The problem with kids today is they play the wrong video games

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I work with children, and I believe that either they’re really different today or I was the odd one out as a child.

Lately I’ve noticed they give up quite easily. From kindergarten through high school, they’re not very tenacious in the short or long term. The older kids I know rarely see anything through. The join a sports team, but quit when it gets a little hard. All of them are lightning quick to tell me, “I can’t do that”, when I give them something new to try.

And I know why.

It’s the video games. When I was young I loved arcades, and coveted my neighbors’ Atari 2600’s and Intellivision systems. Eventually I saved enough money to buy a Colecovision for myself, and later got a Commodore 64. Most of the games played on those systems had something in common - they were very unforgiving.

When you died in those games, that was it. No putting in another quarter or restarting from the last time you saved. Heck, it was a godsend if any of those games allowed you to get new lives by accumulating points.

I loved games where you had to progress through levels. Commodore 64 afficionados may remember “Jumpman” and “Miner 2049er”. These were very difficult games, and it was a big challenge to progress to the end. I don’t think I ever finished Jumpman…

Or how about “Burger Time” and “Ms. Pac Man” in the arcade? You either stayed alive, or you didn’t get to see what the next level looked like. There were a few games that let you put in another quarter to continue, but I only got one dollar for my arcade visits. So whatever I played I tried hard to get my money’s worth.

Go into what passes for an arcade today, and you’ll find that every game can be continued by adding another quarter. The ability to progress is no longer skill acquisition and determination, it is how many quarters you have in your pocket. And the kids seem a lot richer today.

The PC games I play now all allow you to try again if you get whacked. Still great fun, but the sense of urgency is lost.

In playing those games I learned not to give up. I learned that with practice, my skills would improve. I learned that I could get to that next level if I hung in there and was patient.

Let’s toss out all of their Gameboys and Nintendos and set 'em up with vintage Commodore 64’s. Make them sit there and trudge their way up the levels of a 1980’s style game.

[/Old geezer voice on] “When we played Jumpman in the old days we ran uphill both ways to finish the game!”

2

Jumpman was a damned good video game. I miss it.

3

I don’t know about them video games but I do know that a lot of kids these days have access to one of them newfangled FM radios. Back in the day, all that we had was AM. AM radio taught several good lessons. Sometimes the reception was good and you could get shows several states away, other times, it was terrible and you couldn’t get anything in the same town. This taught us several things. One is that you couldn’t count on nothing going right all the time. Sometimes things go real good, and other times not so good. You got to take the good with the bad.

AM radio would also cut out suddenly when you went through a tunnel or under a bridge. That taught us that things could turn to shit in the blink of an eye and there ain’t nothing you can do about it. You have to wait the bad but eventually this to shall pass and things would be back to normal in time.

Today, all youngsters usually know is FM radio where the reception is usually clear and the coverage uniform. This drives them to bel soft when life throws them a curve ball and life ain’t is good anymore.

I believe that FM radio, more than video games, is what makes these kids lack the life skills that we developed.

4

Here’s something I wrote a while back:

===
It’s video games. Specifically, video games you can win or finish. That’s ruined everything. When we were kids, there was one thing we all knew: The Space Invaders were coming. Yes, you could shoot at them, you could destroy them, and you might slow them down a little, but then they would resume their inexorable march. You couldn’t stop them. You couldn’t win against them.

Missile Command, as well. It only had one ending: the flashing words THE END accompanying the inevitable nuclear holocaust. Yes, you could somewhat postpone this, but it was going to happen. The question was not whether you’d fail, but how much time would pass until you fail.

This taught us the reality of life. There is no winning. You’ll never be on top of the mountain holding the sword and the princess with your foot planted on the corpse of the villain. There is no final boss who is difficult to defeat but still possible to defeat. There is only an endless marching horde of space invaders, bearing down on you until you submit.

Here’s an addendum:

The video games of old taught us another lesson. Not only does life consist of repetitive, futile tasks, but if you do manage to finish one your reward is not cheers, not gold ribbons or thanks or monuments. Your reward is that you get to do the same task again.

Only you have to do it faster.

5

Legomancer, I’ve never heard anything so negative, cynical, and pessimistic.

Unfortunately, I’ve also never heard anything so accurate.

6

:eek: You never finished Jumpman?!?! :eek:
I was addicted to that game in the C64 days.

