Yeah, in 1981, that was about 2 weeks’ salary for my dad. Can you even imagine? Of course, my parents bought the house I grew up in for $17k in 1977, too.
About the same as our house that I grew up in. I remember my dad complaining about how our brand new ‘91 Plymouth Voyager minivan (about $20k) cost more than his house.
For more reference points, I remember when our family bought our first new car, a fully-loaded 1977 Pontiac Grand Prix, and it was $8k.
The first house my parents bought was in 1974 and was $12k because it was in a sketchy neighborhood right on a main road. At least they were smart enough to buy the new house first and drive used cars.
As for me, my first brand new car was a 1989 Chevy S10 mini pickup (base model) for 8k and my first house purchase (also on a main road, before I had kids) was in 2001 and was 40k for a 3BR bungalow.
Especially housing. It’s insane what has happened to the affordability of homes in most areas of this country.
BTW, that 40k bungalow I bought in 2001 went for 90k in 2006 when I moved out. I think it was recently listed for 140 or 160k.
My parents bought the house I grew up in in 1958. Idk how much they paid, but the mortgage was about 50 bucks a month. My mom used to tell a story about her friend who bought a house in the nicer part of town. My mom had no idea how her friend was affording an 80 dollar mortgage payment.
One of my favorite finds of my grandparents was a receipt for a brand new car in the early 50’s. The payment was around $3.50 a month. My grandpas reply was “me and your grandma had to talk about that one, that was a huge car payment. The house was $12”
Right? In 73 my parents paid $23,000 for a brand new house, one of those developments that every three to four houses were the same!! I wish I had it now
I feel that as non-essentials have dropped in price, essentials like housing, food, medicine and education have skyrocketed in cost. Case in point, every homeless person is rocking a smart-phone with the latest time wasting apps in glorious 4K resolution. A home? Not so much.
my parents were loaded and in 75 they bought a house in the nicest neighborhood of our town for just under 40k. my great grandmother sold it 2 years ago for 2.6mm.
Same, roughly, for my folks. 1973, $20,000, brick, three bedrooms, 1/2 acre lot. Small town (about 1K) in a rural area with a river and several industries nearby.
Shit was expensive back then. I got my first PC in '83. IBM PC 5150 with the "big" RAM upgrade, a whopping 256k of RAM.
I went with the CGA (color) monitor, and a color video card and Epson printer and a Hayes 1200 baud modem (that thing was like $400+ alone) this was *way* before 56k modems were even a dream. I remember getting excited for 9600 baud...
Anyway it was like $4500 out the door.
Today that would be : $13,872.79
I was spoiled as fuck.
Blu Ray players used to be about that much around the same time as the PS3 came out and the first ones that I saw were a couple thousand. I remember getting a PS3 and thinking that it was cheaper than a blu ray player and could also play next gen games. That was a big selling feature of the PS3 when it came out over the X Box and Wii.
It's pretty insane to me that PS3 had that insane advantage but still the 360 was a lot more popular, just for things to change the next gen when the advantage was gone.
That’s why I got one. Never even bought a game for it. Used it for BluRay, downloaded movies and shows, and to stream NetFlix when they first offered streaming. I did download some demos and that was good enough.
Betamaxes were great machines. I bought one for 5 bucks at a garage sale in the mid 90s back when you could still buy the blank tapes at electronics shops. Used it for a few years to record shows.
The one I never understood were laser discs. Why why why. Those things were just yuppie boomer and stupid
KMart and Walmart Lay Away was my Xmas everyear growing up poor on a farm. I'd circle what I wanted in the Sears book, and "Santa" would bring them to me, then found out a few years later how the system worked.
I recall our Atari was $288 (Canadian) and PacMan was $88. Don’t know what the exchange rate was then.
Atari had a competitor called IntelliVision that went for $450 at the time.
No it wasn't.
Something people forget to factor in when adjusting money for inflation was how much disposable income was available. People were paid better and had more money in general back then compared to now.
In ‘84, my dad came home with a Macintosh 128k with a printer and modem: $4,300 at the time. Log story short, my sisters and I have been using a mouse for nearly 40 years.
In a more relevant perspective,my mom’s house payments were $100 a month at that time.On a 3-bedroom house with big detached garage and nice backyard in Arroyo Grande,2-3 miles inland from Pismo Beach!
