Friday, October 18, 2024

All night long with the 200-game hire


Of course I've played less video games as I've got older, that's what happens to most people. The time and money needed to sink into the modern gaming experience is beyond a lot of people with families and careers and all that, and I'm definitely no immune. So I generally stick to simple shoot-'em-up games from 10 years ago these days, and am happy enough with that. 

(Although I have got stuck into Spider Solitaire again recently, after successfully breaking that addiction a few years ago. Games go in and out of fashion, but the Spider is eternal.)

But I can still remember the pre Playstation days, when most of the video games action was in the arcade, or in the most rudimentary consoles, usually ripping off Pong or Space Invaders, and how easily amused we could all be with the most basic games.  

The PlayStation wasn't a thing in the world until I was in my very late teens, and the first console I ever hired out with my own money was a weird machines with 200 games on its tiny hard drive.

They were games in only the most basic sense, and we would be paying twelve bucks a night for various kinds of very simple games, almost all platformers of some description. None of them were titles that anybody would remember  these days, I can't even recall what the machine was called. I just remember how much incredible fun it was, racing down a pixelated ski slope.

Most of the games wouldn't even load properly, but still felt like we got our money worth, sticking to the six or seven ones that worked, and playing them until dawn.

The incredibly complexity of modern games is all well and good, but the simplest games are always the best, and I still occasionally play these types of games when you see them around online. I don't play them all night anymore and I don't pay $12 to access them, but I do still play them.

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