Let's journey to the past and discover how we came to be.
Greetings, traveler!
Welcome to "From the Memory Bank: My History with Video Games," a blog that I've created for the purpose of sharing with you my memories of and experiences with video games. Mainly, I want to explore the concept of a "video game" being not simply a physical or digital good but moreover a living entity with its own functioning pulse--an organic being whose continuing palpitations are meant to remind us of more than just its cherished or loathed gameplay; of equal importance are the beats that provide us resonance of the events, the experiences, and the friendships that were running concurrent to the time we spent with it. Every game has a story behind it, after all.
You'll see this idea manifest as you read through the entries on this blog, wherein I intend to chronicle my entire history with video games, starting with those I played way back in the early 80s, when I was a wee lad.
But that's only part of the mission. Furthermore, I want to use this opportunity to expand my horizons and open myself up to new experiences. I want to learn as much as I can and become a true video-game historian.
Really, I'm disappointed in myself for waiting so long to start. Though I've always had a great fondness for video games, the truth is that for so long I didn't have any interest in exploring the medium's history beyond what I knew (or what I thought I knew). In my head, I'd put together a neat little history: One day, out of nowhere, Pong came along and created the arcade scene, and its success beget the creation of the Atari 2600, which established the console sector and gave rise to machines that ruled the land, uncontested, until home-computers--specifically the Commodore 64--began to explode in popularity. The rest was a simple sequence: The entire market crashed, the NES arrived to save the day, there was a big ol' 16-bit console war, PlayStation became a thing, and then someone thought it would be a good idea to let Microsoft enter the fray (because, really, we didn't need that healthy middle class of game developers and all of that "variety" junk).
Somethin' like that.
It wasn't until fairly recently, after I got an itch to learn more about the medium and its complex history (which I did by reading the works of Jeremy Parish, the Retronauts crew, and video-game experts in general), that I started to develop an ever-increasing thirst for knowledge--a passion for delving into history and learning about video games' multi-rooted origins. Reborn as an obsessive-compulsive historian, I went on to discover that the history of video games is a vast treasure trove of eras we never read about; of platforms we never knew to exist; of characters who emblemized current societal trends but sadly plunged into the depths of oblivion when cultures shifted; and of hidden gems that were doomed to obscurity due to their association with failed formats and platforms.
Now that I'm cognizant of their existence and readily swimming in once-uncharted waters, I'm ready to start this mission. I'm ready to share with you my gaming experiences both deeply ingrained and newly occurring and hopefully ignite within you a similar passion or at least evoke some memories and give your ol' nostalgia bone a quick tickle.
I won't be discussing every game I've ever owned or played--since I have experience with literally hundreds of games and not all of them resonate so strongly that they warrant such effort--nor will I be adhering to a strict chronology. Rather, I'll be jumping around from era to era as my whims carry me (though, I will provide a chronological listing for those who demand continuity). Occasionally I might cover topics like my history with specific platforms or game magazines.
So strap on in and get ready for a long, bizarre trip whose stops are plenty and whose final destination is whatever awaits at the point in time when my consciousness expires.
Somethin' like that.
I've been going through a similar journey - just when I thought I knew most of what there was to know about the NES, I started learning about the history of the Famicom in Japan, where the system was thriving for a good two years before it got released in the U.S. Many of the games from the 1983-1986 range were not released on the NES or were poorly received since by that time they seemed much more primitive than the games being made in the post-Super Mario Bros. era.
ReplyDeleteAnd that's just ONE system in a single generation.
By the by, another good video game blog worth exploring is VG Junk, if you don't already do so. A lot of exploration of somewhat obscure games, both good and bad.