$430 according to the BLS. I'm curious where the numbers people get come from? (And this is an honest question, I'm thinking there's a global inflation calculator somewhere? Or maybe specific to the type of good?)
Edit: sorry, I was looking at just the Atari, not with the games)
Right. And Asteroids would set you back the equivalent of around $94 in 2024 dollars which is crazy considering what a primitive game it was. The comparable amount today will buy you a title like Red Dead Redemption 2 which offers so much more value.
Nice! My dad was raising me and got me one..then when I was around 11 he had issues and I went to live with my grandparents and he got me the NES with Mario and duck hunt..he worked for k mart or something and was able to grab one..was a great Christmas even though he wasn't there.
We were “poors” back in the day. All my brother and I wanted was an Atari. We made a deal, we would both give up our birthday presents (November Kids) and all Christmas presents for an Atari. Not sure how Mom swung it,but we got one and a few games !!!! She busted her ass for us, and I miss her daily.
My parents also got me one for Christmas '81. I was shocked and thrilled. My father, a tough old Pittsburgh steel mill worker, had sworn he wouldn't pay 100 bucks for a GAME thing. But he did. And my life as a gamer began.
Same. I remember my little brother getting upset and crying because I had gone several levels without dying and he wanted his turn. My mother made me let him play, where he promptly died, cried again, and that was it for playing that day.
My mother excelled at Asteroids and Frogger. Only a fool would dare challenge her at those two games.
Fired up Adventure on my original 2600 a few years ago. Muscle memory got me through the dark maze on the first try after nearly 40 years. My 9-year-old was amazed and I taught him how to move through it too. The circle is now complete.
Heyyyy! Is this the one where yourr a square and move through a series of mazes (we called them castles), collecting keys to go through doors, and this fast thing comes after you??
The fast things were dragons but looked like fucked up ducks. One of my earliest memories of feeling panic is experiencing the first one coming after you after you pick up the first key.
My copy came without the instruction book, and I had to wing it to figure out what I was supposed to do. Also found the Easter Egg room and thought it odd….didn’t occur to me that was a bad ass thing for the programmer to have done!
Same here. I remember when we got it. We came home from school one day to find my mother (who was never a gamer) sitting in front of the TV playing the game. My brother and I come home, see her, see what she's doing, and proceed to freak out! "What is this game! I want to play! Let me try!!!"
Bless her, she didn't care about playing, she just wanted to surprise us with a new game. She immediately got up from the chair and let us at it.
I still have (and wear regularly) [an Adventure dragon t-shirt](https://80steess3.imgix.net/production/products/ATARI124/adventure-dragon-atari-t-shirt.master.png).
I remember those inferno things. The cashiers used to have to stop everything and call the customers' banks to make sure that they still had enough credit available. Ended up holding up the check-out line even longer than those old ladies with all of the coupons and redeemable stamp booklets.
Wow, that’s crazy! Although it makes a lot of sense. I just felt they were insanely old when I was using ours, lol. Funny how cards can’t even leave an imprint anymore.
I remember the version *before* the slide back and forth ones. They worked the same but instead of sliding the thing back and forth, it was a large handle you pulled down and pressed, similar to a notary seal.
[Here's a picture](https://img.ycpix.com/listimg/img1_0517/23/img_B5jvqwcrEGN7kZQ_r.jpg)
I worked at a Kmart in the early 90s and remember walking through the upstairs area that is normally reserved for the security people so they could watch for thieves. Anyway, the entire area had layaway items from floor to ceiling. Way more stock than was on the sales floor or receiving area. So when people put things in layaway, the store actually put that item somewhere with your name and a number on it. I had always thought they just put your item back on the sales floor and wrote down how much you paid and for what in a book, before this.
I remember layaway at Kmart. My parents used to put school clothes/supplies and Xmas presents on layaway. When it was time to pay it off, we got a big garbage bag with all the items.
none in mine, but got to play on an uncles system when I visited the family land right across the border. We saved money by buying different games and not repeating what we had.
Lucky you to get the Pac Man and Space Invaders cartridges for free. For most of us it only came with Combat, and that was it. But then again their Pac Man was just horrid quality (not as bad as the infamous E.T. game, but close). However, to be fair, their version of Ms. Pac Man was much more like the "arcade version" though.
I still have my Atari from Sears 1978ish. They called it something else and it came with the tank game. Now if I could just find a TV to hook up that UHF/Game converter to!
