AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS .... lol...
How about Commodore 64: LOAD"*" ,8,1
I remember when my dad brought home PONG and it was the BEST THING EVER... watching that ball go back and forth back and forth... lol... there were 4 games, hockey, tennis, and two other games I cant remember... BUT EVERY GAME HAD THE SAME IDEA, don't let the ball get past your line lol
Atari 2600 games were 99.99 back when they came out! That would be equivalent to paying about 200+ for your kids games!..... but what better game was there than COMBAT, ASTEROIDS, or later games such as PITFALL, RIVER RAID or POLE POSITION
Then there was the scam of commodore 128... DOUBLE the power of a 64, but everyone who had it played 64 games... lol.... 64 kilobytes... my kids toy watch from the dollar store has more memory than that lol
Vic 20 was great too.... pop in the casset tape and away you go!
We had a PET in school, (no not a animal lol) but the computer, it was in the library and not to be used by anyone... don't know why we even had one!
I've heard of the PET computer (Commodore PET, IIRC), I've just never seen one in person.
I used to tinker with a TI-99 4/A. Even figured out how to program in BASIC it a little bit. To play a plug-in game, all you had to do was plug the "Command Module" into the cartridge slot, turn it on, "Press Any Key to Begin", then press a number higher than 1, and you were in business. I never could find the "Any Key", but I eventually figured out all of the other keys would start the system, too.
You could program a simple game if you wanted to, but it wasn't required. Then there was the Speech Synthesizer option. In those days, getting anything resembling natural sound out of a computer was remarkable.
Today, full pre-recorded voices. Sometimes, the voice acting is even mostly bearable.
A few years back, I had this old Sinbad pinball machine I used to have working. Unfortunately it was the electronic version missing a power supply board. The Gottlieb System 80 didn't feature all that great electronics either, not to mention what might have been wrong with what was under the playfield. I eventually sold it.
As far as Ataris go, you can by a brand new "reproduction" at the Dollar stores today around US $50, with some games already on it. Not really sure which Atari is being copied, I'm not an Atari fan. I'm sure they're emulation consoles, but I've heard that some of the boards inside are set up where you can solder an Atari cartridge port to them. I've never tried one though.
Here's an example.
http://www.dollargeneral.com/product/index.jsp?productId=15702686I know I've rambled off topic a bit.
Sending in box tops or bar codes from cereal boxes for prizes. Today Kellogg's prints codes on the inside of boxes to be entered online. Same with instant win games, bleh.