We enjoyed thrift shopping where I found an SNES.

Sadly, there has only been one or two games for each of those consoles that I enjoyed, the Ghosts 'n Goblins series, the Halo series, and a handful of others. Due to various reasons I no longer have any of the consoles or games, but I've continued to watch game play on YT and have found other titles that I'd love to try, The Last Of Us, Uncharted, GTA V, Beyond Two Souls. It's the story that draws me in. Interestingly, while Uncharted and Tomb Raider are virtually the same game, I've never been able to get through Tomb raider. This is also where it makes more sense for me to get these games on the PC instead of the individual console.

Oh, one other platform that I haven't mentioned that isn't technically a console, but was basically a console of the day and that was the Commodor64 and the one game that I'd love to have to this day is Lode Runner. This was a side scroll with the typical basic pixelated graphics of the time, kinda sorta like Pac Man, but more interactive. Best part was, when you completed all the game levels you could make your own levels. I literally spent hundreds of hours at my buddy's house after school building ever more difficult levels. We had a couple that pushed the absolute limits of the game play that were quite tough to get through.

Ah, the good old days.