Kids have it so easy these days when it comes to gaming, they have no idea what it was like being one of the first gamers and what we had to do in order to play the video games of the past.
(This is going to sound familiar)
When I was your age, or when I was young, there was no way to know if a game was good or not other than the commercial they had on T.V. My parents didn't care for games and I had to save the money I made to buy the ones I wanted. There was no downloading games either, and since I lived out of the city I had to rely on my parents to drive me in to buy one.
When I got to the city there was no guarantee that my game would be in, it could have been sold out, and my parents were not going to drive me all over the countryside to find it. If they didn't have the game I wanted, I either bought something else or nothing at all.
Playing the games were a lot different as well, we used to get a book that would tell us how to play the game, what the controls were, and any items you found and the purpose each one had.
When we were in the game there was no fast travel, we had to walk from one end of the map and back again, a process that could sometimes take forever depending on the game you were playing.
We had to deal with what we got as well, there were no updates, or game fixes, no future content downloads so that you could keep playing your favorite game. If you bought a game that would freeze and crash once in a while you dealt with it, no crying to developers to fix it.
If you bought a terrible game because you were fooled by the commercial, you sucked it up and played it anyway, because there was nothing else. (Wrestlemania for the NES comes to mind).
Terrible wrestlemania Nes game
There was no online multiplayer, if you wanted to play a game with your friends, they either had to come to your house or you had to go to theirs and share a couch for a few hours. There was also no automatic save, so if you had been playing for a few hours and hadn't saved that whole time and the power went out, guess what? You would have to do everything you had done in those hours all over again.
After being screwed over from buying a terrible game once or twice I started to read the magazines, I would buy them whenever we went anywhere, there was usually a review section where they would tell you if the game was good or not. There was no online or internet that you could check to see if you were buying a dud or a gem.
Are you an old gamer? what are your thoughts?
Scott Goerz
