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Can Kids Tolerate Classic Games?
Thanks to EGM for their feature subjecting today's children to yesterday's gaming classics, as they "...rounded up nine children of the PlayStation generation - ages 10 to 13 - and forced them to play titles from the '70s and '80s." Games the kids comment on include Pong ("I would never pay to play something like this"), Tetris ("Which button do I press to make the blocks explode?"), and, evilly, E.T. for the Atari 2600 ("Didn't they bury this game in Mexico or something?")
Did You Know?
Atari buried 5 million unsold copies of E.T. in the New Mexico desert.
1) Your analysis is based on bad assumptions so your result is way off. 2) You're a sick bastard for fucking a horse.
It just has to grow on you. Add in a defective family and a nonexistant social life and you'll play anything to get away, even if it's pretending you're a ping pong paddle.
"I only speak the truth"
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How can I make the puck go faster (pacman)...
They don't know a good game if it slaped them in the face. Pong, is a truely insirational game, Andthe mind testing skill for tetris...and ET....well...if anyone has ever played that, they should have burried it in the desert.
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we all know there just playing dumb... Al Gore invented video games, ya know...
Tubas are cool...
Alright, yeah, nostalgia, we get it. When graphics and games were simpler, and kids (apparantly) had larger attention spans.
But there's still something wrong if they can't figure out the basics of TETRIS.
Dark Nexus
"Sanity is calming, but madness is more interesting."
I think perhaps 2 adults of the several dozen that were there ever got a chance to play. The kids were fighting over who got to have a chance at jousting each other.
Maybe these kids are particularly "urbanized" (once you play GTA:VC it's hard to go back to nibbling dots, admittedly) but from what I've seen kids are just as enthused about oldschool games as we were... except now, they don't have to pay for 'em. GG MAME! :D
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
They take pre-teens/barely teens and ask them to play classic games. They've been raised to expect instant gratification, extremely narrow (regular) gameplay and plots that are always the same, to like eye candy instead of depth, etc. This is exactly like the situation of theatre or reading, or say, The Birds VS Crossroads("Woah, no explosions! Too small boobies" [etc]). It does not mean anything except that the kids they used for the article weren't geeky enough.
I read classics at that age. I still play battlezone (MAME) and have fun, even though battlezone is a bit older than me. Just like many others with litterature, classical music and other timeless works of arts, the kids will learn to like good stuff isntead of shiny new stuff as they get older and see more of the world. They'll find a way of escaping their generation's cavern, of curing themselves of the contemporaries' myopia(? it's hard translating english-french-english. i feel like babelfish)
Hopefully.
Try Corewar @ www.koth.org - rec.games.corewar
From the review of Donkey Kong:
EGM: Who's that chick Mario is rescuing up there?
Brian: It's Princess Peach.
Kirk: It's a hooker.
Half of these games that we enjoyed were simply crap, but it was the best we had. The other half will probably never get the respect they deserve simply because they're "old." Come now, how many average teenagers would actually sit down to watch a 1940's movie in black & white? Hell, even Roger Ebert was appalled to see film school students saying they don't like black & white because it looks "old."
Other games, such as Tetris, can still live on forever with its simplistic gameplay. The child who was lining up colors has obviously played Tetris-influenced games such as Puzzle Bobble.
The games back then were much better than games today in getting kids interested in programming. Who among us didn't look at a game and think of ways to make it better? It wasn't that hard to think of improvements, c'mon, look at the games!
So we got a copy of the BASIC source on our Apple ][ and changed the background color. Or we added beeps (chr$(7)) to certain events. It was pretty easy to implement the improvement because everything was a piece of cake to get to.
Today's games are polished beyond belief. No doubt that the games made today blow away older games in terms of gameplay, graphics, audio, and any other parameter you can apply to a game. In essence, the game is finished at the time you buy it. Sure, you can improve games like Doom or Quake or CS with graphics tweaks that take weeks and special software to develop, but the incentive isn't there as the games, as delivered, are usually really good.
So you end up with kids who are accustomed to simply plugging in the latest and greatest game and playing it as is, without any thought as to improving it or writing their own. Even if they do think about writing their own they quickly become discouraged to learn how hard it is to actually come up with something interesting.
This all leads to a lower number of programmers in the future, as we are currently training them to be users instead of builders.
