Remembering Simon

We were sitting around earlier today thinking of ideas for future Re:sound shows when Simon came to mind. Remember? It's that old electronic game from the early 80's that would warble songs consisting of bleeps in four notes corresponding to 4 boldly colored, enormous buttons, that would light up with each respective bleep.

Simon would start with one bleep (blue!) which you'd repeat back by pressing the blue button, and then would advance to two (blue! green!) and then three (blue! green! yellow!) and so on. The point of the game was to repeat Simon's melody back to him (it?) as it became increasingly long, complicated, and beautiful. The point was remembering.

Simon was a close friend for a while. I used to play for hours, sitting cross-legged in my closet in the dark, with Simon on my lap lighting up a color show and bleeping away, then letting out the always startling Game Over-signaling MEHHHHH when the song became too jumbled in my head and I pressed the wrong button.

I can still hear those tones so clearly in my mind's ear. Turns out red = A , green's = A an octave higher, yellow = G and blue = D. Also turns out there were a lot of Simon imitators, (like Castle Toy Einstein, Space Echo and Copy Cat.) and later versions of my beloved game, like Simon Surprise, Simon Rewind, Simon Trickster, Simon Bounce (!?). Think I prefer remembering the regular old Simon, the first version. The best version.

So now I'm on the lookout for a Simon, and am certain there's one out there in Chicago, perched upon a thrift store shelf just waiting for me. Bleep! MEHHHHH. Bleep! Red. Bleep! Blue. Bleep! Green. Bleep! Green. Bleep! MEHHHHH. And yes, of course I can play a virtual version in the meantime. There are tons of them out there. Like this one. Or this one. (no soul) Or THIS one (nice sword, dude.) No surprise - I can even play on my phone. But none adequately simulate the look, feel and sound of the actual game. So guess I'll just keep my eyes open for the real deal.

MEHHHH