Playing vintage video games is part of the job for these Goodwill techs

GORHAM, Maine — At Goodwill of Northern New England headquarters, a riot of bleeps, pew-pews and ka-changs shot from an old-fashioned, picture-tube equipped color television set on Tuesday. The fuzzy, eight-inch screen showed two dark blobs, meant to represent military tanks, shooting at each other in a simple maze.

Jimmy Carter was still president when the ancient, 1978 Sears-branded Atari 2600 knockoff video game console came out. Andy Gibb’s “Shadow Dancing” was the top hit that year and Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” was showing on silver screens all over the country.

The game, titled “Combat,” with its crude graphics and low-fi sounds, is primitive by today’s gaming standards. But the two men at the joystick controls give it their best shot, anyway. They must. Playing vintage video games is their job — or part of it, anyway.

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