Ever have those moments when you are reminded of just how old you really are? Ever have those moments where you think HOLY CRAP was it really that long ago? Do you ever look at your children and think to yourself, sure they have a lot of cool high tech gadgets HOWEVER they will never know how cool it really was? I have those moments frequently. Lately however, those moments seem to be coming on an almost daily basis and the inspiration for those moments seem to be coming from the same source *glares at that
dude who lives in California*.
The generation that is mine, grew up in a very magical time. We grew up in a time of rapid scientific advancement. We grew up in an era where almost overnight, computers went from these monstrosities that inhabited buildings the size of a city block to the person desktop computer. We grew up in a time, where almost overnight, you had to be rich to have a computer in your home to a time where having a computer is no different than owning a Tonka truck. Just think about it for a few moments. When my grandmother grew up (and it really was not all that long ago) not every house had running water or sewage. The television wasn’t even on the radar. How many years did it take from the advent of the light bulb to a time where it is common for all houses to have electricity? Even today, since the advent of the Internet, it is still common for people in small rural areas to have to rely on dial-up for their connection. But we all have our games.
Gaming, regardless of format, has been around since the beginning of time. I cannot think of one society where games and gaming have not been an important part of the larger community. In the past, depending on the society, losing the game often resulted in death. Take the lottery as an example. Not too long ago (if you look at history in a broad scope) winning the lottery did not mean millions of dollars, it meant death. Then something happened a long the way. Gaming turned into a family affair. And then the age of the computer started, and we have so many gaming opportunities, it would take a lifetime to explore the smallest fraction of what is available.
I grew up in the age of of the arcade which grew to console gaming and computer gaming. I grew up in an age where gaming exploded from sitting around the table with a group of people and interacting on a community scale to one on one interaction between the gamer and the electronic medium. I grew up in a time where you could not enter a store without seeing an arcade game and whole store fronts being dedicated to nothing but arcade games. I miss this time in history. And as much as I love to sit down with a console system or my PC, I miss the physical plunking of quarters into a machine for anywhere from minutes of fun to hours of fun. I do blame console gaming for this. Technology advanced to a point where it became cheaper and more practical to play the games at home instead of going to loud and funny smelling locations. I wish my children had the opportunity to enjoy the same joy and pleasure that I received from the simple act of plunking a quarter, hearing the 8-bit start up music and gaming. I have in a round about way shown them that pleasure by purchasing games that were once only available at an arcade game for console format. A couple examples, for their GameCube they have all the versions of Zelda ever on one disk, all the versions of Pac-Man on one disk and all the versions of Sonic on one disk. Thank you Nintendo for that! I have done my best to pass on the same love of gaming (even though they tell me all the time, poor you mom the graphics from your time are so bad) that was given to me by my mother. Yes, my mother.
My mother was not a good one by any stretch of the imagination. My childhood was far from ideal. But I do owe my love of gaming in any format to her. Unlike the parents of the other children I grew up with, my mother encouraged us to play arcade and console games. I use to live five city blocks from the coolest arcade I had ever seen. We were never discouraged from going there and spending hours playing games. We never had to not tell her in fear she would say no. To add to this, we grew up on Vancouver Island and at least once a year, we would travel to the mainland. This involved taking a ferry. This involved a lot of anticipation because there was an arcade on the ferry. My mother would give my sister and I each 10$ that we could spend on whatever we wanted during the 2 hour trip. That was like a billion dollars when you are in the 80s and in the the first to second decade of your life! Half of that I would always spend on some type of puzzle book from the gift shop. This would keep me occupied during the long drive ahead after we got off the ferry. The other half, you guessed it, would go straight to the change machine that would proceed to spit out 20 shiny quarters. Even so fighting would ensue between my sister and I over who got to play what game first, those trips were some of the coolest trips in my life.
The same goes for console gaming. My mom was just as much into it as we were. From our first console (ColecoVision in 1982) and hours of Lady Bug and Donkey Kong and then later when Nintendo came out with Duck Hunt and Mario, we would have to fight and pry the controller out of her hands. It was a constant cry of, “When do we get to play mom? C’mon mom, you have had it for hours!” For us, it was part of our family time. It was not seen as some thing that the children did alone which required them to be glued to a television set for hours at a time not being part of the family. Wow, I still have a hard time believing it has been 27 years since my first console gaming system.
The gaming did not end there. We played board games all the time. My mom was ruthless, let me tell you. She would never let my sister and I win. She taught us how to really play the game. This also translated to playing the Christmas family penny poker games. It would be the grandparents, aunts and uncles, parents and my sister and I at the dinner table as soon as dessert was over, sitting down to a long night of poker. I really do owe my love of gaming in all forms to my mom. That is the one thing I will always be thankful to her for.
And now I am passing on the same love of gaming, in all its forms, to my own children. Sure the graphics may be better. Sure the games may be more involved and more in depth. However, they will never have the joy of the arcade. And part of me thinks they even realize what they have missed out on. And this is what gives me that little hint. My youngest (10) wants to be the next Stephen King when he grows up. He is already writing many a wonderful story, comics and creating storyboards for future movies he wants to create. He had to do a creative writing exercise at school. Part of the exercise was creating a storyboard for the book after the brainstorming exercise. The time the story took place was the day and year of his birth. The location of the story was an arcade, which he describes as “smelling like flat cream soda and stale popcorn”. The boy in the story plunks his quarter into a machine. The boy does not realize the machine is broken and is unplugged. The boy suddenly gets whisked away into a different reality where he has to fight the 8-bit creatures from the video game. My child has never stepped foot in an arcade in his life.
Maybe the age of the arcade is not dead after all.
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julia sherred
