Apartment 16, Arthur's first apartment, was where he opened a portal to the world of 16-bit gaming, the 80286, and the power of Prodigy. Years earlier I logged many hours on my father's Commodore 64 transcribing BASIC from books and magazines. In Sonoma, my life nearly went dark on the gaming front - until a FAO Schwartz Nintendo was delivered for Christmas. Allen, my grandfather, had in his possession what I believe to be an 8086 computer that I attempted, on a two occasions, to cajole into performing some useful operation for a person such as myself. The most exciting thing I was able to do was launch a spreadsheet application called Lotus 1-2-3. It kept me entertained for approximately 5 minutes.
Arthur was in possession of both a Sega Genesis, a Personal Computer, and very shortly after a Super Nintendo. Days after school, I would follow him home back to his place to where we conquered, but found out we had only delayed the formulated machinations of Chaos (Warsong) , or battled side-by-side as Mystical Ninjas. When we grew tired of staring at the television we would turn around and play games on his computer. There, in that world, we escaped detention and helped out our lazy pet frog in Willy Beamish or "cracked" the adult-aged questions protection in Leisure Suit Larry 3.
But it all paled in comparison to the power of the 300 baud modem that the computer harnessed to connect us to the Prodigy Service. The sole function of Prodigy provided me with the ability to talk with real-life girls in the form of pen-pals system. While an anecdote related to the correspond sadly escapes me, it was common for me quickly find a 'pal-up', exchange a few pieces of electronic correspondence, and no longer KIT (Keep-In-Touch) after a month.
However, there was nothing quite like the noise of the modem connecting to the prodigy service and the visceral feeling when I would see the notification of a new message. Those were moments of magic in my youth. It was in those moments, I truly fell in love with computers.