This isn't so much about the 70s and 80s games, but recently I found some games I used to play in the early 90s on an abandonware site - one of the ones I remember was A-10 Tank Killer by Dynamix (I think?). Anyway, I recall spending HOURS playing this game because it was so immersive and stuff, when I fired up the copy now I couldn't see how I could ever have played the game that much as the graphics were very primitive. I think modern gaming has in some way spoiled us, obviously I must've been using my imagination a fair bit when playing the game 12 years ago in order to have memories of it being that interesting and realistic.
:)
Obviously this only applies to games with a basis in reality, mainly flight and driving simulators, and not so much to puzzle games and RTS type games. I can only imagine how a flight simulator will look in another 12 years time!
Interestingly though, Doom, from around the same time, is still quite playable and the graphics aren't TOO bad - obviously nothing like UT2K3 or the Doom III screenshots, but not as bad as a comparison between the aforementioned A-10 game and FS2003
hed.
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I remember waking up at 5 am on saturdays to practice playing combat so i could beat my sister.
ANd it kept me occupied too. WE had that and space invaders.
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i think the article is fake
i can't think of any kids who would have a conversation and bring up the various topics mentioned in the snippet - it seems very orchestrated by adults
For real this time. I've said it before. When I have kids, I'm making them play video games right. No johnny, you can't have zelda 2 until you beat zelda 1. Now sit your ass down and find some triforce pieces. You want a PS4? Hah! You haven't even beaten pitfall yet! How can you expect to play those new fancy games if you suck at the old ones so much.
I will raise my children to be the video game masters. Out of the womb and into the hands goes the joystick. The kind with a single orange button.
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The comments seem a little too poetic, really. And between the heavy sarcasm ("John: Yeah, let's watch the lamp. It's more fun and less predictable.") and the flip flop between naieve and the cereberal comments from the same person ("they put quarters in there? [pointing at console]" vs " Maybe this is what seafood will do in a thousand years." Not to mention whoever knew that they had to dump off extra copies of E.T.
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I received the shock of my life a few months ago. I've been out of the emulation scene for a few years, so I popped onto IRC one day to get back into things for a bit, and I asked the channel what the best, current NES emulator was (since new ones always seem to be popping up).
;)
Man... the replies I received! I could tell they must have all been ~13 or younger. "I'd shoot myself if all I had to play were 8-bit games!" (Dunno where that came from).
I wisely chose to say nothing, but filed it under the effects of being an aging gamer.
I get a kick in a similar fashion out of hearing different ages reminisce. People a few years ahead of me, who were brought up with a coleco or intellivision in their hands, never stop talking about the golden age of games. Back when "graphics didn't matter and the gameplay was the core attraction".
Amusingly enough, all my friends from my generation (who were raised primarily with the C64, 8-bit NES, SNES, Atari, and Sega generation hardware), seem to think the golden age of gaming began and ended with these systems. Someone recently on slashdot cracked me up when they posted something about how the Nintendo and Sega 8 & 16-bit ages of gaming were the height of gaming history because "that's when graphics didn't matter, and the gameplay was pure".
I think another friend of mind summed it up best when he said "games are just as magical today as they were when we were kids".
I hate a lot of titles that come out today, and I really miss my SNES, but I could see that if I were 16 years old again with nothing to do on a Saturday but play all day, I would probably feel the same way again.
You only have that feeling of discovery once in your life. So I feel a little justified knowing that today's gaming generation will sit down with their younger brothers and sisters 10 years from now to bitch and moan about how games have just lost that "magic", and when they were younger the PS1 was the shit.
While I was a huge video game buff as a kid, I don't let my kids get into it as much. (I was master of the "Back Brain Kick" on Pro Wrestling on the NES, and once kicked out of a "Greasy Spoon" burger joint as a kid because I had about 15 kids cheering me on as I was beating Super Mario Brothers).
My kids are partially adapt to modern gaming. But, I've really tried to NOT let them play on our PS/2 or my game computers. They are very happy beating Legend of Zelda for the SNES. They thought that was the greatest game ever, and now they are trying to beat all of the N64 Zelda games.
Time consuming, and mind provoking compared ot 007 for the PS/2 in my mind.
Of course, I'm trying to get them into a good baseball or soccer game for their next step. Something that they just can't memorize and play over and over. They still get to play on the PS/2 and XBox, but, very very limited time. I'll let their logical minds develop and then let them blow $h!7 up.
