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Dad Makes His Kid Play Through All Video Game History In Chronological Order
An anonymous reader writes Andy Baio, aka @waxpancake, indy video game enthusiast and founder of the XOXO conference and other cool stuff, conducted a weird/cool experiment on his four-year-old. Andy taught him about gaming by making him play and master all of the old video games and gaming systems in the exact order they were actually released. In other words, this 21st century kid learned gaming the same way the generation that grew up in the 1970s and 1980s experienced them, but in compressed time. From the article: "This approach to widely surveying classic games clearly had an impact on him, and influenced the games that he likes now. Like seemingly every kid his age, he loves Minecraft. No surprises there. But he also loves brutally difficult games that challenge gamers 2–3 times his age, and he’s frighteningly good at them. His favorites usually borrow characteristics from roguelikes: procedurally-generated levels, permanent death, no save points."
Took me five years as a teenager to master the Sargon II chess game for the Commodore 64 on the hardest difficulty level. I'll like to see a four-year-old do that in less time.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
http://www.theonion.com/articles/father-excitedly-tells-10yearold-son-about-new-vid,32518/
N64 was not the beginning of the "3D era on consoles." That would be Sega 32x, Sega CD, or at the very least Playstation.
Andy taught him about gaming by making him play and master all of the old video games and gaming systems in the exact order they were actually released.
So he's forcing his kid to play these games? I wonder if he ever has to tell his son that he has to beat Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles before he's allowed to do his homework...
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
The same conference that tells people to "listen and believe" and suggests that people should use block lists to create their own social isolation circle?
Om, nomnomnom...
what games is he playing? In all of the RPGs that I have played my character resurrects at a graveyard or a save point. I can always continue my game with the same character. Yes, I am showing my age. lol
Maybe with more of a PC bent, but I'm not sure how I'd pull that off without a big stash of old hardware. Probably worth it for Doom and Quake, but the real gem will be text adventure games. Sitting on my dad's lap while he played them was a big part of how I learned to read.
now from anonymous submitters.
Please tell me you did not make him play and master Superman 64 because if you did I'm calling DCFS.
this was probably the hardest game I played in the old days - it took me a month to figure out all it's secrets and figure out how to get the Ark of the Covenant - (the final tricky point was snagging a parachute on a branch that dragged you into the mesa the Ark was buried in) -
but man when I beat it - holy crap - also the first Atari game I recall where you needed to play it with both joysticks - one to select items and one to move the guy
RB
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ah honey, we're all resplendent - Bill Mallonee
At the top of the article, it shows an Atari 2600 in front of a TV. Displayed on the TV is Pac Man. But it isn't the 2600 version. It looks like the 800 version, or possibly the 5600 version (which was only slightly different).
Mixing up the graphics like that is just wrong.
Especially when the 2600 version of Pac Man was notorious for being so horribly bad. If only it had looked like that.
He is teaching his kid skills which have some but limited value in actual life. Perhaps reaction times, maybe some cognitive development yes, but it's not life. He's channeling his little boy down a narrow funnel of gameland when the whole world is still full of wonder. At that age, he could be absorbing human languages. He could be playing with lego. He could be learning any number of things, but even better - he could be playing with other little kids and developing essential social skills - OUTSIDE! You know, like in the world out there?
I once spent most evenings one summer trying to complete Dennis on the Amiga before giving up. Ten years later I read an article on how it was shipped unfinished. Fml.
"DAAAAAAD, can I please do my homework? Just an hour?"
"Not before you're done with Donkey Kong!"
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
You know those crazy parents that make their kids go to baseball camps, practice several hours a week, and try to talk over the teams coach. Yeah, this guy is that kind of parent.
MC Lars - O.G. Original Gamer
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
I'd like to know how the kid fared on E.T. for the Atari 2600.
Trolling is a art,
> conducted a weird/cool experiment on his four-year-old
One data-point does not make for an experiment.
> But he also loves brutally difficult games that challenge gamers 2–3 times his age
Yeah... his brain has probably adapted to play games.
Could have spent years on Apple ][ / C64 games.
Consoles will never match the likes of computer games from the 80s. Even as great as arcades were (thank jebus for MAME), nothing beats games like Ultima Series, Bard's Tale, Wizardry, Wasteland, Deathlord, Anything Infocom, Auto Duel, Bolo, F-15 Strike Eagle, Stellar 7, Sea Dragon, Conan, Temple of Apshai, Oregon Trail, Karateka, Lemonade Stand, Lode Runner, Spy v Spy, ...
harae
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_4nuGczOL4
Andy taught him about gaming by making him play and master all of the old video games and gaming systems in the exact order they were actually released.
Part of that sentence is definitely wrong and part of it is definitely misleading. Because he skipped straight from the Atari 2600 to the NES, and then to the Super NES, and then to the N64. No Coleco, no Genesis, etc. So not all the consoles, and from what i can tell not even all the games for each console. And i can't see any indication that they're being played strictly in order either.
