Submitted by Laurens B, coin-operated.

Pinball existed, and was popular, long before video games appeared on the scene. Today, only 1 company still makes pinball machines. These great forms of entertainment still exist in electronic, video game form, but the real deal is pretty much extinct. Such a shame.

Submitted by Kenny O, wonderful and waterful:

Forget the gameboy. This is what we played before handheld video game consoles. Wonderful Waterful Basketball is still the best handheld basketball game ever made.

Me? I liked the “ring toss” variation on this game. One has to wonder how long toys like these would entertain today’s youth if their attention spans are anything like people say they are.

Submitted by Kenny O, who cheated by peeking at the shoes:

This was everyone’s favorite rainy day activity in elementary school. A few problems: If you weren’t popular, no one ever touched your thumb. Or, if a boy picked a girl, it could have been taken to mean that he liked her. Cheating was easy: All you had to do was open your eyes and steal a peek at the shoes when you felt your thumb get tapped. You could also tap your neighbor’s thumb to trick him.

Submitted by Michael D, who spies some WIN.

If I could count the hour spent interacting with I Spy books during my youth…Well, I don’t have that much time, honestly. In addition to being fun, the images themselves were gorgeous enough to stare at for hours. I’ve even, as an adult, flipped an I Spy book open once or twice, and there is still something magical about them. These have my vote over the “I spy, with my little eye, something _____” games that my brother and I used to play on road trips. Here’s a sample to gaze at for a bit (might be kind of hard to spot a toothpick in an image this size, but that shouldn’t stop you from trying):

Submitted by Chris T, epic gamer.

This classic video game console was released in 1994 (1995 in the United States and Europe). It was not the first console to utilize optical disc format, but it was the first successful model to do so. It was manufactured for 11 years. Of course, by now we’ve been through PlayStation 2 and are currently using PlayStation 3, but the original is the true nostalgic win. Let us know in the comments what your favorite PlayStation games were!