March 12, 2007 I was scanning through some old magazine articles and I came across an opinion that Epyx's Pitstop II for the Commodore 64 was one of the greatest home video games ever. The title sounded familiar, so I did some more research to see what it was about.

The game I eventually remembered was Epyx's Pitstop for the ColecoVision. I fired it up in an emulator, and was amazed that I had forgotten this game. In 1984 I played Pitstop for so many hours that it doesn't seem possible that the game could have slipped my mind. I can easily name all of the other ColecoVision titles I once owned, so why had I forgotten Pitstop? Here are my theories:

• Pitstop was unremarkable, therefore forgettable, even though I played it extensively. In the early 80s mediocre games still had to be played because of cost, availability, no options for trade-in, etc.. This partially explains why I also played the Atari 2600 version of Pac-Man for months, a game so bad that it was partially responsible for the first downfall of Atari.
  
  
• Racing games are often eclipsed by newer games with better technologies. Night Driver was abandoned for Turbo, then Pole Position, Out Run, Hard Driving, Virtua Racing, Ridge Racer, and every other racing game to date. Being a racer, Pitstop was destined to be overshadowed by its successors. The flaw with this theory is that I remember every one of those arcade racing games, even though I undoubtedly played Pitstop more because it was for my home console.
  
  
• I experienced some trauma, such as illness or head injury, that affected my memory. Of course, I don't remember any events that would have affected my memory.

Truth is, I've surely forgotten things and events that are significantly more important than a video game. The fact that I've thought about this topic as much as I have is a direct result of a lack of decent television and not turning on the TV for days. Who knows what other bizarre paths I will follow while entertaining myself and trying to replace television viewing...