I’m going to make a safe assumption: most of the world’s population today cannot remember a time when there were no electronic games.

This is based on two facts: (1) the world’s median population is approximately 30.9 years old (meaning half of the world’s population is older than 30.9); and, (2) the world’s first electronic games — Galaxy and Pong — were introduced in 1971 and 1972, respectively.

This realization occurred when Julie and I watched three of her grandchildren for a week in June while their parents vacationed with friends in Minnesota. On Friday afternoon we took the kids — ages 14, 12 and 10 — to a popular electronic game arcade in the city. It was undoubtedly the most exciting thing they did all week.

While Julie and I looked on, bewildered by the flashing lights and weird recorded sounds, the kids took to the games like a horse to oats. They shot insects with lasers, rode fake motorcycles while shooting targets on a computer screen and enjoyed a host of other electronic games.

The youngest jumped wildly after winning 1,000 points (which can be redeemed for merchandise) in a game resembling a drag line operation.

While they have an electronic game console at home, games you can sit on and shoot with are obviously more exciting.

As I watched them having fun it occurred to me that there was no such thing as an electronic game when I was a kid. There were pinball machines with fancy lights and sounds and at home we had an “Operation” game that operated on a flashlight battery. A little red bulb glowed and a buzzer sounded when you messed up. That was it.

My introduction to electronic games occurred in the late ’70s when our family was shopping at a nearby Kmart store. The home model of the Pong game was introduced by Atari in 1975 and on this occasion Kmart offered Pong games for just $10.

My son was probably about six years old at the time and that was a good excuse to make a purchase I wanted too.

Pong was a simple game which was good because I was already about 30 and, as I learned later, you must start playing electronic games early to develop game skills. Pong simulates table tennis; you control an in-game paddle by moving it vertically across the left or right side of the screen. Players use the paddles to hit a ball back and forth. My son and I enjoyed many hours of Pong.

Within a few years technology had advanced and game consoles offering multiple games were on the market. My son wanted one but his father was a frugal fellow who wasn’t willing to spend a month’s worth of grocery money on a game.

In the early ’80s a JC Penney flyer in our Sunday paper advertised Atari game consoles at a deep discount. My wife and I decided the price was low enough; we could afford to buy the kids a game console.

The children were ecstatic. I hooked up the console to our family room television and my son took it from there. In a short time he and his sister were playing electronic games like old pros.

They asked me to play a game with them. I did poorly. While they didn’t laugh, they enjoyed the fact that old guys born in the 1940s just weren’t equipped to play Pac-Man.

We had electronic games in the house until the kids left for college. While my daughter developed other interests, my son continued to play electronic games well into his 20s.

I never did develop an interest (or skill) in playing electronic games, but I was impressed with the technology. The games’ action and graphics became more and more realistic as time went on.

Much has been said and written about the electronic game phenomenon, including criticism of the violent nature of many of the games.

As with so many things, parental discretion is important. Some parents treat these games like babysitters and are comfortably unaware of (or don’t care about) the violence in some of the games.

These are things I thought about while watching the grandkids at the game arcade last month. And to think, it all started with our simple game of Pong some 50 years ago.

Arvid Huisman can be contacted at huismaniowa@gmail.com. ©2025 by Huisman Communications.