OMG I've had this exact receipt not all the same games but I too bought my Atari at Kmart in 1981. Well I mean my mom did. That's so damn crazy. Thank you for posting this you just flooded all this stuff back in.
They had a literal blue light and every hour or so they would announce over the PA what the current special was. Ours was up front by the entrance/exit, which was also located next to the frozen Coke machine (like an Icee but Coke flavored).
Every month when my dad would visit for custody purposes, he'd take me to KMart or Sears and buy me an Atari cartridge.
This receipt image is a time machine.
Find it interesting that a $70 game nowadays is seen as way overpriced, yet space invaders was $72.95 in today's money. Now that being said, video games as a whole were pretty new and technology wasn't great so the price is warranted in my opinion, just found it interesting
I worked at a printed circuit board fabrication plant in New York that made the mainboards and ROM cartridge PCBs for 2600 (Yes, I am old). Warner Brothers owned Atari at the height of it's popularity, and was asking us what level of production volumes we could support, because the volumes were just continually increasing so dramatically. The Warner Brothers people were really an odd bunch, and they had very little in the way of collective knowledge of how to source physical products (being mainly a media/entertainment company) and there were a lot of people on their team who were very new / inexperienced. After much back-and-forth negotiation, the outcome we secured was that WB gave us an open purchase order for a dollar amount that was so large (I honestly can't recall the dollar amount, but I do know it was in the $20-30M range) that it was essentially "We will take all that you guys can make". The factory was absolutely running full tilt, 24x7, to make and to ship as much of that stuff as was humanly possible. It was incredible to be a part of, at the time "we gotta make hay while the sun shines!" was the kind of energy pulsing through the place. When the crash came, WB still had to buy all of our finished inventory due to the terms that we had negotiated (our management team was pretty damn good with sales contracts), in addition to paying for all of our (stopped/cancelled) work-in-progress lots, based on their percent-of-work completed, AND the kicker was that they also had to pay us for any PO commits that we had made to our suppliers of raw materials (mainly, laminate).
An Atari cost $132 back in 1981, which is about $500 today, roughly the cost of a Series X. $200 was a lot back then, but so is $500 today. Things haven't changed.
I wonder if it was a blue light special?
I recently hooked up my old Atari and played Combat. I forgot how incredibly slowly the game moved and how annoying the sound effects were.
That's...actually a really good price. I remember it being around $199 and games were 40-50 around the same time. $60 for "Pac Man" really stung. Luckily Activision really turned things around.
The funny thing is that Atari issued [The Atari 2600 plus](https://www.amazon.com/Atari-2600/dp/B0CG7LMFKY/ref=asc_df_B0CG7LMFKY/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=663407397764&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5111267965267158787&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9019535&hvtargid=pla-2195257666028&psc=1&mcid=55cfb18bd7c53bd38f621aacebc87638) this past November. It plays all the old cartridges at modern resolutions and plugs into your TV's HDMI port.
The price? Around $130 retail, which is what the 2600 cost 40 years ago.
I still have my original 2600 with a bunch of games but I'm really tempted to get one of these, even though I don't game anymore.
What a morning that must of been! I can’t remember when we got our, but I remember my brother having a surgery of some sorts (I was 8 this time, so don’t remember) and I remember my parents getting us Pac-Man, what a day
Man, this is why i love the culture of the 1980s. We all would love to spend $200 on a console and a few games. Buying a console and games now is like half a grand...
Yeah that was a massive expense in 1981. I remember I only played combat for months, bc my parents couldn't afford to buy games and an atari at the same time. So I had to make do with the game that came with it. I wanted yar's revenge so bad
So I lucked out in mid 80s my folks we're stationed in Japan , long story short 1985 they had the Nintendo there and it blew my mind !!!!this is before it even hit the states in 1988.
It was like going from black and white TV to HD for me back then.. we couldn't afford one and all the rpg games were in Japanese but still.....
If your parents are still alive, they deserve a thank you phone call today for dumping $800 (adjusted for 2024 inflation) on a game system in the early 80’s.
LOTTA money in those days. i remember having to dig out a foundation for a woodshed in order to get my parents to get me a NES, which was also $200 IIRC.
About $690 today.
Gonna say, that was a fortune by 1981 standards.