You can download C64 emulators and play Jumpman NOW!!! You can download hundreds of C64 games in a few minutes!!!

I just wish I could get Wizard (similar to Jumpman) to work. Sometimes the emulators are buggy, but you can tweak the settings and usually get things to work.

It’s such a trip to go back and play games you haven’t played in twenty years or so. Was anybody else here addicted to Parsec for the TI-99/4a ? I ruled that game!!!

WARNING FUEL LEVEL IS LOW

7

Even better than playing old games on the computer : Dreamcast emulation. Yep, you can burn all your old games with special emulators on CDs, pop them in your Sega Dreamcast (If you’re lucky enough to still have one), and play Atari 800, 2600, and 5200, Commodore 64, Colecovision, Gameboy, Sega Master System, Genesis, NES, and SNES, among others.

8

Luckily, they still have Mario, whose princess is in another castle.

And Gauntlet, where Valkyrie needs food badly and Elf shot the food! (Lesson taught: It’s fun to screw over your teammates.) :smack:

9

Never Trust An Elf!!!

10

I quite agree. My son has discovered the fun of going to the Arcade, so on the weekend I am more than happy to oblige him, and we drive up to Virginia to waste some money at the Greenbriar Mall arcade.

But after my long absence from arcades, I notice that it’s a different place. It still consists of large, loud, token-eating machines and is still full of young teenage punks (now dressed in pants pulled down too low rather than Members Only jackets and parachute pants), but for $0.25 to $0.50 you get instead of a game of actual stay-alive skill, about 30 seconds of Shooting/Driving/Skiing and insert another quater to continue.

I’d sulk off to the Galaga or Ms Pac Man machines in the back corner, except that I can’t get to it for the crowd of Young Punks using them as a place to lean and sit while they wait for their 30 seconds playing some strange game that requires “dancing” to loud music.

So, it’s off to that game where you roll the balls and win tickets and at least get The Kid some styrofoam airplanes for our tokens.

11

Pantellerite is right. There’s almost no variety in arcade game genres now. Whenever I go to the arcade, I rarely find anything that can hold my attention longer than five minutes. What happened to the good old days when we could play *TMNT : The Arcade Game, Golden Axe, and * Double Dragon?

12

Yr joking, right neutron? TMNT, Golden Axe, and Double Dragon were essentially the same game; Dance Dance Revolution, Tekken, and Crazy Taxi (all current arcade staples where I live) are all completely different.

13

Look, I just want those kids to pull their pants up and quit leaning on Galaga and let me play!

14

This is honestly a pathetic pity-party. Times change, what else can anyone do but accept this? There’s no point in bemoaning the fact that the arcades in the coming generation will be as different from the current ones as the current ones are from the ones in your day.

I bet your elders claimed “television rots your brain” and blamed THAT for all societal ills pertaining to people your age, too.

It’s all relative.

15

Lighten up, dude. We know that. If you listen carefully, you can hear an undertone of astonishment at how quickly we slightly older folks became totally unhip and ready to criticize the young’uns.

And now to something important: voltaire WHERE CAN I DOWNLOAD THOSE C64 GAMES?

16
      • OP: I agree, it’s the same even with home video games. The cheat codes get found just weeks after the games come out on sale. Of course, the companies could remove the cheat codes in the final version before they start making copies of it, but they don’t.
  • I have a few complaints about videogames and what they have become, myself. As well as what they have not.
    ~
17

First, you need an emulator program such as:
VICE
-or-
CCS64

and then you can get oodles of games at:
Lemon64
-or-
C64.com

As you can see, there’s still quite an active C64 community out there. It’s been a while since I’ve used an emulator to play old games because the laptop I had that all on died. But I’m telling you, it is a freaky experience to go back and play games from ages ago. It takes a bit of warm up, but usually you still remember all your strategies and techniques.

The memories it brings back can make you feel like a kid again! (Depending on how old you were back then, I guess)

18

You see, this is why Counter-Strike builds character. If you run out into a hail of bullets like an idiot, you die, and that’s that. You have to wait until the round is over to play again, and this often requires many minute of watching your friends valliantly defeat the foe, while your own body lies spread eagle in the dust where you decided to confront a seasoned sniper with only your pistol. This gives you time to think about your mistakes, to learn from them, or to scream about the “wallhax0ring n3wb@!#%@” who shot you.

Counter-Strike: Building a better tomorrow, one gamer at a time.