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April 7, 2008 1:08 PM PDT

Retro Tech: Mattel Classic Football

by Joseph Kaminski
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'77 throwback

(Credit: Matthew Fitzgerald)

For all you PSP and Nintendo DS addicts, we're taking you back, way back in time. It's the year 1977, where disco rules and the interwebs is just a twinkle in Al Gore's eye--it may seem like a long time ago to some, and for others it may even supersede your existence. That year though, I can remember emptying my piggy bank and running down to Woolworths to make my first handheld game purchase: Mattel Football. A very simple game, and quite prehistoric when compared to the handheld games of today. It didn't have Wi-Fi, and you couldn't buy different game discs or cartridges. For this handheld game in particular it was football and football only. As for sound, it was just bleeps and blips and it ran on a single 9V battery--not a rechargeable one like the PSP and the DS--but I spent hours playing it. Like I said the game was simple; it was all about offense, all you could do is score and since the 70's was about scoring--although of a different type--this game fit in to that era nicely? Even better, it had two levels of game play: Pro 1 and Pro 2. As for graphics, if you wanted to call them that, they were all red lit dots and you were the brightest of the six. The object: Get across the screen without getting tackled by the five remaining dots--a simple concept, but not easily accomplished. It wasn't much to look at, but back then it was all we had and it more than fit the bill.

Stay tuned, for our next stroll down memory lane we'll look at the Mego Corp. 2-XL.

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