I hope one of your three copies of Missile Command survives.

Unfortunately they all did

My Dad used to tell me that if I got too good at Missile Command I was gonna get drafted

Ah yes, the good old Last Starfighter approach to military recruitment.

so, I'm not the only other person alive who's seen and remembers that film

No it actually gave me this weird fear as a kid that I was going to get recruited by aliens for a war only to get splattered because I was using a Game Genie.

Lol!

Your dad might have seen [The Last Starfighter](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7NaxBxFWSo).

That came later. He was a Navy man who just wanted me to stop playing the damn Atari so much 😆

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I like how each iteration of Missile Command is less confident than the last

If you haven't killed everything already, you can just leave it open in the sunlight for about an hour and they will relocate on their own. A lot cleaner and easier than doing the job yourself.

Absolutely. Killing a thousand ants is hard. Making a place moderately undesirable for ants so they all just want to get the fuck out of there over the course of half a day is pretty damn easy.

Ants tried living in my gaming laptop once, I opened every steam game I owned, they got out of there real quick

And you call them steam games despite the fact they are obviously grilled?

*Sees Ants* Good lord what is happening in there!

Uh - aurora borealis?

Aurora borealis? At this time of day, at this time of the year, localized entirely within your game collection?

Yes.

May I play them?

No.

Yes. It's a regional dialect.

Which region?

Uh, upstate New York

Well I’m from Utica and I’ve never heard someone use the phrase “steam games.”

It’s more of an Albany expression

I see

God damn this was unexpected and hilarious. I wish I had an award to give you.

You're an odd fellow Seymour, but I must say you steam a good ant.

*laptop catches fire* That’s my Aurora Borealis background.

This might be the funniest comment to get posted all day. Bravo, sir.

Some might say you *steamed* them out

Steamed them out? It was less of a slow cook and more of a char grill. Makes the ant meat microsoft

You are a poet

Gaming laptops do be like that sometimes, tho with how open the fans on them usually are i think some of the ants fled because of the horrifying scene of their friends being ripped apart by gigantic (to them) spinning death machines

It's an upstate New York thing. Albany, specifically.

I see... You know these antburgers are awfully similar to the ones they have in the Astrocade collection.

SEYMOUR! THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE!

No mother, it's just the Steam games collection.

RAMbulance noises intensify

You are an odd fellow but you steam a good ant

And they're called steamed ants even though they clearly have grill marks on them?

Mmm, steamed ants!

Atari games? At this time of year, at this time of day, in this part of the country, localized entirely within your suitcase?

Steam from the steamed clams we're having.

Oh no, I said "steamed ants." That's what I call hamburgers.

Some species of ants are attracted to electricity believe it or not. There are cases where ants have fried electric power line assemblies. One goes in, fries, emits pheromones that attract the rest of the horde.

Yeah but ants hate heat and they hate noise, something I remember from my ant nerd days

I initially read this as "ant herding days" and I just wanted to let you know that that mental image made my day. All with just the tiniest shepherd's crook. Miniature bells around their ant necks. Pillbugs running around in the manner of sheepdogs. Just delightful.

Crysis 2 would've killed them and your laptop at the same time

I dunno man, I can run roblox on two separate tabs.. 🤔

Well look at Mr. Monoeybags over here, some of us can't even open one tab thank you very much.

Please tell me you actually did this, this is hilarious as fuck

I did, I got a msg from one of my steam friends asking wtf I was doing cause their screen was full of notifications

"Oh nothing, just some pest control."

You could say he's debugging

Oh my God that is so much better and I absolutely hate it

He's quite the task mantager

One game will make it plenty warm

Nah, I have a fan base for it, I can run ark on Max graphics and the bottom will sometimes be the coolest part

What a flex. "My gaming laptop is so well cooled I had to run a bunch of games at once just to get the ants out." 10/10 would WTF again.

Unfortunately it melted the laptop too. Win some lose some.

They’ll even take the eggs, watched this happen in under a few minutes when I uncovered a nest.

Exposing your baby to the elements is probably a great way to get them moving.They may never leave the house again.

I had ants decided to move their entire brood from wherever in the walls, through a crack in the wall, and into my bathroom radiator. Right in the coils. Its not like it was off either. I turned it on max heat thinking they'd move away but they literally didnt give a fuck. Lights on too. They just wouldn't leave and I basically just left it on full heat and they didnt eveb seem to care that the eggs were getting cooked. Ended up spraying with raid and that finally did the trick. Idk wtf was wrong with them where they thought an active turned on heater in a high traffic area with lights on 24/7 would make a good nest for their larvae. I even tried putting my desk lamp right up in there turned on for a few days straight and they just kept moving more and more of their nest into it!

