Shadow Ranch Football Ghost

(Above)  My son playing flag football.  

Notice the mysterious figure in the window 

of the building in the rear.  Scaaaaaaaary.

Took this picture of my son playing football at Shadow Ranch Park here in Woodland Hills when we discovered a picture of a ghost in the window. Creepy...

Mattel Electronic Football - The Height of Gaming Technology

When this came out it was the apex of electronic gaming. My brother had snagged one of these Mattel Electronic Football games for Christmas and it soon afforded us hours and hours of thumb numbing joy. Like may football-type games (see electric football here), it is more window dressing than an actual simulation of playing football.

Basically there were three rows by which you could move your 'man' forward. You had to wait for the 'defense' to get out of the way and then ran down the open row before you were 'tackled'. There were two speeds "Pro 1" and "Pro 2", the first was impossibly easy and the second was impossibly hard. Only fools ever 'kicked' and it had some memorable if not simple electronic beeps sfx (especially upon turning the ball over on downs).

Surprisingly, I still don't have this somewhere in my packrat collection. I believe I eBayed it several years ago for a small fortune ($18 rings a bell).

Football Week - Electric Football

Has anything ever been more overrated than electric football? It has nothing to do with football and everything to do with absolute randomness. The fact that it is even called a 'game' is quite silly to me. It is equivalent to throwing a deck of playing cards into the air and tallying the 'result'.

For anyone who doesn't know, electric football is a throwback game for us late 1960's/1970's kids. Prior to Madden, this was how you did the home football thing. Basically, you arranged you men on the field, stuck a piece of cotton in the runners hand, and turned on the electricity. That's right, you plugged a big piece of metal into a wall socket. Then, electricity surges through a motor which vibrates the playing surface and makes a horrible electrical sound. Then, all the players on the board start bobbing up and down and move in random directions. Hopefully, the blockers 'block' and hopefully the runner:

a) Runs
b) Runs in the right direction
c) Runs without being touched by an opposing player.

When I was a kid, I was always disappointed when I played. It was definitely a more of an imagination type game than a real game. Despite all that, I was still kind of nostalgic for it when I saw one online. My number 3 son got it into his head that he wanted one, so he spent his allowance money and bought an old one off eBay. Once it arrived, within two minutes, he was thoroughly bored and within thirty seconds I was reminded of how lame electric football is.

The buzzing noise from the game was so loud, my wife thought we were getting electrocuted. That was the extent of our fun.