Waxing Nostalgia: Arcades and oldschool computer gaming.

[Elton John]

Double Dragon. Pac Man. Joust. Street Fighter 2. Contra. Space Invaders. Mortal Kombat. Wizardry. Zork. The Bards Tale. Ultima. Rogue. Wasteland.

If these words conjure up images of dimly lit areas with questionable smells and retro gaming goodness, you might just be old enough to remember when arcades were a thing. Arcades that weren't relegated to pubs, movie theaters or dave and busters.

Some of those I listed weren't originally arcade games. If you know which were which you get a gold star on your next test.

They provided a social gaming experience that hasn't been matched. Online gaming lacks human in the way arcades did. In fairness towards modern online gaming you don't have to worry about someone stabbing you with a switchblade.

Arcades, until the late 90's and the dreamcast, were the gold standard for bleeding edge visuals. If a home console game was anywhere near the arcade version it was a good port. The infamous Atari 2600 port of pac man was a part of why the home console game industry crashed in 1983. Pac Man was a big deal back then.

As home console ports got better and arcade machines slowly went from 25 cents a credit to a dollar plus...the arcade scene died out most places in America. In Japan, IIRC Arcades are still a big deal.

By oldschool computer gaming I mean 80's. Before the advent of the mouse. When color monitors were a huge deal. When text adventure titles and first person role playing games ruled the land.

Remember those huge instruction books that were 500 pages? That you actually had to read because some games required you to?

Most of these games were really sadistic.

FUN BIT OF TRIVIA: Back in the 80's, for most people you played videogames on consoles or arcades. Duh, you say? Well, Personsal Computers were primarily owned by people who had a lot of money. The upper class mostly. It wasnt until the 90's when computers became a more affordable item.

BUT WAIT, you exclaim...That wasn't a fun bit of trivia...

What makes this so fascinating is that some computer game designers were oldschool elitists. Aristocratic levels of hate towards the lower and middle class. As time went on some of them purposefully made their games even more sadistic because they didn't like how the non-elite could suddenly afford a home computer...the unwashed masses were playing their games and they weren't happy about it.

So yeah. Videogames were serious business in a non-ironic way.