The 1980′s were a wonderful and magical time, when just the very thought of holding something in your hands that would once take large, bulky machinery had us just as hopelessly ecstatic and orgasmic as many people seem to get today over the introduction of the latest iWhatever device.  Remember how the Japanese were going to make all these small, handheld TV’s that would be the everyday essential of the future?  Yeah, that seemed like a great idea until we realized just how shitty the analog signal of the time that looked bad enough on a regular sized TV looked even shittier on a screen as big as your hand.

But hey, we still drooled over the novel concept of the handheld device!  Little did we realize then that the 21st century would turn the handheld device into the antichrist…

Your souls are all mine! The Dark Queen of the Smartphone!!!

Handheld electronic games were all the rage in the decade of excess thirty years ago, and one of the originators of that trend was also one of its most brilliant and coolest creations, and that was the one and only Merlin, the subject of this week’s Flashback Friday!

It looked like what Knight Rider might have made a call from KITT on…

First produced and manufactured by Parker Brothers in 1978, Merlin wound up becoming one of the most popular toys of the early and mid 80′s.  The original Merlin, the one I had as a kid and will sing the praises of today, can be seen above.  Yes, it looked like a prototype for the very first cellphones, and yes, like all handheld electronic devices of the 80′s, you could have used it as a lethal weapon had it become necessary.  The console had eleven numbered buttons (0-10), as well as four additional buttons at the bottom that were used to select games or  for some gameplay.

Panic Button not included.

Despite being an advanced piece of technological wizardry that cost a pretty penny back in the day, there were only six “games” that could be played on the Merlin… and half of them got old faster than a video game that took you 10 minutes and one try to beat.

Or a game that had no ending and the same looping theme music…

Let’s see what the ol’ Merlin could do here…

Game #1 – Tic Tac Toe:

I’ll take Detective Dietrich to block.

You gotta love the human spirit to innovate and do things that were never before possible.  But sometimes we can take that too far, like when we build a sophisticated handheld computer to play a game that requires only a pencil and a piece of paper.  Oh, but wait, you say… the Merlin brought a new element to Tic Tac Toe that couldn’t be replicated with chalk on a sidewalk.  If you were one of those kids everyone hated, you could now play Tic Tac Toe by yourself, with the Mighty Merlin as your opponent!  Here’s a wonky, but sufficient video that shows you how to play Tic Tac Toe by yourself on this red menace…

That button on the bottom right there that says “COMP TURN”.  Yeah, you had to tell Merlin when it was its turn to play… as if there are lesser known rules of Tic Tac Toe that allow for someone to take more than one turn at a time.  This is the kind of brilliant computer AI you were up against when you couldn’t find an O person to your X.  Somewhere out there, a whole bunch of antisocial kids cheated the Merlin again and again in Tic Tac Toe by never allowing it to take its turn, and never felt the least bit guilty about it.  What kind of awful lessons were the children of the 80′s learning anyhow?

Oh…. yeah.

Game #2 – Music Machine:

Not to be outdone with just being a glorified outlet for our Tic Tac Toe cravings, the Merlin could also double as a musical instrument!  Well, a shitty musical instrument that only played 10 different notes, anyway.  You haven’t lived until you’ve heard “Jingle Bells” played on a Merlin.

Beep beep beep! Beep beep beep! BeepBEEP beep beepbeep!

In all seriousness, though, to this day I can still tap out Jingle Bells on a keyboard because I still remember the code to play it on the Merlin!  Since most kids wouldn’t know their FACE from their EGBDF, Merlin came with a few songs included in the instruction manual.  Plugging in 3330333035123044443333335321 into Merlin will greet you with the opening bars of this joyous carol, and when I later figured out that 1=C, 2=D, 3 =E, etc., I could take these mad Merlin music making skills to the piano and really show off my musical genius.

One can only take so much holiday cheer.

Game #3 – Echo:

Let’s see what our guest commentator Simon has to say about this game…

And a whole string of bleeping beeps for good measure!

Echo gave you a sequence of one to nine numbers you had to memorize and enter back into Merlin to win this game.  This was the absolute worst possible game for people like me with very short attention spans.  Of course, those kids who were cheating the game at Tic Tac Toe probably always selected the option to have to memorize only one note… and those bastards probably got into Harvard.  Of course, some of them probably discovered that they didn’t even have the short term memory to recall a single note for 3 seconds, and those kids undoubtedly went on to the prestigious University of Sally Struthers…

Yep, they all got their diploma in firearms repair from ICS. God help us all…

Game #4 – Blackjack:

Long before casinos became omnipresent across the United States, and compulsive gamblers needed pocket handheld slot machines to cure their fever, Merlin was offering us the chance to play a little blackjack.  Awesome!  I’ve got 14, go ahead and hit me….

Wait… what the hell kind of blackjack is this!?!?!?

Note from the Nest:  Yes, I know the ace can count as 1 or 11 in blackjack.  Just go with it, OK? It was the only good image I could find of a 14!

While the rest of the world plays blackjack where the magic number is 21, Merlin can apparently only count up to 13.  Either that, or the choice of 13 could be one more sign this device was created by Satan himself.  This is the only game where the “Hit Me” button in the lower left corner of the Merlin is ever used.  After putting up with these four shitty games so far, Merlin’s “Hit Me” button sounds more like an invitation for sweet revenge than it does a request for another card…

Die Merlin!!! Die!!!

Game #5 – Magic Square:

Just when it seemed like the Merlin’s best function might be as a doorstop, we have finally come to a game that is actually interesting to play.  Magic square used the 1-9 buttons and started out with some random pattern being lit up.  Touching a button caused the lights on the buttons in all four directions to turn from on to off or from off to on.  The object was to figure out how to get all of the lights off, kind of like…. um…..

Is there no originality in the electronic toy market?

Game #6 – Mindbender:

Luckily for the Merlin’s sake, this sixth game was totally worth all the technology and money that went into this oversized telephone receiver.  In this game, Merlin would come up with a secret combination of numbers, the length of which was determined by the player beforehand.  Your job was to try to guess the string, and after each try, Merlin would give you clues as to how many numbers you got right (steady lights) and how many you got in the right place (blinking lights).  This was the game I enjoyed most, and spent the majority of my Merlin playing days partaking in,

Ahem, ahem!!!

Yes, OK.  This was a more involved, electronic version of the game Mastermind.  But at least in this case, the case for recreating the game on the Merlin interface is justified simply because there aren’t five billion marbles and pegs to lose and have your little sister choke on.  So finally we see an instance of gameplay copycatting that was actually a marked improvement on the original!

Well played, Merlin! You spared yourself from the sledgehammer! I might even let you have a turn the next time we play Tic Tac Toe.

A childhood without the internet and cell phones could’ve been real boring, but thanks to the handheld game revolution of the 80′s, we were able to fight off the boredom so we could all be claimed by the smartphone zombie apocalypse.  The Nest would like to thank the makers of these fantastic little gadgets of the 80′s like Merlin, who realized that all a person needed to have a good time was a shapely piece of plastic, some buttons, and a fresh supply of C batteries.  And to those of you out there with dirty minds…. well, you asked for it!

I wonder what this “Hit Me” button does?