Technology has taken the video-game to unbelievable heights. The gaming consoles have a million controls and give real-time vibrations which are in-sync with the game that you're playing. Each game has so many stages and once you're done, you can complete the same game at 10 or more different difficulty-levels(ranging from 'easy' to 'hard' to 'insane' to 'beyond-god-like' to 'out of this f'kin universe'). Every game is slotted into a genre, may be action(Tomb raider) or Arcade(Tekken) or adventure(GTA) or military operations(Commando, IGI) or animation(Lion king). There's so much attention to detail.
But lets do a rewind. Lets go back ten,fifteen years in time. When the video-game was a relatively new concept, when gully cricket was still the most popular urban-colony pass-time. First came the hand-held or pocket video games(called hand-video game or the brick game back then). Kids used to endlessly play games like Tetris, 101 Dalmations, SkaterBoy and GunMan. They'd take so much pride in getting a 'high score' that they'd share their moment of joy with all the kids in the neighborhood. Kids who were good at video-games used to don the 'cool-dude' image in the neighbourhood. There'd be large video-game gossip sessions.
You know, Adren went upto level 12 in 101 Dalmations.
Ahh, big deal. I crossed Skaterboy the very first time I played it.
In Tetris, I scored 99,000 at level 8, beat that.
Tetris is a lame game, who plays Tetris nowadays !
Arey, I heard that when you goto level 13 na, you get some magic potion.
I was just about to cross level 12, but my batteries went down and so I lost that game.
Then came the TV video game era, which took every urban household by storm. Kids, teens, parents, grandparents, servants....in short, everyone was hooked onto them. When they were'nt playing, they were watching others in the house play. It was an addiction that had taken the nation by storm. Dads fought with their kids for some video-game time, moms used to watch in despair as grandpa's used to cry like babies trying to snatch the joysticks from the kids. Kids used to pester the hell outta their parents till they got themselves one game console. The one set that was popular then was the 'Terminator' video-game console, the 'Media Game-Boy' was also in vogue.
Once the console and settings in place, the first game which everyone invariably played was 'Super Mario'. Then, once you'd get bored of 'Mario' and gun-games like 'Wild Gunman' and 'Duck Hunt', you'd wait for the next new video-game cassette to hit the market. The '64-in one' era was succeeded by the '76-in one' era which was followed by the '8-in one' era. By the late 90's, the video-game fever had spread far and wide. It was a natural stress buster, people played Mario and Contra for hours after coming back from work.
Siblings settled scores by playing against each other and see who played better. The wife and husband would sit together and play the typical non-violent 2-player games, whereas the older junta mostly preferred the easier ones. All this while, the servant maids would just observe and try to make sense of reason behind the animated faces staring at the TV screens while pushing buttons randomly on a joystick.
Some of these games have really left an indelible impression in my head. It is these games which I cherished playing, more than the other hi-fi ones. Here are some.
Super Mario - Needless to say, this game was synonymous with the term video-game back then. Easily the most popular game a very likeable one.
Spartan X - Nice action game, the audio track being superb. Mr.X's sinister laugh at the end of each level still rings in my ears.
Contra - Contra, Super Contra, Super Contra-2, Super Contra Force, New Contra....have played 5 versions of this game. I just loved the background scores for each level, the different guns (the 'S' power, the 'F' power) and the gawky lookin enemies.
Wild GunMan - Shoot the bad cowboy....The only game ever which required you to use that gun instead of the game pads or joysticks.
Islander - Pretty much similar to Mario, but the only likeable thing about this game was that our hero is a rolly-polly fatso who throws hammers at birds :)
Mappy - The rat in a maze game....simply brilliant
DJ boy - Really tough game, our hero gets to move on skates throughout the game. The level of description on each level of the game still amazes me.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - The Turtles, whether on the TV screen or the video-game console, were always my favourites.
Street Fighter - The first ever arcade game that had some intricacy in it.
Elevator Action - Very few must've played this, but I was really thrilled the concept of killing enemies while you're in an elevator, get 30 floors down and run away in a car.