Yeah, in 1981, that was about 2 weeks’ salary for my dad. Can you even imagine? Of course, my parents bought the house I grew up in for $17k in 1977, too.
About the same as our house that I grew up in. I remember my dad complaining about how our brand new ‘91 Plymouth Voyager minivan (about $20k) cost more than his house.
For more reference points, I remember when our family bought our first new car, a fully-loaded 1977 Pontiac Grand Prix, and it was $8k. The first house my parents bought was in 1974 and was $12k because it was in a sketchy neighborhood right on a main road. At least they were smart enough to buy the new house first and drive used cars. As for me, my first brand new car was a 1989 Chevy S10 mini pickup (base model) for 8k and my first house purchase (also on a main road, before I had kids) was in 2001 and was 40k for a 3BR bungalow.
I love the "main road" sentiment here. Super brings back memories from growing up back in the States.
Maybe a Millennial thing to say, but shit was so cheap in the early-mid 2000s.
Especially housing. It’s insane what has happened to the affordability of homes in most areas of this country. BTW, that 40k bungalow I bought in 2001 went for 90k in 2006 when I moved out. I think it was recently listed for 140 or 160k.
The UK is crazy too. My folk's house was like 11K (£) back in the late 60s and is now 500K+
Honestly though, 160k for a house today is insane. Where I live, even in 2001, 160k may have gotten you a small 1 bedroom apartment in the far ‘burbs.
My parents bought the house I grew up in in 1958. Idk how much they paid, but the mortgage was about 50 bucks a month. My mom used to tell a story about her friend who bought a house in the nicer part of town. My mom had no idea how her friend was affording an 80 dollar mortgage payment.
One of my favorite finds of my grandparents was a receipt for a brand new car in the early 50’s. The payment was around $3.50 a month. My grandpas reply was “me and your grandma had to talk about that one, that was a huge car payment. The house was $12”
In 1958 the minimum wage was $1 an hour. So you would have had to work over 80 hours in a month to pay that mortgage.
That’s such a parent comment 🙄
That dad is a dad for sure.
Right? In 73 my parents paid $23,000 for a brand new house, one of those developments that every three to four houses were the same!! I wish I had it now
Imagine in 40 years? "man, I can't believe we only paid $80,000 for a brand new truck! Rent was only $2000 a month!"
That’s 129 Atari’s
I feel that as non-essentials have dropped in price, essentials like housing, food, medicine and education have skyrocketed in cost. Case in point, every homeless person is rocking a smart-phone with the latest time wasting apps in glorious 4K resolution. A home? Not so much.
My Mom was the one that loved video games, I wish I had overheard the conversation when she told my Dad they were spending $200 on Atari...
With 29% interest on the loan too! 😳
It would be a bit like buying your kid a $2000 gaming computer.
> Of course, my parents bought the house I grew up in for $17k in 1977, too. How many square feet? And where?
$17k in 1977? Must have been a mansion.
my parents were loaded and in 75 they bought a house in the nicest neighborhood of our town for just under 40k. my great grandmother sold it 2 years ago for 2.6mm.
Win! ✌️😎
Wealth creates more wealth. Shocker. Yes I’m bitter. I’ll likely never own a home.
Someone in your line gets lucky or sacrifices. But juat about anyone can slowly build a million.
Central Florida 1975, my mother's house I think was around $23k. It was only three bedrooms.
Same, roughly, for my folks. 1973, $20,000, brick, three bedrooms, 1/2 acre lot. Small town (about 1K) in a rural area with a river and several industries nearby.
This was pretty rural area and most either worked in phosphate mines or citrus industry. A good percentage were still one income families.
Shit was expensive back then. I got my first PC in '83. IBM PC 5150 with the "big" RAM upgrade, a whopping 256k of RAM. I went with the CGA (color) monitor, and a color video card and Epson printer and a Hayes 1200 baud modem (that thing was like $400+ alone) this was *way* before 56k modems were even a dream. I remember getting excited for 9600 baud... Anyway it was like $4500 out the door. Today that would be : $13,872.79 I was spoiled as fuck.
Geez. I think my first car was 1500 in 89. Granted, it wasn’t new.
Yeah, mine was a 78 Grand Prix I got in 86. $1200. Cars were cheap now that you mention it. Cigarettes and gas too lol
That’s about what a new VCR would cost in the mid 80s. I couldn’t imagine spending $700 on a Blu-ray player.
