Father Makes Son Play Through Video Game History, Chronologically

[Sinner]

Re: Father Makes Son Play Through Video Game History, Chronologically

That is interesting, I played my cousins Atari 2600 but I started with (as far as owning) the Intellivision II....Burger Time, Basketball, and Baseball man that was good times...the memories.

[Mr. Hanky]

Re: Father Makes Son Play Through Video Game History, Chronologically

I've been thinking of doing the same. My son is 3 and I won't try and get him into video games or anything but if he does go that direction i want him to experience at least some of the history of video games so he can appreciate what he has today. So that he'll not turn into some shrieking message board nerd with no understanding of how games came to be what they are today. I'll have him play with some Atari 2600, then Colecovision, then NES, Genesis, PS1, Xbox......just so he can see the progression. And it would be a shame for him not to experience some of the pivotal games in history like the original Metroid, Kid Icarus, the Donkey Kong games, Pitfall, Zaxxon, Shenmue, The original RE and Tomb Raider games, etc.

[Mr. Hanky]

Re: Father Makes Son Play Through Video Game History, Chronologically

Interesting. I wouldn't do this with my kids, but I can appreciate what he's trying to show them.

Its hard to explain, but when I was playing games on my Odyssey or Intellivision back in the day, I would see what was going on on the screen, but my mind was processing it very differently.

I didn't see a stick figure running around on my Odyssey Quest for the Rings game. I saw a Warrior in my mind with a sword and shield something like you would see in todays games. Same with the sports games. I remember the boxing game on the intellivision. Played the heck out of that game with my buddies, we would see Ali & Frazier up on the screen, we wouldn't just see blobs that looked semi-humanoid in solid colors. When you'd knock a guy down, you'd see Fraziers crushing hook or Ali's right cross.

The games were always about the gameplay and could they be fun. It was never about the graphics.

I think that's why I liked the games so much because to some people it was just a bunch of squares moving around, I had all types of images of what those graphics represented.

Played a lot of early RPG's on the Commodore 64. Those weren't just dots and X's walking through a maze. I knew what my characters in my party looked like, what the Monsters looked like, the dungeons. Like I said, very hard to explain, but Wasteland is my all time favorite game and it looked like this....

Excellent post. I agree completely. That's why I still prefer offline single player gaming. It lets my imagination play a part, especially with sports games. I develop little story lines in my head about the rookie getting his shot, or picking up a diamond in the rough off some other team's depth chart and watching him flourish in a starting role. Stuff like that. It's a shame that kids today will look at those old games and just snicker at the graphics, or throw a bunch of snark at the fact that they can't go online and shoot each other with those old games. They don't even realize it, but they're missing out on the most fundamental point of gaming, which is the enjoyment of escapism through imagination. I'm extremely thankful that I my childhood was in the late 70's and 80's and I got to experience gaming from ground zero to now.

[oneamongthefence]

Re: Father Makes Son Play Through Video Game History, Chronologically

One of my earliest memories is playing pitfall. the odd thing is i remember what the joystick smelled like. its weird. i really wanted my kids to start off playing nes at least but many of those games are so expensive to.buy now.

[Paradingwolves]

Re: Father Makes Son Play Through Video Game History, Chronologically

In my opinion games like Call of Duty have created a bunch of linear thinking impatient brats when it comes to games. I was visiting family this weekend and my 15 year old cousin was playing FC4 and he never once stopped sprinting and never looked in the same direction more than a split second, just tried to run into outposts and shoot everything up and would get angry when he was killed for it over and over, but refused to change his guns blazing approach... Then he would see the objective marker on his screen and run in a straight line towards it, this is farcry there's no such thing as a straight line to your goal, when he came up to the obvious mountain in his way he'd tried to run up it, yes run up a freaking mountain. I asked him if he considered checking the map, he looked at me dead serious and said "for what"..... He's a very smart kid too, right then I decided that I would make sure my son (who's only 5 months now) never plays a CoD or similar game.

[Slim4824]

Re: Father Makes Son Play Through Video Game History, Chronologically

Being almost 35, I of course started on the same systems a lot of us did, Atari 2600, NES, and on. Yet the game I literally played the most was one most of you didn't play much I'm sure.





Then I moved up later lol

One of my favorites of all time.