I'm just glad that they also find most Atari 5200 qualify Flash games very entertaining. Unfortunately my oldest just learned his first slang phrase. AHHH!!!
...just heavily edited. I'm guessing a lot more was said than what was printed, and they just trimmed it down to the parts that were +5 Funny and +5 Insightful. The full transcript is probably twenty times that length -- and it wouldn't be interesting for anyone to read.
If you believe this is real I've got a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to sell you. What the hell is with EGM and these stupid fucking joke articles? Remember that Henry Hill B.S. from a month or two back?
Every time I got a better game (i was a vic20-c64 kid) I thanked a higher power.
I liked computer games because they were novel, and something to do when I was bored or my friends weren't over. I personally got more enjoyment out of building legos, models, and painting.
The first game that really hooked me was Wing Commander, the second was Civilization. Even with those games I don't get nostalgic. Hell, I don't feel special about ANY games. 'Real' memories are built from interaction with friends and the world around you.
All of this comes from a person who is EASILY addicted to good video games. As someone who has spent much time playing them, I know they are not life, but something to pass the time. Perhaps the nostalgia some feel comes from the circumstance of the game play.
I just lost track of where I was going with this....*sigh*
Well, not that they're crappy games, they were indeed revolutionary, and quite a bit of fun, but none of the games they had the kids play were games *I* get urges to go back and play. Classic games aren't necessarily classic because of their fun factor.
If I had to recommend some classic games that I would ask kids to "tolerate", it'd be games like Pitfall, Asteroids, Space Invaders, Galaga, Legend of Zelda, Super Mario 3, King's Quest, Space Quest, heck even Nethack. These games were all a lot of fun, unlike say, E.T.
Random and weird software I've written.
This reminds me of Back to the Future 2, where he plays an Arcade game and the kids go "Oh he has to use his hands, like a baby game" or something like that.
:) Now its backlight, SNES with stereo sound, and networked handhelds.
Speaking of electronic football, "Dancing Dots". Had a watch that had 4 games on it, use to play it all the time before the NES game out.
You had a sister who played combat with you?
And she was so good that you felt the need to practice at 5am just to beat her?
You wouldn't ahem! still have her phone number, would you?
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the elephants are untrained.
Hate to say it but all those games sucked and still suck except Tetris. I'm surprised the kids don't know about tetris but they knew about space invaders from their cell phones!
.. ahh kids today don't know what they are missing .. open up a console and it's a blob of ASICs and "tamper-proof" bullshit).
I'm in my thirties but I never really got into those games when I was a kid for some reason. I got bored after 5 minutes and started looking how to take the console apart and see what chips were inside (those old atari machines had so much 7400 series logic!! you could pick a chip off the board and look it up at radio shack
If you're kidding, I'm not.
My credentials are figuring out how to get autofire in 2600 Space Invaders by toggling the power switch.
Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1992-1951
You're expecting me to believe some random kid said "The concept of a power-up hadn't been invented yet." The Tetris one looks totally fake.
because adults only like classic games because of the nostalgic factor?
Do you know who said that in Back to the Future 2? It was Elijah Wood, his first movie roll as an actor. Funny, huh?
"Mario dies way too easy. Oh, grab the umbrella. Those are cool. Unfashionable, gay, but cool. Oh, 300 points. That's it? All you get is points? That's lame. Can't you do something with the umbrella?" - Tim, 11 years old
... wait maybe it IS written in its entirety by an EGM writer! No wonder it was my favorite magazine when I was 12.
I dunno sounds like a normal retarded 11 year old to me. Note the vernacular of the word "gay" (or "ghey").
Sure sure, we've all said a game is sort of "gay" at one time or another no matter our personal sexual preference or gregarious mood. But really, is this something that should be attributed to an 11 year old in a large magazine?
Hmm
---Up Up Down Down Left Right Left Right B A START
My 8 yr old kid kid was pestering me all the time about buying a Playstation, so I put the SNES emulator on his pc. He's ver content with that.
I like to play Bust A Move on the SNES, it's pretty addictive.
-- unix is for people without a social life - Patrick van Eijk
????
PUSSIES!!!!
Funny that he's pestering you for a playstation when he has his own PC. ;)
I really mean that, are they very social out going kids? Or do they sit home playing games as soon as school's over till 2AM?
