There was a time when I thought I was a video game god.
Now, I'm cowering at the feet of young people who are more skilled than I ever was at games that are 100X more complex than the games of my youth. Before I go further into my lamentations I must give you a backstory so you know why this came about.
On a friend's strong recommendation, the Kinect was purchased for use with an XBOX 360 that was purchased two years ago. It is a motion control sensor that allows you to use your body gestures to control the game. For example, if you are playing a volleyball game, you would move your hands and arms to hit the ball as it sailed over a net or you would toss an imaginary horssshoe at a spike and so on and so forth. The sensor images you and puts you into the game.
It is devised to give you the total gaming experience without the use of a controller. Truly and amazing device.
That is now, so I'll tell you about "then".
The first video game system purchased for me was when I was 12, two years older than my son, and it was a state-of-the-art, accept-no-substitutes Atari 2600. It was made of black plastic and simulated wood grain and it came with two joystick controllers, and the two grandparents of todays video games, Combat and Space Invaders. The year was, of course, 1981.
With all due respect to my late father, he was a good man who had many talents, but putting complex things together was NOT one of them. It wasn't his fault, it's just that the lack of patience inherent in most of the male species existed in a double dose with my Pop and it affected how things were completed. It may habe taken him a longer period of time to finish the job but he would get it done AND he would usually have parts left over, which he thought was a cool thing.
Anyway, the 2600 was supposed to be a device that would present it's games in full, living color with no distortions. Well, when my old man affixed the U-shaped prongs of the Atari to the antenna screws on the back of our Zenith, (try finding one of those TVs around in 2010), 19-inch that Christmas eve he powered the thing up and it didn't look like it was supposed to. Oh, it was playable, and the screen LOOKED like Space Invaders with one small detail.
It looked as if you were playing Space Invaders defending Neil Armstrong from the dropping aliens as he was taking his first step onto the moon back in 1969. But we played it nonetheless, and once we figured it out and flipped a switch on the bottom of the console to correct it (it was channel 3, not 4 dad...see?), it was something that brought our whole family together.
There were knockoffs around the neighborhood, Intellivisions and Colecovisions and whatnot, but when it came to playing the best game around the kids in the neighborhood always seemed to wind up in our front room playing Atari at Rich and Maggie's house.
Unfortunatley, those days have gone the way of the dinosaurs. The XBOX 360 in this room right now, minus the Kinect sensor, has a wireless controller. The joysticks we had back in the day had wires that would get tangled. That controller is as solid as a rock. It looks like it could withstand a bomb. I can't remember how many different joysticks we went through after the hours of play we had with the VCS,
I guess the last straw to complete my oldness (if that's a word), is seeing the games my sister and I BEGGED my parent to get that had a retail price of over $50 in the Reagan administration selling for (used) less than $1.
By no means is this a criticism of the Kinect or of today's video games. Far from it. It's just that my generation paved the way for the XBOX's, Wii's, and Playstattions and those who once were gods among our peers when it came to playing video games are no more than old farts in rocking chairs outide of the old video arcades. And the disappearance of THOSE is the subject of another, entirely different blog at a later time.
With fond rememberance of the Cosmic Cowboy and Time Tunnel Arcades, lest we forget.
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