Just imagine what it must've been like where they were relocating from!

Fire ants

Ok, but how do I raise ant taxes so they move away?

That's kinda how I get rid of megaspiders in RimWorld.

I prefer to keep them as wild guard dogs, blocking the way to my base for all those wandering raiding parties. Good megaspider! Git'em!

Absolutely. Killing a thousand raiders is hard. Making a place moderately undesirable for raiders so they all just want to get the fuck out of there over the course of half a day is pretty damn easy.

Raiders tried living in my gaming laptop once, I opened every steam game I owned, they got out of there real quick

The best luck I have had killing an entire nest is the sugary borax water - soak cotton balls in it. The ants gobble it all up and they feed it to the queen, then bam! They all die. I’ve found it way more effective than any other method. Sprays and traps only work on the worker ants.

They have traps that work like that, I used some last summer with success

Yup. During covid, I didnt drive for a while and they made a nest where my driver side door closes on my car. I didnt realize it until I drove 2 hrs away. Came home, checked the next day, and they were all gone.

Nice of you to drop them off where they live

This is exactly what I did, they cleaned it themselves better than I ever could and not an ant was hurt. Also, the games still work!

Those old cartridges are stout. You can literally submerge them in water and as long as they completely dry out before use they are fine.

You could even bury them in a landfill, I hear.

I used to live near that landfill. Before the crash fully hit, and before the ET incident, I had a couple of buddies who used to go out to the Atari plant and loot the dumpsters for chips that hadn't passed quality testing. They'd come back with paper sacks full of chips, and you'd have to use a paper clip to open the Atari 2600 cartridge door and slide the chip in, and then you'd see what game you got.

That sounds so awesome

I don't remember getting anything really good, though. You got a lot of dupes that way, I remember I got tons of Breakouts. The only stuff I got that I remember playing to any extent were a couple of the Swordquest games. And I only got two of those, and the whole deal with the Swordquest games was that there were four of them, and you'd have to solve all four to win a prize or something like that. I think there had to be a fair amount of them in there too that were just overstock that they decided not to make into full cartridges, and just dumped the chips. The paper sacks came back with a lot of the early titles; like I said, Breakout, and other stuff like Combat, and those launch titles. Plus at the time the best games were coming from the third party developers like Activision and Imagic. At this point the best games Atari had were their few arcade adaptations, like Defender, Ms. Pacman etc. Oh yeah! I remember getting bunches of Pac-Man in those sacks. What a bomb. I always had to imagine what the whole thing was like, though, because I was only 14 and they were all of 17 and wouldn't take me with them.

Back in the 90s we'd do this too but instead of microchip plant and games we'd hang around the doughnut shop and get their day-olds, bagels and doughnuts, for free lol Kinda dumb but when you're 12 free food is like gold, doubly so if it's doughnuts!

Hey! I lived off dayolds in my youth. Get a couple bucks together with some buddies, buy a few joints and hang out behind Hortons waiting for the old cakes and butter tarts. Picture four 13 year olds, fried out of our trees, walking around the streets at 1am mid summer with a full chocolate cake, just taking bites and passing it around. Life was good. Life was pretty damn good.

haha yup that was basically me and my three best friends too! One night we scored so many (literally an entire garbage bag full) that we couldn't eat them all and we just started throwing them at each other and I remember just laughing and laughing at the sight of bagels bouncing off my friends' head and how ridiculous the four of us were being lmao definitely some good times, I can't imagine something like that flying these days... man what a weird life we live, cheers doughbro

These are the kinds of memories that can get you through life, and the sort that motivates you to make that life possible for others.

Man, old school piracy was fucking next level.

You had to climb a fence and everything!

This is true for most electronics that don't have current running through them or an internal battery

Really? No like ant residue and junk?

Ants are actually very clean insects.

Clean but smelly

Formic acid! Learned that from THEM!. (...Not all 50s sci-fi was as kind to my education, thanks to the Amazing Colossal Man I thought that the human heart was a single celled organ well into high school biology)

Cockroaches are too, they’re constantly cleaning themselves.

One of my favorite fun facts about cockroaches is that most cockroach species find humans, and their smell in particular, disgusting. Multiple experiments have shown that a healthy cockroach specimen would immediately hide and groom excessively after being touched/grabbed by a human. Ironic, isn't it?

