Oldskool Gamer

Ok, first real post. Back in the fall of 1978, while in a 5th grade art class, listening to Steve Martin's wildly popular song King Tut, a friend told me about the most amazing video game that just came out called Space Invaders. Back at home, my brothers and I were merely playing pong/squash/tennis (or anything else that involved a ball being smacked back and forth) on a Telstar system. Listening to the description of Space Invaders (a real wooden upright video game), I couldn't imagine a game where the action scrolled vertically, much less the manic nature of shooting all these aliens as they speed up racing to land on the ground. It was then that I went to my first arcade, and was hooked. I feel priviledged to have witnessed the birth of Arcade Games, and real Arcades for that matter.

Today's home video games are all RPG story driven crap that drags on for hours/days/months, or derivative FPS shooters - a small few I do enjoy playing, but only on the PC. Arcades are pretty much relegated to Dance Dance Revolution (and the like) in movie theatre lobbies. I feel sorry for today's youth to have never experienced the "evolution" of real arcade games. To be able to appreciate hand drawn pixel artwork over pre-rendered 3D animated cut scenes. To feel that burst of adrenaline as your ass is handed back to you in about 2 to 4 minutes per quarter of play.

Yeah, I'm an oldskool gamer, and I have a garage full of real arcade games to prove it. Its for this reason that I haven't turned on my Xbox in almost a year, and its the reason why I'm not really interested in the latest Xbox 360 or Playstation3, or Nintendo Revolution. Hmm...actually, scratch that last part. The Nintendo Revolution does interest me a bit with its weird new controller, but more out of an HCI curiosity than anything else.