I would imagine the average child being very bored with those games. They're probably the kids that are occasional gamers. Find the kid's that sit home all day and play video games and they'd be much better at these classics. With different views on them too.
Some of those old "classics", just did not stand the test of time. My opinion is, that a whole lot of them have serious problems. They just didn't age well.
For example, take Pac-Man. Same Maze, every time. Very repetitive. (Ms. Pac-Man has aged much more gracefully.)
Zelda 1:VERY annoying gameplay. The fact that the sword goes straight out, and the controls are very blocky almost make it unplayable.
On the other hand, a few games have stood the test of time IMO. Bubble Bobble, Wonder Boy in Monster Land, Gauntlet, Arkanoid. SMB 1 and 3.
Strangely enough, even back then I didn't like the repetetive/annoying classics. I'd find my favorite games and play them over and over.
The other thing is that the same thing happened with movies. Before maybe 20 years ago, an overwhelming % of movies were just plain horrid. Glitter-level bad. However, a lot of people tend to forget that and just pine for the "good-ol days"..which never existed.
The premise of this article is like taking a turn of the century steam-powered buggy and comparing it to a modern luxury car like a Mercedes E-class or something. OF COURSE the 100 year old buggy with it's 12 horsepower motor, 40 MPH top speed, wooden spoke wheels that jar every bone of your body, unreliable boiler that craps out every few hours (etc.) is going to seem completely worthless and outdated to anyone that's driven a modern vehicle. But that doesn't mean that the steam-powered buggy wasn't a revolutionary achievement at the time, compared to having to keep horses around and deal with all their crap, etc.
By removing the context you completely miss the point. I'm sure that if you took a PS2 into the future and sat some 12 year-old down with it they would laugh and scoff and wonder what kind of idiot would actually buy that piece of crap, compared to SuperConsole3000 or whatever the modern technology of the day is.
I thought the article was really funny, as naturally the kids couldn't understand why anyone would want to play those old games. But you can't use that somehow as proof that "kids these days just don't get it" or any other sort of comparison of kids now vs. kids then. You completely invalidate the argument by removing the context.
Yeah, it does. Pong even has it own Google category!
[...] It goes through it. I don't even think that thing in the middle is a net.
Oh.... he didn't mean the internet... my mistake.
My cats ate my karma. They also wrote this comment.
Many (most?) times games with simple rules are much more enjoyable than games with complex rules that require joysticks with 20 buttons.
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The lava lamp comment was hilarious.
Danke tres mucho, tovarishch.
I've wasted a lot of time tricking out my PC to play the latest and greatest 3D frag fests, city builders, fleet commanders, moody adventures, etc. And I've wasted even more time finding emulators, old cartridges, and 5.25" floppy disks to revive the old games I used to adore growing up.
Problem is nostalgia colors the view of the past. Those old games just don't play like the current ones, and not even nostalgia improves the clunky graphics, primitive gameplay, limited options. Not even MULE was as much fun as I remembered.
My father-in-law and I fired up my old Atari 2600 a few months back. First of all an Atari 2600 on a 36" Trinitron just seemed wrong in its own right, but that didn't stop us.
After a couple of bouts with of Combat covering tanks, planes, and Zepplin vs planes the kids were getting really interested (6 year old nephew was there to). It didn't take long to get the kids hooked on Circus, they loved the how the little guy kicked his feet in the air after he hit the ground. They found my Spiderman cart. Spiderman on the 2600 was pretty complicated for a 2600 game, and I knew it wasn't something they would like, but thanks to the movie and the recent surge in Spiderman popularity they were drawn to it like moths to flames. I had to play for them, they gave up quickly but they were going to let their giving up stand in the way. It was a 2600 fest for several hours, my only problem is the old switchbox I had kept going to black and white, oh well. Oh yeah, they insisted on E.T. also.
That night aside my daughter loves the NES. My wife got Bubble Bobble used from Game Stop specificaly for the two of them. She plays Dr. Mario everytime she gets a chance, and for some damn unexplainable reason she's drawn to licenced games. She insist on Ghost Busters, it frustrates the hell out of her because the game has always sucked and when she does manage to talke me into playing she gets bored with it. But next time like a moth to flames.....
She plays the SNES quite a bit to. I got her hooked on UniRacers - purposely, I figured it was easy enough for her to get the hang of. Her cousin plays that with her whenever he's around. She loves Mario World, thanks to another cousin it has been redubbed "Mario Saves the Day". Of course she would rather watch me play that instead of play on her own. That niece it 8.
