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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.
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...
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.
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
Check the comments on the Nethack article yesterday.
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?
"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,
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
I hate the fact that "roguelike" just means "permadeath" now. That was the least interesting part of rogue/nethack/etc. To me, "roguelike" has always meant an exploration-focused RPG with a simple UI but complex play. I always savescummed anyhow. (Except in nethack. There I played real permadeath. When my character died the first time -- to a cheap kill -- I deleted the game and never played again).
I'd love to find an RPG with the depth and detail of rogue/nethack/angband/etc but with the same learn-as-you go vibe, where everything has more depth than it seems at first. (Wait - you can eat your kills? And there are so many different effects depending on what the critter was? Now I have to try every one! Everything was like that.)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
Could have spent years on Apple ][ / C64 games.
Yeah, and that's just the load times from floppy.
Consoles will never match the likes of computer games from the 80s.
And vice versa, they had different strengths.
nothing beats games like Ultima Series, Bard's Tale, Wizardry, F-15 Strike Eagle, Oregon Trail, Karateka, , Lode Runner, Spy v Spy.
Don't you know all those games had console releases?
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.
Impossible Mission FTW.
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.
Had that game. It was shit. It wasn't really 3D as we know it. There were no polygons or anything - all sprites. It had the hokey 3D glasses thing, but I never got that to work right.
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.
Savescumming makes you sloppy. Real permadeath makes you *think* about the game. And its not really much harder, once you get the hang of paying attention, anticipating, preparing, and thinking about what's in your inventory.
You play the game you enjoy, and I'll play the game I enjoy, how about that?
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
there's a port of elite to NES.
I find it pretty fucking hard for the boy to play through all of videogame history. he wouldn't have the time.
let's just say that only playing through ultima 1,2,3,4,5,6 would take quite a bit. throw elite in there for another quite a bit.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
You're the one who called permadeath the "least interesting" part of the roguelikes. Despite that you gave up after your first game that mandated it. If you want to keep your experiences limited, you leave the discussion to people who can actually speak on the pros and cons of the roguelikes as they were intended to work, how about that?
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.
Simple UI? what are you talking about?
Nethack uses almost all key combinations, lower case, uper case and ctrl+key. And if you are playing Nethack without a keypad, you need to use vi style cursor movements. Not that I'm complaining, but not even vim forces you into sort of pain.
And don't make me start talking about Dwarf Fortress, were the game needs to be hacked to put some sense intro that micromanagement mess.
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.
In the MMO I'm currently playing, I have 120 useful taskbar slots, 14 weapon sets I actively switch between, and a combination of gear that's a freaking jigsaw puzzle to get all of the three dozen bonuses I need or want in the limited slots available, so I need to regularly swap equipped gear and keep all that straight in my head (and which is which on my taskbars). It's fun in it's way, but Rogue had a certain charm it lacks.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Gave up? You're just not hardcore enough if you kept playing after you died!
Seriously, you want to fight that 25-year-old fight? Should we also argue about VI vs EMACS? (BTW: EMACS!!!!! And Kirk could totally kick Pickard's ass, and then steal his girl!)
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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.
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.
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.
I'd love to find an RPG with the depth and detail of rogue/nethack/angband/etc but with the same learn-as-you go vibe, where everything has more depth than it seems at first. (Wait - you can eat your kills? And there are so many different effects depending on what the critter was? Now I have to try every one! Everything was like that.)
Try Ultima 6 or 7.
"The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
Like I said: it's fun in it's way. You can spend days coming up with a new build that maybe no one has tried before, or play some rather comical builds that are more entertaining than powerful, or etc. And I find it fun to craft a perfectly optimized weapon for each creature type that I commonly face.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
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!
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