The history of videogames- part 2 (80s-90s)

Awwwwww yeeeeeee- a, ahem, hello. It is time for us to delve into the wonderful world of recent history, specifically, the 80s and 90s. A lot of things were going on in the 80s you know. Some good, some bad. I'm no historian, nor am I particularly good at writing about things like history. And- just between you and I, I don't know a great deal about much of anything. Thankfully, you don't have to listen to me pretend to know about the 80s. I could just go and get someone more capable right now, but that would be much too easy. No, no, for you- I go one better! We're going back to 1989 to hear about history right from the horse's mouth! In this case, the horse is called Billy Joel. So Billy, tell us a little about the history of the 80s, please.

"Wheel of Fortune" This, I believe, was a very popular gameshow. It involves a wheel and fortune.
"Sally Ride" The first american woman in space! Look at all this equality. Now women leave the world, too! A right we can all agree was denied to them for the longest of times.
"heavy metal suicide" Metal is bad, you see. Ozzy Osbourne and Metallica are acccused of hiding pro-suicide messages in their songs. A bad business move, if you ask me. Sales plummeting in future albums? Coincidence? I think not. But this does present a taste of the media's xenophobic view of new and scary things that kids like. Like videogames. More on that next time...
"Foreign debts" How times have changed... NOT (See: Waynes world)
"homeless vets" Really?  But I've seen 'Animal Hospital', those guys are minted! Oh, you mean veterans, Billy? After the barrel of laughs that was 'Nam, a lot of soldiers found themselves sans legs or housing. Think Forest Gump's  Lieutenant Dan. I don't know enough on this to make a valid point, really, but I hear this had a lot to do with America's inability to deal with it's failures. Sounds about right.
"AIDS" First recognised in the 80s, this became a pretty major problem. Nowadays, HIV isn't the one-way-ticket it used to be, but AIDs is still pretty bad news.
"Crack" Cocaine use surged in the 80s and a great time was had by all, until they died. Rest in peace, John Belushi. Seriously. So few people know how funny that man was.
"Bernie Goetz" was a man who shot four men and was charged with attempted murder. Standard stuff in the US, right? He got let off, though, despite being convicted of carrying an unlicensed gun. I don't even want to talk about America's gun laws, I really don't. Just take it up with someone else, it makes me too cross. I mean... fuck...
"Hypodermics on the shores" Environmentalism! New Jersey beaches found themselves slightly more sticky and syringey than usual when medical waste graced its shores. People weren't too happy about it. Prior to this, illegally dumping waste in the sea wasn't too much of a deal.
"China's under martial law" China declares martial law, allowing them to use arms against protestors- a slightly pointed move aimed at students at the Tiananmen Square protests. I'm afraid that I know very little about these protests, other than they were crushed by Chinese Military force in something resembling a massacre.                                            
"Rock and roller cola wars" possibly definitely the largest and most influential war of the last 2,000 years, the giants of PEPSI face off against the titans of COKE (making them both seem normal sized). Rock 'n Roll was used to appeal to the younger demographic. Fun fact: Did you know that Santa's red jacket is primarily the creation of the Coca Cola campaign.

"I can't take it anymore!" Don't worry, Billy! We're almost out of time anyway, so you can head off home and do whatever it is you do. Boating or something.

Christ, this is going to be a long post. Maybe we should take a breather, catch our breaths, enjoy some orange juice. I'm actually writing this in Starbucks (shut your mouth) so that's what I'm going to do. Mmm. It's innocent orange juice. Boy, I love innocent orange juice.

So, videogames. Video video videogames. Actually, for those of you enjoying this blog on the internet (now I think of, thats all of you) I'll link you to a nice relevant song. God it's awful.

So, you want to talk about videogames, eh? Pac man. Pac man was big video games. That doesn't make much sense, so let me explain it to you. My mother loved pacman. She lived in Daule, Ecuador, and she hung out at the local arcade. Odd places, these arcades. I mean, these places are odd in the US, imagine a South American one! Anyway, her favourite game at the arcade was Pacman. She played it so much that she held the top score. MON it would read. MON for Monica. Friends would cheer her, lift her up onto their shoulders and parade around the dingy room 54,000. A score to never be bested. But this untouchable glory was not to remain untouched. One day, a stranger came to town (come on, picture it) his hat brought down firmly over his brow, his boots clanking underneath the equatorial sun. Clank. Clank. Clank. He burst into the saloon- I mean, arcade- and challenged my mother. Confidently, she backed away from the Pacman machine, arms folded, waiting to bask in his tears. But boy, did he play. He played hard. The machine was shaking under the fury of his fists, his knuckles pounding the faded, rounded buttons. 10,000- 20,000- 50,000! No! This cannot be! 56,000!? He had beaten her to the ground, her hands clawing the dusty earth for pieces of her broken name. She ran from her former castle. She ran all the way home. Under the shade of a mango tree, she wept.

Not seedy at all.

From the heavens- a ray of light! A fairy god mother with a faux wooden finish. The Atari 2600. "Plug me in to your TV" it said "And you shall have Pacman right in your home!" Surely not. Surely this is witchcraft? This was the ace up my mother's sleeve. She could practice pacman in the dark of the night, after Arcade closing time. She would be the best once again. Weeks went by, the game consumed her. 55,000, damn it! Again! 55,500! Again! 57,000! Yes! But I don't want to beat him, she thought, I want to destroy him! Again!

In the arcade, a once familiar face returns... She approached the Pacman machine.

INSERT COIN. PLAYER 1 START.

A fury like no other, a whirlwind of button mashing and joystick twiddling. WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA WAKA. On and on and on. Grab the cherry! Eat the ghost! WAKA WAKA WAKA! When the night was through, the machine was all but in ruins.

High Score:  MON - 64,000

The eighties saw a shift away from these arcades and towards home consoles. They were simply more convenient- kids could stay inside, crash on the couch and play video-games without the coins, the dingy carpetted rooms, the smell of smoke and teenage sweat. Convenience and ease are key. Whilst my mother used it to train her arcade skills, she, like other teenagers, would stop going to the arcades at all. It did take a little while for home consoles to replicate the visual fidelity of arcade machines, but once that was done they were superior in every sense. In the west, the Arcades are basically dead. They just sort of faded away, like a broken CRT screen. It wasn't so much a shift in what we played, although the 80s did see the birth of the shooter- a genre set to spread like duracel rabbits on heat. No, the real change was in where we played, or how we played. Controllers got refined- they became sleeker, trendier. Big and bulky was out of style, and so were the arcades. Maybe somewhere out there, in the basement of some cartel's drug-bank, there is a dusty old Pacman machine that still reads "MON - 64,000".


Links and references:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5SNOAcD3ak
http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/01/30/the-25-greatest-breakthroughs-in-video-game-history\
http://www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/ride-sk.html
http://www.metrolyrics.com/we-didnt-start-the-fire-lyrics-billy-joel.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cola_Wars
http://geography2020.blogspot.co.uk/2007/05/rock-and-roller-cola-wars-1964-89.html

Images:

http://macabroniandcheese.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/sotg-arcades.jpg