At more than 60 years of age, I should be forgiven for not knowing about the latest video games or the devices to play them with. All I hear is “blah blah blah blah” when anyone tries to tell me about them now. It isn’t like I wasn’t involved with them at all. It’s just that I grew out of them. There are a lot of things I would rather do than stay glued to a screen of some kind for hours at a time, playing one video game or another.
My History With Video Games
I played video games at arcades during many of my weekends from 1979 to 1982, in both California and Arizona. For whatever reasons I can’t recall, I didn’t play them anymore after the military transferred me to Hawaii. The video games I enjoyed were Asteroids, Pac-Man, Space Invaders, Donkey Kong and Mario Bros (before they became super).
I bought an Atari console from someone who didn’t want it anymore in 1985, for next to nothing. Since I only enjoyed one game on it, I ended up giving it to someone else when I moved again in 1987. I bought the first Nintendo Entertainment System for my family in 1988 or 1989, after I ended up in North Carolina. My older son, Joe, continued to enjoy it after I lost interest in the first Super Mario Bros.
I owned a couple of Commodore computers in 1987 and 1988. After playing a few disk-based video games on them, I stopped using them for that purpose. In the 1990s, I played the shareware versions of Doom and Duke Nukem on my PC. When I grew tired of them, I gave up video games almost completely. During the years my younger son, Jon, was in the Philippines, I would occasionally play a video game with him. It was usually one version of “Soulcalibur” or another.
My Children, My Grandchildren and Video Games
My children can play video games forever. Two of my grandchildren, can also play video games for hours. Joe and his children play on Xbox consoles, while Jon plays on PlayStation consoles. Ezra, my youngest grandson, isn’t old enough to know what video games are yet, thank goodness.
I really have nothing against video games. It’s just that people spend way too much time playing them, excluding things that are much more important. Joe and his wife, Diann, use the loss of media to discipline their children. When that happens, I tell the children there’s a much better game available, and it’s called “outside”.
I don’t play video games anymore. I just watch them, and I’ve watched everyone in Joe’s family (except Diann) play “Fortnite” and “Rocket League”. Joshua and Michael like “Minecraft” enough to watch YouTubers playing it. There were a few games with Legos and superheroes that the kids played a few years ago, but I didn’t see them playing any of them the last time I was staying at Joe’s house for a few months.
Pocket Dimensions and Unlimited Items
Way back when I played text-based adventure games (not often), the games would tell me when I couldn’t carry any more than I was already carrying. That rule doesn’t seem to exist these days. I once watched Jon playing a game in which he was carrying four suits of armor. No one in the real world could possibly carry more than one.
When I watched the “Ultraviolet” movie from 2006, I noticed the main character shoving weapons into some kind of pocket dimension. When she was later scanned, they mentioned that she was carrying “many” concealed weapons. To the casual observer, she wasn’t carrying any at all.
Pocket dimensions and unlimited items are the reasons I can’t stand to do anything but watch my children or grandchildren play games these days. And now we have movies about video games that don’t even exist. “Free Guy” and “Ready Player One” are two that come to mind. Just more to watch.
Image by Anton Porsche from Pixabay