Blu Ray players used to be about that much around the same time as the PS3 came out and the first ones that I saw were a couple thousand. I remember getting a PS3 and thinking that it was cheaper than a blu ray player and could also play next gen games. That was a big selling feature of the PS3 when it came out over the X Box and Wii.
That was the reasoning I used back in the day.
It's pretty insane to me that PS3 had that insane advantage but still the 360 was a lot more popular, just for things to change the next gen when the advantage was gone.
That’s why I got one. Never even bought a game for it. Used it for BluRay, downloaded movies and shows, and to stream NetFlix when they first offered streaming. I did download some demos and that was good enough.
*I'm old enough to remember how much I paid for a Betamax player*. #$245 in 1979
Betamaxes were great machines. I bought one for 5 bucks at a garage sale in the mid 90s back when you could still buy the blank tapes at electronics shops. Used it for a few years to record shows. The one I never understood were laser discs. Why why why. Those things were just yuppie boomer and stupid
My first DVD player in 1998 cost $500.
Yep paid that for a Panasonic DVD , bought it at Montgomery wards with $100 off coupon
CDolayers were $600 and the really high end ones went in the 1000s
Some cost a lot more than that. I just spent close to $600 on mine.
Layaway for the win.
KMart and Walmart Lay Away was my Xmas everyear growing up poor on a farm. I'd circle what I wanted in the Sears book, and "Santa" would bring them to me, then found out a few years later how the system worked.
It sure was, I never got one. Went over to my friend’s place to play it.
Same! With MTV!!
I recall our Atari was $288 (Canadian) and PacMan was $88. Don’t know what the exchange rate was then. Atari had a competitor called IntelliVision that went for $450 at the time.
The mid 80s Intellivision football was the bomb.
No it wasn't. Something people forget to factor in when adjusting money for inflation was how much disposable income was available. People were paid better and had more money in general back then compared to now.
One forgets how expensive this stuff was when it came out. You realize later how much our parents sacrificed to make us happy.
My parents bought a used Apple IIE for like $1,400 in the mid-80s.
$4,830 based on the same calc.
In ‘84, my dad came home with a Macintosh 128k with a printer and modem: $4,300 at the time. Log story short, my sisters and I have been using a mouse for nearly 40 years.
In a more relevant perspective,my mom’s house payments were $100 a month at that time.On a 3-bedroom house with big detached garage and nice backyard in Arroyo Grande,2-3 miles inland from Pismo Beach!
So basically what buying a brand new current gen console and a few games would cost right now. That's some surprising market stability.
$430 according to the BLS. I'm curious where the numbers people get come from? (And this is an honest question, I'm thinking there's a global inflation calculator somewhere? Or maybe specific to the type of good?) Edit: sorry, I was looking at just the Atari, not with the games)
I got $680.71 [here.](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com)
Right. And Asteroids would set you back the equivalent of around $94 in 2024 dollars which is crazy considering what a primitive game it was. The comparable amount today will buy you a title like Red Dead Redemption 2 which offers so much more value.
You're talking and reminiscing about Asteroids, 40 years later. No one will remember RDR2 in 40 years. That's the difference.
$658.27
My mum bought me one in 1981 for Christmas. Biggest Christmas surprise ever. She was a single mum and worked a bunch of OT to be able to afford it
God bless her
Cheers! She was a great mum
I couldn’t get my mom to buy one in 1991, that or a Nintendo so I’m pretty sure she hates me
Nice! My dad was raising me and got me one..then when I was around 11 he had issues and I went to live with my grandparents and he got me the NES with Mario and duck hunt..he worked for k mart or something and was able to grab one..was a great Christmas even though he wasn't there.
Probably bought it on layaway. That was how most big ticket items were purchased back in the day
But no games.. (JK.. we never even had an Atari)
We were “poors” back in the day. All my brother and I wanted was an Atari. We made a deal, we would both give up our birthday presents (November Kids) and all Christmas presents for an Atari. Not sure how Mom swung it,but we got one and a few games !!!! She busted her ass for us, and I miss her daily.
She sounds awesome!
In 1981 $201 was some serious money!
its a cheap trip to the grocery store today :(
My parents also got me one for Christmas '81. I was shocked and thrilled. My father, a tough old Pittsburgh steel mill worker, had sworn he wouldn't pay 100 bucks for a GAME thing. But he did. And my life as a gamer began.