When they all get together it's time to fire up the N64. Remember, at this age the N64 is classic gaming. Ditty Kong racing, 4 controls, 3 in the hands of kids, one with me doing my best not to kick all their butts and win every time.
One good/bad thing about it. My daughter enjoys wathing me play as much if not more so than playing herself. I get game time because of this. The bad thing is it's not always a game I want to play, and of course theirs the constant 6 year old questions and annoyances.
I'm playing Skies of Arcadia Legends right now on the Cube, because I want to, not because she wants me to. She's hooked on that now. Now it's putting up with eaither reading for her, waiting half an hour for her to read it herself or summerizing whats going on. Being an RPG anything to do with managing equipment or running around town talking to people gets "This is boring, go fight comments", fortunately being the dad I can so "You're annoying, go take a bath". Atari2600 to GameCube, all Nintendo systems sans Virtual Boy inbetween. I thik my daughter has classic gaming covered.
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Also, I think they went too far back in time. It would be more interesting to see how they react to classics such as DOOM or Duke Nukem 3D, since (odd as it may seem) I'm sure there are plenty of teens out there who've never played either title. I believe they'd be able to recognize how the elements present in those games shaped the games the play today.
And is tetris really that old that these kids didn't know about it? It's not like it is abandonware... I mean, isn't it on pretty much every console?
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
The main draws of older games for people that enjoy them are familiarity and nostalgia. There's none of that for young kids. How many Slashdot readers born after the '50s regularly watch Mr. Ed or I Love Lucy? While there are exceptions for amazing works in every medium, old technology generally doesn't appeal to younger people, particularly when the technology is dated or limited. (For instance, black-and-white movies tend not to appeal to people who weren't raised on them.)
Personally, I'm a member of the SNES and PSX generation. I'll play classic games like Final Fantasy or the original Mario games, but by and large, I don't play a lot of NES games. People I know who first got into gaming with the current generation of consoles are less apt to play even last generation's games. It's all about nostalgia.
I'm having a tought time deciding if this is all out fake, or just staged. Like the kids finishing eachother punch lines sounds like something someone would just make up out of thier own head, but one kid's partial AYB reference makes me think there may have been actual kids there. Scripts maybe?
"Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!"
How funny.. on the main page:
Posted by CmdrTaco on Thursday October 16, @02:10PM
vb4hire writes "What if you took today's "3D Grand Theft Auto" playing 12 yr olds, and put them in front of the classic games of the 70s and 80s?? Electronic Gaming Monthly has a hilarious article where the author has done just that. "(Pong) It takes this whole console just to do Pong?" "(Mattell Football) EGM: It's one of the first great portable games. Brian: I thought it was Run Away From the Dots." "(Tetris) Which button do I press to make the blocks explode?""
The story looked oddly familiar..
What the hell is up with that Kirk kid saying "piss" and other badness, if my kid talked like that I'd smack him around big time.
...what they think the game "Jet Set Willy" is about :)
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My wife and I teach kids at church, and a few months ago we invited them all to a party at our house. We have a GameCube, PS2, N64, SNES, and Atari 2600 and had them all set up so we could easily switch game systems for them to play. When they saw the Atari, their eyes got all wide and they said, "What is that???" I said it was the video game system I had when I was a kid. Forget the GameCube and PS2, those kids loved nothing more than to sit and play Space Invaders on the Atari 2600. And Maze Craze, and Asteroids, and Vanguard. It was awesome to watch these kids getting as excited about these 20-year old video games as I was when I first got them. Two of the boys even showed up on our doorstep the next day asking if they could come in and play Space Invaders! Could they tolerate the classic video games? Absolutely, they found them fascinating.
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
It makes you wonder what kids ten years from now are going to be saying about GTA3... "What the hell? You mean I actually have to use a CONTROLLER? You mean I actually have to use my hands?"
"By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth." - George Carlin
Feh. Lock them in a room with Sinistar, and see how long it is until they go raving mad.
RUN, COWARD!
Haida Manga
EGM: Who's that chick Mario is rescuing up there?
Kirk: It's a hooker.
