The Atari 2600 BASIC cartridge -- holds a special place in my heart! You see, as a child possessing the 2600 console in the 1980's -- I never possessed that sp

The Atari 2600 BASIC cartridge -- holds a special place in my heart! You see, as a child possessing the 2600 console in the 1980's -- I never possessed that specific cartridge... But, oh did I want to! But now the $64,000 question... WHY? You see, every other cartridge for the 2600, every other cartridge, WAS A GAME !!! But the BASIC cartridge? It was the one cartridge, the one cartridge out of hundreds, perhaps thousands that existed at the time -- THAT WAS NOT A GAME !!! In other words, no matter how crappy it was, no matter how many bad reviews it got (and it got plenty of bad reviews and negative feedback even back in the 1980's!) -- it was the one PATTERN BREAKER -- in other words, it was the one cartridge that did not fit the mold/template/class/parameters/specifications/purpose/intent (use whatever terminology you prefer!), etc. -- of all of the other cartridges, of which all, were GAMES... Because it wasn't a game and thus broke the pattern of all cartridges released up until that point in time -- IT CAPTURED MY ATTENTION! Now, even though I encountered much better BASICs later on (most notably PET, VIC-20, COMMODORE-64, AMIGA and PC BASICS), and even though, beyond BASIC, I went on to be a programmer later on in life in other more complex languages, the 2600 BASIC Cartridge STILL holds a place in my heart -- if for no other reason than IT WAS DIFFERENT, IT WAS RADICALLY DIFFERENT -- than all of the other cartridges released both before and after it! That is, it was a PATTERN BREAKER -- an anomaly, a singularity, a "Googlewhack"; call it whatever you will... Now, on a broader note -- that same pattern of investigating things that seem alien, wierd, or out-of-place, in a variety of contexts, in a variety of disciplines -- has made all of the difference in my life, and to a large part, makes me what I am today... And the Atari 2600 BASIC cartridge -- was one of the first things that stood out to me as "matching the above pattern" (of my life!), by simply "not matching the existing pattern" (cartridge/gamewise! <g>). Ah, there's a future essay or blog post here! <g>