How we made single player games into team games on the Atari 2600

Let's take a trip down memory lane to the golden days of Atari and its intriguing commercials. I mean, who could forget that one commercial where Atari suggested the ultimate strategy for tackling a tough video game boss? According to them, all you had to do was call in a giant of a person to take the challenge head-on. It's practically a scientific fact – only those monosyllabic giants possess the finely-tuned hand-eye coordination required to conquer the most demanding games. In fact, that's why Andre the Giant still holds a staggering 70% of all video game world records.

In my group of friends, we never had a giant at our disposal. But we did have our own strategy for mastering games. We'd call in reinforcements for particularly tricky parts of a specific game. This sort of communal gaming turned it into a shared activity. After all, there's nothing worse than having to wait around for up to an hour while your buddy shatters house records on every game.

To spice things up, we sometimes organized elimination rounds for games like Pac-Man. It was a simple concept – take turns, play a single board, then pass the joystick. If you bit the dust, well, you were out and there was no shortage of teasing. It might have been tough, but it sure turned us into hardcore gaming pros pretty quickly.

My favorite? Frogger was right up there on my list. I can vividly recall one sunny afternoon when we all gathered at a friend's house to play. This guy was undoubtedly the fanciest of the bunch. His family room was equipped with these sliding glass doors that opened up onto a backyard paradise, complete with a below-ground swimming pool. Talk about luxury!

But you know what was even more luxurious? The six hours straight that we spent playing Frogger that very afternoon. We were in our bathing suits, the pool was right there, but somehow, we were engrossed in the game. It was as if the pool had faded into the background, and we were on a mission to conquer those virtual roads. We laughed, we improved, and we lost track of time. It's a kind of gaming experience I find myself missing in today's online multiplayer landscape.