I was part of a conversation recently that was focused on video games. There were people of various ages, and it was fun to listen to everyone’s first recollections of games they played.
One person there commented that he remembered playing Pong, one of the very first video games. It was quite simple, really; you bounced a ball back and forth across the screen, trying to get it by your opponent. This was a game focused more on reaction than strategy, but everything has to have an origin, and video gamers often point to Pong as an important point in their history.
My earliest memory is when one of my neighbors first got an Atari. He was the most popular kid in the neighborhood! I spent countless hours over there, waiting my turn to play Pac Man, Asteroids, and Space Invaders. We would cheer on our friends as they advanced to new levels, while also hoping they would lose so we could get to our turn.
The next step on the evolutionary ladder of video games is when that same neighbor got a new Atari console, but this one allowed you to pause in the middle of a game. Holy cow! What an amazing advance in the culture of video games! After all, it was inevitable that, while you were feverishly in the middle of eating ghosts, the phone would ring. That was very exciting back then too, but what could you do? Lose your game to answer the phone? Or potentially miss a call that could change your life (or so we thought)? This new pause button solved all our problems!
My own family bowed to our whims of needing video games and bought… an Odyssey. If you’ve never heard of that, it’s no wonder. Still, we made the best of it, playing games like Pick-Axe Pete until our thumbs were sore.
Nintendo was the next big thing. Atari might have thought it had the market cornered, but there was something special about the group that brought us Super Mario Bros. Anyone who had the original Nintendo console remembers the all-important task of blowing the dust off the end of the game cartridge if it wasn’t loading correctly, right? These games also sometimes offered shortcuts through certain levels so you could reach the end task more quickly.
And here is where a big change occurred. While my parents gave in and bought us a Nintendo, they still scoffed at whether it was that important, despite our arguments that our hand-eye coordination was vastly improved because of video games. But when we caught our mom up at night playing Tetris, it was all over. Here was a woman who had fought against us playing too much on the device, addicted to one of the games!
I think this happened in a lot of homes. And when you think about how many of us adults still play games like this, it likely started back then. Most people who own a smartphone have at least one game on there. My long-time readers know of my (slight) addiction to Candy Crush. Plus, I’ve added Lemmings to my daily routine.
Lemmings is a game I played in college. It was on an actual computer instead of a gaming console. As personal computers became more prevalent, so did the games you could play. Suddenly, if someone was playing the NIntendo, you could turn on your computer and play your own games while you waited for your turn.
College was a grand time for video games. I happened upon a great deal for a Super Nintendo, and suddenly, my dorm room was constantly a busy place. Even if I had class, it was likely that someone would stop by and play NBA Jam or Tecmo Super Bowl. We even had a league where eight of us played full seasons of Tecmo. If it was your team’s turn for a game, you were expected to get it done quickly so we could keep going. I didn’t miss any classes for games, but I know some guys who did.
Another guy on my floor had a Sega Genesis, but it didn’t seem nearly as cool as the Super NES, even if Sonic the Hedgehog was a pretty awesome game. As if there weren’t enough distractions in college, the many hours we spent playing these games were still a good thing. We really bonded well on my dorm floor, and many of us still stay in contact to this day.
I still have that Super Nintendo unit, but it was stored away when we bought a Wii many years ago. I continued to have fun playing games on the new console, and the kids really enjoyed it as well. Games like Just Dance were fun for all of us. However, you begin to see a generational gap in what kids like compared to adults.
The Wii doesn’t get played much anymore, set aside, at least in my son’s case, for online games like Minecraft. This is a game that seems to have some redeeming value, unlike the hated Fortnite that consumed so many of my students for so long. Just like my parents not liking many of the games we played, that shift between parent and child has taken full form now with me.
What’s the next step in video games? There are a lot of advancements in the industry, and I have a feeling you’ll see more and more virtual reality gaming soon. The connectedness we all have with the internet will broaden the scope of games. And you’ll probably never have to wait for your turn again!
Word of the Week: This week’s word is agerasia, which means looking younger than one’s age, as in, “The gamer created his avatar to show agerasia since he didn’t want the other players to know he was in his fifties.” Impress your friends and confuse your enemies!