I've been looking around lately andhave taken notice of what's being said inthe blogs and forums...and it bugs me. I know that gamers are no longer growing up in the "old school" days of Atari, most kids never heard of Colecovision or Intellivision, but it's time to educate the youth of the gaming world. Kids today think "Old-School" means PS1 or N64...that's like country fanswho think old school wasthe first Rascal Flatts cd...or like one kid I hadto enlighten who thought Metallica began with the self-titled "Black" album. Old school in video gaming is NOT Crash Bandicoot 1 or Mario 64. It's not even Super Mario World and Pilot Wings (SNES). Those were all innovative and next-gen for uswho were there in the beginning. Hell, the NES was outstanding technology to me. Ihad an Atari 2600 for several years beforeI got my first NES. I played Donkey Kong in an arcade in 1982. I played Pac Man, Space Invaders, and even the ORIGINAL Star Wars arcade game. And this was back when arcade games cost a quarter ($0.25 formy non-American friends) to play. Not $0.50 or $1 for3 minutes or less of fun. Kids in my day would have mom and dad drop them off at the local mall and they wouldn't be going from store to store looking for their next shoplifting target, or looking for someone to jump because they were wearing the wrong colors...they would go to the arcade with a pocket full of quarters they had saved all week long, just so they could try to get the high score on Galaga or Q*bert.

Those days are long gone now. Most arcades had gone the way of the dinosaurs by the mid-90's...when most of my target audience for this rant werebeing born. So for those of you who do read this, take the time to mention it to a friend. Have them look into the history of video games. It's all right there on Wikipedia. All you have to do is look it up. Learn a little about how it all got started and progressed from a block bouncing back and forth across the screen (Pong), to a circle running a maze gathering dots (Pac Man), to a plumber bouncing on turtles (Mario Bros.).Learn abouthow it all came home to our living rooms, thhe great video game crash of 1983, and it bounced back and became the billion dollar industry that it is today. Learn about the evolution from 2D side scrolling 8-bit games into the monsterous 3D adventures we have now, thanks to some early gimmics such as Mode 7 (making 2D look 3D) and Blast Processing (Sega Genesis'claim to be faster than the SNES). The bottom line here, people, is LEARN. And if you have already gained appreciation for where your games came from, TEACH. There are far too many children out there who have yet to grasp the concept that they are so lucky to start out with games like Halo and God Of War...

In continuing memory of London Rose - Sept. 16th, 2007