Gaming in the 1970’s and 1980’s

I was born in 1974 and gaming in that day and era was extremely limited. The most popular system at the time I was old enough to play video games and beyond was probably the Atari 2600.

A lot of you may not be old enough to even remember it. For those of you that are old enough you undoubtedly remember how limited and poor the graphics were on this system. I’m talking like stick figures basically, but at the time it was the coolest thing around. When you don’t have anything better it’s easy to be wow’ed by something so simple, especially when you are a young kid.

It’s amazing what we can do with games today and how the graphics and sound have improved over the years. We would never have guessed back then what we would have today.

It makes me wonder what the next 10, 20, or 30+ years will bring us in the field of gaming.

Personally I’m too old to keep up with it now, but maybe in 20-30 years from now you will be telling your kids about the games and systems you grew up with. And, they will be laughing at you, telling you how lame and stupid that is/was. Who knows really right?

In my very early teens the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) came out, and in my opinion killed the Atari 2600 off.

The NES was such a huge improvement over the Atari it was unimaginable. Although it would still be laughable and couldn’t compare or compete with what we have today. Still it was a massive improvement.

Then, came the Sony Playstation, and later the Xbox several years down the road. Now we have the gaming war and the argument of which is better Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft.

I really expected to see another prime-time system or two competing in the gaming market, but so far that hasn’t happened other than possibly regular computer games. Which, are usually available on the gaming consoles as well.

After giving up gaming years ago, I am too old to get back into it now. They have so many buttons on the controllers and they are much faster paced than what I grew up with that I would just be wasting my time. Not to mention the price or cost of owning these systems are considerably more than what I am willing to shell out just to play a video game.

Anyway I recently came across a website talking about classic retro gaming that really brought back fond memories for me. I wish I could turn the clock back and play some of these classics instead of the complex ones of today.

My android tablet has a few that are more my pace … Slow and slower! It’s just not quite the same experience as the Atari 2600 or Nintendo Entertainment System.

I still have a working Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). However, it is just sitting on a shelf collecting dust. One of these days I am going to have to pull it out and hook it up and rock the retro SNES.

A few years ago I sold my Nintendo 64 (N64) for like $10 to $12. I kind of wish I had hung on to it now. It was probably worth way more than that anyway, but at the time I was trying to get rid of some things I rarely to never use. So it went bye … bye!