"Watson A.Name - \"Watt Sun, the Dark Remover\"" wrote:

Same here in the Atari 2600 and Super Mario Bros years back in the '70s,
when a neighbor bought one for his kids. I must've repaired the
joystick at least a half dozen times.

My kids were just hitting their teens when the Atari 2600 came
along. We bought one, and it was almost never turned off...
After two power supplies burned out, I built a supply robust
enough to last. The joysticks and the switches on the main unit
were all rebuilt *many* times. That Atari finally just got too
hard to maintain, and we bought another one and, except for the
power supply problem, started the whole sequence again.

It was fascinating to watch the kids learn to fix those things.
Initially I had to work on it, but it wasn't long before they
did all the repair work.

Another fun thing about that Atari was the process that we went
through with every new game. I could understand the
instructions better, so I'd win at most of the games... for
about the first half a dozen iterations. That's when the kids
would catch up in understanding what the point of the game was.
Then their reflexes took over, and by the time they had the
experience of maybe 10 or 12 games, there was simply no point in
me even attempting to play against them.

--
Floyd L. Davidson http://web.newsguy.com/floyd_davidson
Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska)