I recently purchased a fresh copy of Activision’s River Raid from eBay with the express purpose of opening it and pretending like it was Christmas 1982 all over again.

I opened the game and played my first round on the Retron 77 using the Retron 77 joystick. the experience was just okay. and I made a YouTube video about it. You see that below:

The next day I was just not satisfied, so I dub my original Atari 7800 out of the garage plus an original CX-40 Joystick

In my very first serious game of River Raid, after 38 years I proceeded to obliterate my old high score from Christmas 1982 by nearly 15,000 points.    I could never play River Raid well on any of the retro collections, or emulators because the feel of the joystick was just not right. 

But with an actual CX-40 in my hand on real hardware (okay a 7800), all the nuances were correct and I was able to score higher than I ever thought possible as a kid, 33450 points.  I don’t care if this is not really a record or anything, it’s my record and it took 38 years to do it.

I now have my 7800 plugged in for good and I’m looking forward to playing new home brews as well as developing my own games and running them on real hardware.

-Steve Fulton