This article has been put up on - http://themag.in/
But lets do a rewind. Lets go back ten,fifteen years in time. When the video-game was a relatively new concept, when gully cricket was still the most popular urban-colony pass-time. First came the hand-held or pocket video games(called hand-video game or the brick game back then). Kids used to endlessly play games like Tetris, 101 Dalmations, SkaterBoy and GunMan. They'd take so much pride in getting a 'high score' that they'd share their moment of joy with all the kids in the neighborhood. Kids who were good at video-games used to don the 'cool-dude' image in the neighbourhood. There'd be large video-game gossip sessions.
You know, Adren went upto level 12 in 101 Dalmations.
Ahh, big deal. I crossed Skaterboy the very first time I played it.
In Tetris, I scored 99,000 at level 8, beat that.
Tetris is a lame game, who plays Tetris nowadays !
Arey, I heard that when you goto level 13 na, you get some magic potion.
I was just about to cross level 12, but my batteries went down and so I lost that game.
Then came the TV video game era, which took every urban household by storm. Kids, teens, parents, grandparents, servants....in short, everyone was hooked onto them. When they were'nt playing, they were watching others in the house play. It was an addiction that had taken the nation by storm. Dads fought with their kids for some video-game time, moms used to watch in despair as grandpa's used to cry like babies trying to snatch the joysticks from the kids. Kids used to pester the hell outta their parents till they got themselves one game console. The one set that was popular then was the 'Terminator' video-game console, the 'Media Game-Boy' was also in vogue.
Once the console and settings in place, the first game which everyone invariably played was 'Super Mario'. Then, once you'd get bored of 'Mario' and gun-games like 'Wild Gunman' and 'Duck Hunt', you'd wait for the next new video-game cassette to hit the market. The '64-in one' era was succeeded by the '76-in one' era which was followed by the '8-in one' era. By the late 90's, the video-game fever had spread far and wide. It was a natural stress buster, people played Mario and Contra for hours after coming back from work.
Siblings settled scores by playing against each other and see who played better. The wife and husband would sit together and play the typical non-violent 2-player games, whereas the older junta mostly preferred the easier ones. All this while, the servant maids would just observe and try to make sense of reason behind the animated faces staring at the TV screens while pushing buttons randomly on a joystick.
Some of these games have really left an indelible impression in my head. It is these games which I cherished playing, more than the other hi-fi ones. Here are some.
Super Mario - Needless to say, this game was synonymous with the term video-game back then. Easily the most popular game a very likeable one.
Spartan X - Nice action game, the audio track being superb. Mr.X's sinister laugh at the end of each level still rings in my ears.
Contra - Contra, Super Contra, Super Contra-2, Super Contra Force, New Contra....have played 5 versions of this game. I just loved the background scores for each level, the different guns (the 'S' power, the 'F' power) and the gawky lookin enemies.
Wild GunMan - Shoot the bad cowboy....The only game ever which required you to use that gun instead of the game pads or joysticks.
Islander - Pretty much similar to Mario, but the only likeable thing about this game was that our hero is a rolly-polly fatso who throws hammers at birds :)
Mappy - The rat in a maze game....simply brilliant
DJ boy - Really tough game, our hero gets to move on skates throughout the game. The level of description on each level of the game still amazes me.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - The Turtles, whether on the TV screen or the video-game console, were always my favourites.
Street Fighter - The first ever arcade game that had some intricacy in it.
Elevator Action - Very few must've played this, but I was really thrilled the concept of killing enemies while you're in an elevator, get 30 floors down and run away in a car.
This article has been put up on - http://themag.in/
2 comments:
u remind me of the good old days when i used to plead my mom to play contra for 30 mins and then study...and my bro disconnecting the game exactly in 30 mins when i'm in the 8th stage ready to complete the game in another 5 mins
edava .. ikkada kooda partiality choopincharaa..
maa AOE, mana CS veetini kooda include cheyyocchu kadhaara...
aipoyaavu.. i'll attack u with 200 crossbowman and 100 "potugallu" :D :P
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