The gist of my sentiments here today is this: on the 27th of this month, I will be fifty years old. I don’t understand it any better than you do. I feel no older than 38. I don’t look at my face, hands, or body and see those of a fifty-year-old man. I can walk a mile in ninety-degree weather without issues. I don’t talk about it much because my age is a recurring reminder that my ability to empathize with other humans will only continue to dissipate.
The hieroglyph depicted in the “punch panel” of this strip represents a circular struggle many of us are grappling with right now. We want to knock it off with the political shit, but we also want a valid excuse for indulging in our baser urges.
Not many arcade players noticed, but in December of 1984, the sound of video games changed for the better, forever.
I certainly noticed. I pumped quarter after quarter into that Marble Madness machine, not just because I enjoyed the (admittedly very challenging) game, but because I had to hear that music, one more time. Continue reading →
Yea, I say unto you, I was in the right place at the right time for two major moments in American history. You must believe that what I’m about to tell you is the truth; it will seem like so much legend and myth.
The first: I was gifted a copy of E.T. (the game) for the Atari 2600, on Christmas, but that is a tale for another article.
I HAD TO PRETEND I ENJOYED THIS.
The second, and more significant: I talked my father into buying me Pac-Man for the Atari 2600, one of the most notoriously disappointing games of all time. Second only to E.T.,of course.
No reboot of Mortal Kombat has come close to the cultural coup-de-grace of the original series from the 1990s. It doesn’t matter how many new “Fatalities” there are, or how much blood, or how realistic the fighters look. There’s still a crucial ingredient missing.
The techno.
If these words are screaming in your head right now, you know what I’m talking about.
Earlier today, I suffered a terrible tumble from my high horse. During yet another lament about the endless saturation of smartphones, my rose-colored recollection of my own childhood was shattered when I realized that in grade school 35 years ago, my generation was gazing at little electronic rectangles too.
They weren’t easy to get, either; I only ever saw them in the windows of weird electronics stores in NYC, the kind of places you’d expect to have a mogwai for sale. Most of the games didn’t take regular batteries, but instead used the teeny watch kind that you had to ask your grandma for (grandmas always had them). Typically, the sound consisted of high-pitched beeps, and could not be turned off, so play was often halted by grown-ups with more hearing than patience.
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