So it's a heavily curated list of games, which is a good thing because the full list would be impossible to do, and it seems to be in strict chronological order in terms of consoles but only vague order within each generation.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I never understood the appeal of a game where you can be continually blasted with machine gun fire for a period of time before actually dying; and then that death is not a restart from the beginning, but a continuation from that point with a new life. Where is the skill in that? One bullet == death requires developing mad skills and makes a game much more realistic. The way most games are programmed these days is akin to playing online no limit hold-em with fake money; people take chances they would never consider otherwise.
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
Father's a liar, kid's prolly gonna grow up to be one, too.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
He has a 4yr old playing these games?
His 4yr old plays mine craft?!?!
His 4yr old can handle WASD input?
I keep hearing about kids loving minecraft, but every time I ask if they have actually played the game I find out they are simply watching Youtube videos of funny British guys narrating their games. It seems the narrators are the real stars and the games incidental. I've got a 7yr old and he, nor anyone in his class can actually play the game.
These mad skillz are supposed to impress me? Let me know when he can do something really hard like solo his way to 100 in World of Warcraft without buying an instant 90.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
My 10-year-old now only likes easy console shooters and shies away from any real gaming challenge. And he keeps begging me to get him Rated M games, because the rating is the only thing he cares about. Ugh.
And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start
To mold a new reality... closer to the heart
It sounds like another overbearing parent trying to relive his youth through his kid.
I know parents who are trying to force their kids to listen to the music they listened to, or play the sports they played, or go into the professional field they failed at. There's one kid who got pushed into pee-wee hockey at a very young age and ended up hating the sport (and his father, a little bit).
What is so hard about understanding that your children are actually individual human beings and not clones of you? Please don't experiment on your kids. And they're smarter than you think and are capable of exercising a little agency regarding what does and does not interest them.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Please tell me you did not make him play and master Superman 64 because if you did I'm calling DCFS.
Nintendo version or Commodore version? There's a difference.
If you want good Pac-Man on an Atari 2600, try Hack 'Em and Hangly-Man.
Depends on whether it's the original version of E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial or the service pack.
"All of the old videogames" = Every video game ever made. FFS samzenpus.
NES:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_3-D_Battles_of_WorldRunner
And no save points.
Soooo... life, then?
anyone, anyone, Bueller?
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I have seven kids all homeschooled and we love to fire up Mame, and I've kept my Atari 2600 although they haven't gotten to play it yet and I need to bring it out of storage. And I love to have them go through interesting pieces of twentieth century history in chronological order - right now we're watching through old Disney and Warner Brothers cartoons together on Saturday mornings, in order. Next year they are going to watch all six Star Wars films in the order they were released, before we see Episode VII.
BTW, it's kind of adding insult to injury that the Pac-Man screen on that article doesn't match the actual console that is shown. I wonder what the kid thought of various ports of Pac-Man.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Total bullshit and completely impossible. There have been many tens of thousands of games published. It would take more than 4 years just to load them and start playing at the lowest level, let alone "mastering" them. If there is any truth at all in this story, that kid's dad clearly knows of only a small handful of games.
Been there, still doing that that.
Waste of time on a 4 year old. I have bright 11+ yr olds who are only beginning to really get it. Even while they have stuff in the TF2 workshop. It's both sad and hard to see that they, too, are distracted by the 3D shiny instead of the gameplay diamond. But they're getting there.
So, will this outstanding father figure be just as proud when his kid ends up being some horribly unhealthy basement dweller, having spent some of the most important developmental years of his life playing games obsessively instead of being outside playing and getting excercise?
Right now my wife and I have an Atari remake, a Neo Geo remake, an Xbox, and an Xbox 360 setup on our tv. I wondered how easy would it be with emulation to make my six month old son progress through video game history in order, like we did growing up. Great idea.
I played a freeware PC shmup called Genetos which follows this same idea of playing through video game history. The first stage plays similar to Galaga, the second stage is more like Star Force, etc. The last stage has a zillion bullets everywhere like Touhou or something. It's a nifty game (but too easy)
This guy is playing all CRPGs in chronological order and writes about it.
http://crpgaddict.blogspot.de/
All yalls Sony fanboys have a funny way of spelling "Super FX Chip".
The progression was basically this:
1)- Old school vector graphics on dedicated arcade boxes
2)- Old school vector graphics on Vectrex
3)- Lines and Polys in arcades
4)- Lines and Polys on a few PCs
5)- Decent polys with a bit of shading in a few places, always with a dedicated hardware piece.
(5) Is one arguable point, and includes the Super FX chip for the Super NES. Nowadays we would say they put a graphics card in the cartridge, but the truth of the matter was they were very experienced in offloading some of the processing to chips. The Super Nintendo CD ROM was also going to have a bit of polygon pushing power, and that eventually became the Playstation once Nintendo broke off their agreement with Sony.
6)- Some polys on PCs that looked decentish, Playstation / Saturn launches.
