My son, Dominic, plays the classic systems at least as much as I do. He is the only four-year-old I know who, upon first playing Parker Brothers' Gyruss, compares it to Atari's Tempest. He has a gaming background that is nearly as vast as my own. Before he was old enough to hold a joystick, he was playing an Arkanoid clone on the Amiga called Megaball (with a bit of help from Mom -- or was it the other way around?).
While Dominic is playing a game, he is always explaining to me what is happening on the screen. He gets very excited about little effects. When playing Berzerk or Frenzy, I always overhear him saying, "Oh, no! The happy-face is coming!" Then he will say moments later, "This game is too hard for me!" The game then comes out and is replaced by another classic.
Playing video games with my son keeps the hobby fresh for me. He is able to offer a new perspective on games that I would not have without him. Chris and I become jaded with certain game-play, but Dominic is able to play most games with a fresh approach. The only problem with playing games with him is that most of the time, he beats me! (It's proof that game-play expertise is contained in the genes.)
Here, for reader examination, is what Dominic tells me about the games that he has been playing this morning. These are the actual words he used. I have taken the liberty of placing them in paragraph format. Some of his statements might seem vague if you have not played the games in question. Not everything he says is accurate -- but from his perspective, it is all true. -- AT
ANTARCTIC ADVENTURE (ColecoVision) -- This is the penguin game. I like this game. I like the fishes. Did you know if you press "5," there is music? I like it when it makes sound. Make sure you get the flags. Jump over the holes, of course! I can't win this game; it is hard. You can jump over the holes if you want, because you can -- and you can climb out. When you get the flags, you can get points. When you get the flags, you don't die. -- DL
BEAMRIDER (ColecoVision) --Now, about Beamrider: It is so fun for me because the joystick is kinda slow while you shoot. I don't know about the game. This is the bad guys' planet. When you beat the whole game, you have to go on your planet. When you get on your planet, you have to get some more bad guys. -- DL
I'm just not sure about the N-64 and PlayStation, or even the Sega; I'd like to be optimistic and assume that very young kids who started their game-playing careers during the "glossy system" era will, as they get older, hold dear to their hearts a mystique about, and fascination with, the first adventures they embarked upon -- like people our age are sentimental about 2600 games and such. But we had to use our imaginations to create cerebrally tangible universes out of the abstract graphics, and since the games themselves had to be essentially excellent in order to render the simple pixelation incidental, it's the game-play we retain as we get older, a fascination with the circular stories themselves rather than any realistic worlds that serve as vicarious replacements for real-life activities.
But if little Jimmy walks into an arcade these days, he can see tons of machines with huge -- or, in some cases, practically panoramic -- screens, offering amazingly rendered auto races, flight simulations and skiing runs (complete with joyboards -- Amiga would be so proud). And glancing at the bedroom of the typical home gamer would reveal a PlayStation or a Nintendo-64, capable of presenting breathtaking 3-D landscapes. A PC in someone's cleared-away dining room/office would be showing one of the realistic Myst scenes.
Makes ya wonder, doesn't it? These people eventually have kids (if they're so inclined), and the kids grow up having no idea that there once existed video games that engaged the players' imaginations, contests that necessitated a lot more mental and psychological interaction and represented domains that were controlled by the kids who were playing, instead of the other way around.
Dominic is a rare case -- he's getting the best of both worlds. He's amazingly intelligent, and my eyeballs popped out the first time I saw him hit the correct combination of keys to play some Amiga game that Adam had set up. But I'll bet that in ten years, Dominic all but ignores the PC and Sega and plugs in Beamrider. -- CF