You'd be surprised at how kids can enjoy older games. Being from a large family with several cousins, there were often children aged 3-12 hanging around my house on special ocassions and the likes. In order to stop them wrecking the place, I'd set up a few consoles, and it really didn't matter which one they flocked to as long as they got to play. On two occassions my NES has been loaned out, purely on the basis of Super Mario Bros 3 - and I think someone still has my rotting Game Boy. I won't deny that graphics aren't important to them, and they major consoles were the most popular - House of the Dead 2 being constantly favoured by my 3 year old cousin - but the likes of Super Mario are still immensely playable.
The thing is, it's not cool to like anything but graphics. Not really. Someone will always make a jibe at how a game's not cool because it only has four colours, and at that age, the rest are bound to join in.
Saying that, Donkey Kong is incredibly dull and repetitive - much as I love it - and kids just don't dig Tetris, in the same way that they don't dig Chess or Draughts and what not.
Although, this article is of course complete bollocks. They know the history of ET, have remarkable vocabularies, and yet don't realise that Tetris is to do with making lines? I'm pretty sure I knew some cuss-words at that age too.
I don't know any kids who talk like that ("fear my pink line"?) ;)
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"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
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Personally my favorite commentary on the article:
"It doesn't even go over the net. It goes through it. I don't even think that thing in the middle is a net."
Their is no spoon.
--"Sorry for the inconvience." Gods Last Words to his Creation
DNA, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish
youre gonna need to do better tahn that. ALl you had to do was hold down reset while turning on the game. My god. How do i remeber that from 25 fucking years ago??
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I have a large VCS / 400 computer collection and the kids liked it. One day, I brought the whole mess down for some cleaning nostalga time.
Most of the games I have on disk have died, so the 400 was cart only... They spent some time playing the 10 or so games that worked. Interesting thing about Star Raiders, they liked this game. One would run the controls, the other the keyboard. The team part let the youngest get into the game without having to deal with coordinates and such.
The 2600 was a different matter. After setting the thing up with all the controllers and about 200 carts, I sat back to watch and give instructions. (They seemed to need a lot of instructions.)
Most of the single player games did not hold their interest very long. (No power ups, bad graphics and such were the most common complaints.) They liked having the different controllers though dealing with switching them was annoying it seemed.
Kaboom! Is addictive still to the younger folks. My oldest kids still ask for this from time to time. They like the same "trance" state I did. --Very interesting. Space Invaders, Ms Pac man, Freeway!, Pitfall II, Breakout, Super Breakout seemed to be the ones they played the most from the one player at a time games.
The most interesting thing was the two or more player games. They liked these far more. Warlords got a lot of game play. They will ask for this on occasion as well. The younger ones will sit around the game and play doing all the simple goofy stuff we all did. Maze Craze is another one that got a lot of play as well. (I always hated that one!) Indy 500 tag, Combat, some of the Video Olympics games seemed to be fun for them as well.
The EGM guys really missed the boat on this article. Sure, we all feel old when kids ask about powerups, or when the next screen is coming, but there is another side to the older games as well.
Take Kaboom! for example. It is a fast and simple game. Turn the paddle, catch the bombs. Focus too much on the nature of the task and you lose track of the bombs. Learn to relax and see the pattern and make the smooth motion and you catch lots of bombs. For a generation of kids knowing only buttons and little analog thumbsticks, this is a new challenge. One, based on the kids in my neighborhood, that they are willing to work at just as we did.
The multi-player games were interesting in a similar way. Warlords got a lot of fun. The game itself is very simple as are the graphics and control mechanics. What makes it fun? Simple human interaction. Trash talk, distraction, fakes, and rapid reflexes all combine for an interesting game experience.
These guys picked some goofy games and ran a focus group. Got some good comments, if they are real that is, but missed getting some reactions from the kids in the process.
This is getting a bit long, but I have one other point to make...
In my house, we have a number of game consoles. The 2600 gets regular play for the good titles. On the computer, MAME gets almost as much play as the consoles do combined. !?!
People recognize good games and want to play them. Old or not, good games are simply good games. As a kid, I wondered if that would continue to be true. Back then, the classic board and card games were still fun, why not video games. Kept my machine and did some collecting in the late 80's and early 90s to see if it continues to be true.
In the end, this article seemed awful shallow. I was disappointed at both the games chosen as well as the story of the kids reactions. Instead of spending their time getting kids reactions to crappy games (Super Mario and Donkey Kong being the exception) they should have let the kids try a lot of games and write about that. Would have actually been worth the read...
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