Here's a nice editorial from Joystiq that I think everyone should read. Hardcore today, arcade tomorrow Posted Dec 5, 2005, 6:30 PM ET by Vladimir Cole No, that headline is not a prescription for your weekend in Las Vegas. It's what happens to video games over time. There was once a time when you could not get any more hardcore than a game of Pac Man. And then Ms. Pac Man came along and amped the whole Pac Man formula up to 11. It was insane! It was fast! More than a few gamers gladly blew their salaries supporting a debilitating Power Pellet addiction. It was about as hardcore as hardcore gets. Pac Man today has been tossed into the "Retro" bin and is avoided by teens who think it lame, slow, boring and ugly. May as well call Akira Kurosawa's films crap because they're 20 years old, or write off all black-and-white movies because they lack "realistic" coloration, right? There's still hope. Most of us who grew up with classic arcade titles are now in our 30s and are-despite the best advice of those who know better-having children. We owe it to our kids to make sure that they do not evaluate games in a vacuum, to educate them on why the classics are classics so that they don't arrive at Joystiq 10 years from now send us hate mail like this: "for JS to say [Geometry Wars] is their fav is a slap in the face to 360 buyers. Pd0 is 100 times better playing online then this silly game. And so is just about every other 360 launch title." I forgive the kid, because today's teens grew up in a cultural vacuum. Their parents are generally too old to have grown up with Atari and Nintendo and therefore failed to pass on any understanding of what makes a good game a good game. These kids have failed to inherit cultural or critical literacy. Just as school children must read Dickens, Hemingway and Salinger as part of a proper education, so too should a proper diet of game classics be required playing. During summer breaks and by force, if necessary.
My Mom is a rare breed. She played all the classic arcade games and the 2600 back in the day, she also played the NES before I was born and she and my Dad gave me one of my own when I was 5. Now almost 15 years later I still have my NES hooked up to my TV and if I didn't start off playing on an NES I don't think I would know what true games are on the inside and to truly enjoy the classics and the history of gaming. So, in a nutshell.... later