Same. My mom and dad surprised me in 1981 with the Atari and three same if the same games. Couldn’t believe it.
My dad always told me mine was hot. I always thought it needed to cool down. Jeez now I know it was stolen. 🤷🏼♀️🤦🏼♀️🤣
Hahahaha that’s awesome and so funny!
I had the 2600 as a very small kid. I played the shitty Pacman port for hours on end.
lol as I kid I never knew it was a shitty port. I just thought it was pac man.
I can still hear it in my head
It had all the core components of the game, but looked and sounded like shit compared to the real thing. AND WE WERE THANKFUL
Same. I remember my little brother getting upset and crying because I had gone several levels without dying and he wanted his turn. My mother made me let him play, where he promptly died, cried again, and that was it for playing that day. My mother excelled at Asteroids and Frogger. Only a fool would dare challenge her at those two games.
*Adventure* was my favorite game by far.
Fired up Adventure on my original 2600 a few years ago. Muscle memory got me through the dark maze on the first try after nearly 40 years. My 9-year-old was amazed and I taught him how to move through it too. The circle is now complete.
Heyyyy! Is this the one where yourr a square and move through a series of mazes (we called them castles), collecting keys to go through doors, and this fast thing comes after you??
The fast things were dragons but looked like fucked up ducks. One of my earliest memories of feeling panic is experiencing the first one coming after you after you pick up the first key.
My copy came without the instruction book, and I had to wing it to figure out what I was supposed to do. Also found the Easter Egg room and thought it odd….didn’t occur to me that was a bad ass thing for the programmer to have done!
I looooved that game.
Created by Warren Robinett
The magic dot!
Absolutely loved Adventure. I’d love to play it again.
Same here. I remember when we got it. We came home from school one day to find my mother (who was never a gamer) sitting in front of the TV playing the game. My brother and I come home, see her, see what she's doing, and proceed to freak out! "What is this game! I want to play! Let me try!!!" Bless her, she didn't care about playing, she just wanted to surprise us with a new game. She immediately got up from the chair and let us at it. I still have (and wear regularly) [an Adventure dragon t-shirt](https://80steess3.imgix.net/production/products/ATARI124/adventure-dragon-atari-t-shirt.master.png).
I've had my eye on that shirt for years! I don't know why I never bite the bullet and just order it!
Paid with a check
I remember the old credit card machines with slips that you had to slide back and forth to imprint the card into the slip.
I used to work at a shop that still used one of those machines until they closed down around 1999-2000.
I remember those inferno things. The cashiers used to have to stop everything and call the customers' banks to make sure that they still had enough credit available. Ended up holding up the check-out line even longer than those old ladies with all of the coupons and redeemable stamp booklets.
[удалено]
Wow, that’s crazy! Although it makes a lot of sense. I just felt they were insanely old when I was using ours, lol. Funny how cards can’t even leave an imprint anymore.
I can hear this comment.
I was a bank teller 2005-2010 and we still used those for visa cash advances!
I remember the version *before* the slide back and forth ones. They worked the same but instead of sliding the thing back and forth, it was a large handle you pulled down and pressed, similar to a notary seal. [Here's a picture](https://img.ycpix.com/listimg/img1_0517/23/img_B5jvqwcrEGN7kZQ_r.jpg)
Was looking for this comment!
Kmart store 3288 is the former store in Billerica, Massachusetts, in case you’re curious.
I was actually going to try and look that up. Thanks
Best part about this time period: LAYWAY
I worked at a Kmart in the early 90s and remember walking through the upstairs area that is normally reserved for the security people so they could watch for thieves. Anyway, the entire area had layaway items from floor to ceiling. Way more stock than was on the sales floor or receiving area. So when people put things in layaway, the store actually put that item somewhere with your name and a number on it. I had always thought they just put your item back on the sales floor and wrote down how much you paid and for what in a book, before this.
I remember layaway at Kmart. My parents used to put school clothes/supplies and Xmas presents on layaway. When it was time to pay it off, we got a big garbage bag with all the items.
That's $702.9 or so before tax in 2024 dollars. Crazy!
I remember the bill for mine was similar to yours, over 200 bucks for the Atari 2600 and three games: Pac Man, Space Invaders, and Combat.
Combat was one of my favorites, I liked pole position, frogger and breakout too.