At this point you had games like X-Wing and the early 32 bit launch titles. The pads were all digital, as they had been copying Nintendo ever since they came out with the thumb pad in the 80s, and had never thought to innovate.
7)- N64 and 3D as a thing you could work with
Far from the gimmicks of the Super NES with chip, Playstation, and Saturn, the N64's built in shaders and camera controls, combined with an analog stick, revolutionized 3D platforming. Mario 64 became an often aped game, with very strong control over how you viewed Mario. A very important element here was the fact that the stick always moved Mario in the correct direction. Previously, games would take shortcuts in the 3D world, with things like:
- A game where you are always first person (every FPS)
- A game where you are always in a fixed position relative to the camera (every racing game, most plane games)
- A game where your controls always controlled from the perspective of the character, even thought the camera might be differently positioned (hold right and the guy goes left because he's facing towards you).
With Mario 64 and the rest of the similar games, the character always went where the joystick pointed, and if the camera was rotating (usually by using one of the camera specific buttons) you would have to constantly move where the joystick was pointing.
Sony quickly aped as much as Nintendo wasn't able to patent, of course, as is their custom.
I don't really agree with this approach, it is like forcing somebody to watch all great sci-fi movies before he can go watch Interstellar. I do think they should watch all those great movies in good time and because they are great, they will still be fun/good to watch today.
The same with games, i've seen it with my own kids. The real gems from the 8bit NES / C64 era still stand their own. I never forced them on these, but the questions come anyway, if you know kids, they are always full of questions.
After playing mario galaxy, the question came if there are other mario games, at that point it is easy to introduce them to the past. I showed/played them through the whole history of Mario, starting with donkey kong (and showing donkey kong jr on my original savoured game&watch), going to mario bros (no, not 'super mario bros'), etc. Did they like all of them, no and i don't blame them, because some of them are not that great anymore. But the real good ones were still enjoyed and played (by them, by choice afterwards).
Games are part of our culture now, like art, books, music and movies. It would be cruel not to let them know the classics, but it is just as cruel to force-feed them.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
"Makes" the kid play? Probably sounds worse than it was but whatever. There's a tendency to see your first experiences through rose-tinted shades, I have some fond memories of playing games on the Sinclair ZX Spectrum back in 1985 but I go back to them now using emulators and nostalgia is not always a good thing. There were some stunning games in the 1980's and 1990's, some with concepts way ahead of their time but there was also a hell of a lot of dross too that should never have been allowed to be written!
Come on that was really big back in the 80's, 90's and now is big again.
I'll bet he didn't make his kid play Spacewar! on a PDP-1.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
If you're going to subject a kid to the history of video games, start at the beginning. I'm talking systems that were purpose built, like Pong, and Stunt Cycle, and dozens of others (even if only via a MAME like emulator)...
This is a violation of human rights. No one should be forced to play games like Ride to Hell, FMV games of the 90s, and a whole host of egregious games that have been churned out. Does this include all Newgrounds flash games? Heaven help us all.
...weird. I played through all of those too, and I find clunky old pixelated graphics painful. Even back in the day I couldn't WAIT to get the NEXT upgrade in graphics even when it was a slow and painful process(no yearly gfx upgrades then...)...
Sure some of the games were good, but I still have ZERO attachment to the ugly pixelated graphical ghetto, and I really don't understand people who want that ghetto back again. OTOH I despise "modern" "art" as well, so...
somehow I am skeptical that he's "mastered video game history".
He should have started with today's games and made the kid play in reverse chronological order until he mastered text-based adventure games.
This guy didn't force his kid to do anything he didn't want to do... rtfa please. Instead, he is doing what I have done, to a much lesser degree, but just as pre-determined. I have seen if my two kids like video games, one particular does, and I let him try the older video games first. Space Invaders was his first game, like my own! I don't force him to play anything, but I slowly introduce him to old games that I liked, and normally he loves them. Castlevania is his new game this week! I help him out, discuss tactics, and generally bond with my kid. My daughter, who likes to watch video games but not so much plays, also enjoys joining in on the discussion and research in particular. My kids are 5 and 7. My son also enjoys some new video games, but I expressly avoid getting into any long time eating video games that seem unhealthy or generally "bad" for little kids. Both of my kids are also extremely athletic, social, and smart as can be, if I do say so myself. Video gaming is not screwing them up, thank you very much! But it does provide common ground and fun times!
That there aren't some games out there that focus more on gameplay rather than graphics?
Whatever you might think of it, Minecraft isn't exactly Far Cry 4.
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And it's predecessor, LHX Attack Chopper. Two games that managed full filled-polygon 3D engines on just a 68000 processor (AFAIK there is no coprocesor in the cartridge).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
While most ground targets were just boxes, the plane models were surprisingly detailed. Star Fox the first 3D game on consoles? Hah, I was playing F-22 for years before Star Fox came along :D
Man is the animal that laughs.
And occasionally whores for Karma.
Was it Accellerated 3D or just software line drawings?
Been a very useful article , thanks