Remembering the ’70s – BLIP [VIDEO]

From the guy who brought back your fondest "old school" memories with the Trapper Keeper and Slime, comes the latest trip down Memory Lane. Today we remember Blip. Blip was introduced by Tomy in 1977.  It was one of the first portable, self-contained video games (if you could call it that), that would humor us kids before Simon, Merlin, and all those wonderful hand-held electronic  football devices of the '80s came out.

At the time, Atari was just making a name for itself in the television video game department.  Its first game was Pong, the primitive arcade table tennis simulation. 

Blip was more or less a portable version of Pong. It could be played with one or two people. The object was to keep the red LED light bouncing back and forth (batteries not included). When the red dot came to you, you pressed the 1,2, or 3 buttons to send it back to the opposing player. Blip could be played alone as well. The futuristic-looking black box also had counters that kept score, a mode button to select one or two players, serving switches, and a manual wind-up timer.

I thought my Blip was pretty cool at the time. It's a wonder it didn't weigh 150 pounds with all of that advanced circuitry, but it didn't. I enjoyed mine! It served a variety of purposes with my sci-fi imagination. I always needed something to serve as a computer to steer my starship or detonate imaginary obstructions. Blip was always there for me. I think I actually enjoyed it more in that capacity than actually playing the game, which I kind of found annoying. It was sloowwwwww, and the only real sound effects came from the timer being wound and the constant bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz emitted. Picture a fly trapped in a window sill and that's exactly what Blip sounded like.

Still, like any other enterprising youth growing up in the sticks and who worshipped Christmas catalogues, I just had to have one. Thanks for the memories, Blip!