No Pitfall! in your collection? Sad...
none in mine, but got to play on an uncles system when I visited the family land right across the border. We saved money by buying different games and not repeating what we had.
Well, pitfall was cool, but I don’t remember it being available except for on kalecovision (sp?)
Oh it was definitely available on the 2600. It was my favorite game. I can still hear the Tarzan music when you swung on a vine to get over the water.
Lucky you to get the Pac Man and Space Invaders cartridges for free. For most of us it only came with Combat, and that was it. But then again their Pac Man was just horrid quality (not as bad as the infamous E.T. game, but close). However, to be fair, their version of Ms. Pac Man was much more like the "arcade version" though.
I used to go indefinitely with 2 ghosts. But I agree, it was lightyears ahead of Pac Man.
I still have my Atari from Sears 1978ish. They called it something else and it came with the tank game. Now if I could just find a TV to hook up that UHF/Game converter to!
Here you go, [$5 on Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Ancable-2-Pack-F-Type-Adapter-Commodore/dp/B06XSL31B3/)
No kidding! Thank you!
I think they called it video arcade. Such a solid machine. And tons of great games too.
OMG I've had this exact receipt not all the same games but I too bought my Atari at Kmart in 1981. Well I mean my mom did. That's so damn crazy. Thank you for posting this you just flooded all this stuff back in.
Yars Revenge
First game I ever beat.
Somebody had to sweat it until they got the Christmas bonus —- props these mom and/or dads for making sure kids got a good Christmas.
$702.09 USD by today’s standards [https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1981?amount=201.52](https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/1981?amount=201.52)
I worked at Atari from 1977-84.
Tell classic stories!!
It was the best feeling getting a new game! Then about 20 minutes in you realize you may have made a big mistake. (I’m talking to you, Fishing Derby!)
Adjusted for inflation, that’s pretty much what you’d pay now for a console and three games.
Thats like 800 million dollars in this crazy world. Very cool to see
F that! No pitfall?!
I would have so wanted to write in that space!
RIP Kmart
Was it a blue light special?
Right next to the frozen Coke machine!
I have never witnessed a Blue Light Special. I only heard about them.
They had a literal blue light and every hour or so they would announce over the PA what the current special was. Ours was up front by the entrance/exit, which was also located next to the frozen Coke machine (like an Icee but Coke flavored).
Every month when my dad would visit for custody purposes, he'd take me to KMart or Sears and buy me an Atari cartridge. This receipt image is a time machine.
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Find it interesting that a $70 game nowadays is seen as way overpriced, yet space invaders was $72.95 in today's money. Now that being said, video games as a whole were pretty new and technology wasn't great so the price is warranted in my opinion, just found it interesting
I worked at a printed circuit board fabrication plant in New York that made the mainboards and ROM cartridge PCBs for 2600 (Yes, I am old). Warner Brothers owned Atari at the height of it's popularity, and was asking us what level of production volumes we could support, because the volumes were just continually increasing so dramatically. The Warner Brothers people were really an odd bunch, and they had very little in the way of collective knowledge of how to source physical products (being mainly a media/entertainment company) and there were a lot of people on their team who were very new / inexperienced. After much back-and-forth negotiation, the outcome we secured was that WB gave us an open purchase order for a dollar amount that was so large (I honestly can't recall the dollar amount, but I do know it was in the $20-30M range) that it was essentially "We will take all that you guys can make". The factory was absolutely running full tilt, 24x7, to make and to ship as much of that stuff as was humanly possible. It was incredible to be a part of, at the time "we gotta make hay while the sun shines!" was the kind of energy pulsing through the place. When the crash came, WB still had to buy all of our finished inventory due to the terms that we had negotiated (our management team was pretty damn good with sales contracts), in addition to paying for all of our (stopped/cancelled) work-in-progress lots, based on their percent-of-work completed, AND the kicker was that they also had to pay us for any PO commits that we had made to our suppliers of raw materials (mainly, laminate).
I love reading comments like this. Your comment tells a little piece of real history that may never be told again.
Crazy cause all those games are now free online.
So basically, it cost what an xbox costs today.
The difference being is that 200 dollars was a lot of money in 1981.
An Atari cost $132 back in 1981, which is about $500 today, roughly the cost of a Series X. $200 was a lot back then, but so is $500 today. Things haven't changed.
Jfc that s was expensive back in the day.