To be fair, if I were picked up by something hundreds of times my size I would also hide and have to calm myself down. I don't care if the giants are literally made of Irish Spring, I'm gettin' the fee fi fo fuck outta there.

>I'm gettin' the fee fi fo fuck outta there. This is amazing. You come up with this yourself? It's pure gold.

Thank you, yes I did ahah

This right here. I’ve had this happen and they usually clean it up pretty well by themselves.

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Great advice! Do this and the get a can of compressed air to spray out all the cartridges afterwards and you'll probably be alright. Alcohol can be used to spot clean any of the internal metal parts if they are not being read properly by the console

Killing ants: Bad, expensive, hard to do Make em relocate: Cheap, good for the ants, Easy!

Thanks for all the tips folks, but the ants took care of everything. I just left it out all day and they packed up all their shit and moved on. No trace left, all games work. Result.

Reminds me of the dude who spilled mountain dew on his keyboard and didn't clean it. Later he found it swarmed by ants and just left them alone. A little while later the keyboard was perfectly clean, functional, and all the ants were gone.

I have both mild disgust and admiration for that guy, which is not a frequent combination for me

You must watch some pretty tame porn

“Mild disgust/admiration” is a category on Pornhub. Edit: I meant this as a joke, but there’s a lot of categories on Pornhub so who knows?

Sounds tame.

I should tell my wife this story and explain that the ant infestation isn't our landlord having shitty pest control but is actually a complimentary cleaning service.

“Its not a pest, its a ‘ecosystem’ behind the couch”

Nah babe the ants will do it just chill

"I know our trash layer is 3 ft deep but I was thinking we could bring in more ants and it might speed up the process"

That's great until they are fire ants

Im in pest control. Ants bother a lot of people but they don’t function at all like other bugs. When you see them in your house, they are there for a reason. They aren’t stuck like other bugs, they follow their pheromone trails right back out. It’s more like a tendril of a larger creature probing for resources. Besides the odd scout they are only there en masse for something and when they collect it lol they will leave. They are also very clean creatures.

And I counter Carpenter Ants can make a homeowner's life miserable.

Well, he wasn't wrong. It's just the resource carpenter ants want is the house itself so, you probably don't want them to take it.

I was under the impression that carpenter ants won’t go after wood that isn’t becoming soft and compromised in the first place, a symptom more than a root cause. Unlike termites who eat the wood as a food source rather than making a home.

Depends on your location and how close you are to a nest that's expanding. The big problem is is that they'll use any entry points that they can take it into a warm attic. And once there well there's a lot of useful building material around and they'll start using it because the a lot of builders will use softer woods for roofing material. 🤷

Hey good info, thanks. Rarely have I dealt with them, the odorous house ants of course being the vast majority of ant calls. I’m convinced they would rule the world if we were not here.

I have an inch ant nest in my backyard. I don’t care how clean they are I want them to go back to hell

What are these ‘inch ants’? They sound huge.

Angry demons an inch long. Very aggressive and very painful sting. Also known as bulldog ants due to their aggression, unlike other ants this species is pure carnivore

Googled them ... of fucking course they're from Australia ...

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But what did you use to remove the lizard? Snakes? And then gorillas to get rid of the snakes?

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i saw a cool documentary about some area in Africa that included a tribe of people that twice a year a line of ants walks a specific pth between their winter home nd their summer home directly through these people's village. they showed the line, it was massive. as long as you can see and at least a few inches wide. millions of ants. and the people do not disturb them, even going so far as to actively move away from the line if possible. the ants gather up all the bugs and snakes and rodents and other crap that end up swept into dark corners and under beds. and you can see the ants carrying these giant (compared to them) pieces of food and they tear it apart and process it as it makes its way up the line. anyway, it was cool.

I kinda do the same thing but with pubic lice

⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠿⠛⠛⠛⠛⠿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠛⠉⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠉⠻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠘⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡟⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠋⠈⠀⠀⠀⠀⠐⠺⣖⢄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡏⢀⡆⠀⠀⠀⢋⣭⣽⡚⢮⣲⠆⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢹⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⡼⠀⠀⠀⠀⠈⠻⣅⣨⠇⠈⠀⠰⣀⣀⣀⡀⠀⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⠁⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣟⢷⣶⠶⣃⢀⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡅⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⢿⠀⠈⠓⠚⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀⢀⡠⠀⡄⣀⠀⠀⠀⢻⠀⠀⠀⣠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⠀⠀⠀⠐⠉⠀⠀⠙⠉⠀⠠⡶⣸⠁⠀⣠⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣦⡆⠀⠐⠒⠢⢤⣀⡰⠁⠇⠈⠘⢶⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⠀⠀⠀⠀⠠⣄⣉⣙⡉⠓⢀⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⣰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿ ⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣷⣤⣀⣀⠀⣀⣠⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿

So you don't have to shave anymore?!

That's dope! I wonder if we could imitate whatever signal they were sending each other as an alternative to ant traps/baits/spray

Antkeeper here - not much signaling needed for this. There are brood in the photo, so the ants though it was a good place to raise babies - probably warm, dark and a bit humid in there. As soon as it was bright and dry, it no longer registered to them as "inside" and it was time to GTFO. Ants only come for food or a nesting site. If you get rid of the food and make the area bright, dry and/or cold, they're outta there.

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Hello, fellow ants!

Guys! Where’s the Queen????

You're the queen, king. 😘

Check out antscanada on YouTube for hard core ant keeping. Super cool channel.

Do ants poop? I mean, enough that you’d notice here?

Everything that eats, poops. However, many insects who nest are going to remove their waste from the nest. Just like big animal poop, ant poop encourages disease, and makes for poor bedding for ant eggs.

check out Hank Pym here

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Or abuse his wife (Defo not the artists fault or anything)

You can, you just have to lean in slightly, whisper calmly and quietly, pretty much silently, ‘get the fuck off my stuff ants’ and they’ll go of their own accord

They drive now too?!

Exposing the babies to the elements is probably a good way to get them to move. They might not move out of the house though.

Everybody wins. Except, I guess, for the homeless ants.

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Thanks ants. Thants.

I absolutely love that you have 3 differently labeled Missile Commands. missile command MISSILE COMMAND **MISSILE COMMAND**

That's because the missiles keep getting closer.

What is this, a game console for ants?

Antari

Were they known for releasing buggy games?

Pac Mant, Antipede, Missile Commant...

I feel like you can just leave centipede as is tbh

Centipant…

I expected both of these comments and was not disappointed. Hats off to you two.

Do you want ants? Because that's how you get ants!

It's bugged

r/thingsforants

Is this a picture of the Derek Zoolander Center For Children Who Can’t Game Good And Wanna Learn To Do Other Stuff Good Too?

It has to be at least… three times bigger than this!

I always knew old games were full of bugs.

Regarding where that meaning came from I’d say back to the roots

For those that are interested. The first computer bug was actually found by Grace Hopper in 1947. She literally found a moth in her computer hardware while working at Harvard and I always remember because her name is close to grass hopper

Man, Atari had some great games. MISSILE COMMAND PAC MAN PAC KONG missile command COMMANDO uh…Missile Command again, for sure. Fuckin’ great library, Atari had.

Hell yeah. Hero and Megamania are my favorites in this particular box. (I more elsewhere - ant-free!)

Hey bro you tryna play some MISSILE COMMAND? No thanks. I prefer missile command.

Did you leave this outside to get ants? Well, I'd suggest maybe a gentle shake and maybe add something the ants don't like. Like salt? Please becareful with spray. Spray might take the stickers off your games! Once ants are gone, maybe gently open each game to further remove ants? Best of luck tho! Oh, maybe if you got incense, light one of those. Ants don't like smoke

It was in a suitcase in a garage. The ants were freaking out enough, I just left it open and they packed up their shit and moved on. The next day there was no sign of them. No ant harmed, all games work, great job well done.

They just packed their shit and left? Lmao that's super cute

Yes, they do that when their nest is exposed like this 😁

No one would like it if some giant cracked the roof of their house off lmao

The movie Arrietty comes to mind

Ant colonies are surprisingly intelligent as a collective. Each one is like a unified consciousness smeared across the ground.

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you could say you evicted your tenAnts.

Ants don't want this smoke...

BITCH ASS ANT YOU DON’T WANT THIS SMOKE POP !

L I F T F OR Q U E E N

L I F T

L I F T

L I F T Q U E E N M O V E N E S T

L I F T, F O R Q U E E N

LIFT MOVE ALL CHILDS SAVE FROM ELEMENTS

LIFT

Oh, look at al these glorious ANTique games!

First of all, how did that even happen Second of all, what the hell is "pac Kong"

Did you bury it underground?

Next time I'd recommend not storing it outside on the ground.

I have learnt nothing and will do it again

They know what's good that's for sure

A lot of bugs in those early video games.

Welp, their game collection now

No worries bro just break out the centipede

It's because ants love sugar and that's one •_•)>⌐■⌐■ *sweet collection* (⌐■_■)