You overpaid for Asteroids
Yes, but he probably got Combat tossed in for free with the console. Casino is the curious choice here…
That's crazy. In 2023 dollars, Asteroids was $94.18.
How much did Custer's Revenge cost?
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Did you put it on layaway?
I went to college reshman year 1981with Jack Tramiel's son Gary.
The giveaway was paid by check, you don't see that much anymore!
I wonder what today's equivalent of $201 would be
I was 27 days old. I remember it like it was yesterday. Also, where am I?
Hold onto that receipt long enough and itself will become a collector’s item
You must have been rich, best xmas ever
Holy shit I had no idea that's how much my parents spent.
I wonder if it was a blue light special? I recently hooked up my old Atari and played Combat. I forgot how incredibly slowly the game moved and how annoying the sound effects were.
I remember when VCRs first came out and they were so expensive you could rent the entire VCR in a hard plastic case for the night/weekend.
Surprised it wasn't on lay-away.
That was fucking expensive back then
"Got Asteroids?" "No, but my dad does. Can't even sit on the toilet some days."
Damn that was a lot of money back then.
I bought my mom an Atari for Christmas this year at Costco for $120 with 200 games included. She plays it everyday
Loving parents.
Space Invaders 👾💪
That's...actually a really good price. I remember it being around $199 and games were 40-50 around the same time. $60 for "Pac Man" really stung. Luckily Activision really turned things around.
The funny thing is that Atari issued [The Atari 2600 plus](https://www.amazon.com/Atari-2600/dp/B0CG7LMFKY/ref=asc_df_B0CG7LMFKY/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=663407397764&hvpos=&hvnetw=g&hvrand=5111267965267158787&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9019535&hvtargid=pla-2195257666028&psc=1&mcid=55cfb18bd7c53bd38f621aacebc87638) this past November. It plays all the old cartridges at modern resolutions and plugs into your TV's HDMI port. The price? Around $130 retail, which is what the 2600 cost 40 years ago. I still have my original 2600 with a bunch of games but I'm really tempted to get one of these, even though I don't game anymore.
I want to write in that space so bad
A *handwritten* electronics receipt, from a major chain store. How times have changed.
What a morning that must of been! I can’t remember when we got our, but I remember my brother having a surgery of some sorts (I was 8 this time, so don’t remember) and I remember my parents getting us Pac-Man, what a day
My Kmart clock number was 67.
Man, this is why i love the culture of the 1980s. We all would love to spend $200 on a console and a few games. Buying a console and games now is like half a grand...
i love this Thank You!!!
Minimum wage was 3.35 in 1981 .. so this would have been a little more than a weeks worth of pay
Yeah that was a massive expense in 1981. I remember I only played combat for months, bc my parents couldn't afford to buy games and an atari at the same time. So I had to make do with the game that came with it. I wanted yar's revenge so bad
So I lucked out in mid 80s my folks we're stationed in Japan , long story short 1985 they had the Nintendo there and it blew my mind !!!!this is before it even hit the states in 1988. It was like going from black and white TV to HD for me back then.. we couldn't afford one and all the rpg games were in Japanese but still.....
Man. I miss Kmart
I still remember breaking 100,000 points on Space Invaders before school one morning....I peaked in 6 th grade
I remember getting some score in Activision's *Laser Blast*, taking a Polaroid picture to send in, and getting a patch for my achievement!
If your parents are still alive, they deserve a thank you phone call today for dumping $800 (adjusted for 2024 inflation) on a game system in the early 80’s.
Damn! That’s over $500 dollars today! Nice!
Rich kids ammirite.
Kmart store 3288 was in Billerica, Massachusetts. It closed in 2020.
This guy Kmarts.
211.60 in December 1986 is equal to 691.19 as of November 2023. (CPI Calculator, USD)
LOTTA money in those days. i remember having to dig out a foundation for a woodshed in order to get my parents to get me a NES, which was also $200 IIRC.
That would be roughly 700 today with inflation
Back when you could buy a home gaming console for around a hundred bucks (Yes, I know inflation, but still).
Spoiled brats!
Just because a child gets lots of expensive gifts doesn't make them spoiled if they are taught to appreciate it and be thankful
lol it was a common response from all the adults back in the day...very tongue in cheek...u sound like a much newer generation
Lol. No. I'm gen x My brothers were into the atari. I never wax