Video game history- This time it's personal.

My favourite babysitter

Oh hello there, I didn't hear you come in... how long have you been standing there, watching me play my videogames? All that history wasn't enough for you? Oh, you want more? You want more me? Well, I guess you're only human. Come sit by my fire, stretch out on my furs, and lets talk all about me.

Let me tell you, first of all, that I love video-games. Mmmmhmmm! I've always loved video-games, even before I could actually play them. You see, I was always one generation behind when I was a kid. My first console was older than I was by a very, very long way. It was a NES, and I can't remember too much about it, to be honest. The first game I ever played on it was "Gyromite", but let's not talk about that. No seriously, don't talk about Gyromite. My library consisted of many cartridges; the most frequently visited were Mario Bros 3, The Legend Of Zelda, Castlevania and Metroid. You could call that the beginning of my Nintendo fanboyism. Now, I'm not going to try and prove to you that the big 'N' is any better than anyone else. It wouldn't benefit you or I. What I can try and explain to you though, is how much fun I found those games. At this age, I was kind of unaware of the world. Let's be honest, I still am- but I just wasn't interested in everyone else's playstation's and nintendo 64s. The NES was alright by me, between the pervasive and isolating caverns of Metroid, to the rolling deserts of The Legend Of Zelda I was having a brilliant time. Bleep bloop bleep. Bleep bleep bloop bloop. Then one Christmas my father bought me a playstation. There were disks, little rubber stick things, soldiers, cars, 3D, my god! It's like the films, daddy! It's like the movies! But something was missing. The whirring of the disk drive didn't instil the same feeling of warmth that the slamming of cartridges did. The following January, a family friend gave me their Nintendo 64. Hey, I know this. I know this! That sturdy plastic, those stickered boxes- that Italian plumber! That green-clad fairyboy! As sad as it was, those familiar faces were my childhood friends and I was joyous to attend the reunion. I never owned a Gamecube, Xbox or Playstation 2. I skipped that generation for my love of the cartridge. Ignorant, stupid maybe. But definitely happy.

A part of me was leaving behind boyish things. A very different side of me was stirring. My father has never been a gamer- but there was a game that caught his eye. Whilst I was jumping Mario over turtles, he was building bases and manufacturing troops and sending them to their deaths with the click of a mouse. No, it wasn't Command and Conquer. It was Total Annihilation. To this day I have never found a better strategy game. Never. When my dad showed me the overwhelming sight of hundreds of robots marching unto death, I was hooked. It was deeper than anything I'd ever played, it was engrossing. It didn't make me laugh, reminisce or cry- it made me hungry to blow shit up. This was my big-boy time. When Zelda and Mario were tucked up in bed, out came the war-robots. For the aforementioned reasons, I will always enjoy Nintendo games. And you know what? I like that they're different in a somewhat-stale industry. But since sending my first tank onto the battlefield with a right-click, there was no going back. Call me an elitist and paint me Aryan- because I'm a PC gamer.

War is really fun.

Mm, your glass is empty. Want a refill? Let me just stoke the fire a little, there we go... that's better... So you want to know some more about me, do you? My predictions and dreams of the future? Oh where to begin, where to begin. Get comfortable, because I'm about to tell you.

I'm not excited by the next-generation consoles, I'll be honest. Maybe they'll come out with some cool titles, I'm sure they will, but the consoles themselves? Nah. It seems that "next gen" means "more polys", in which case the new consoles aren't going to be doing anything I haven't already played. Seriously, you want next gen? Buy a fucking PC. We have more polys and HD textures than you could shake a Crysis stick at. I'm pretty interested in the other routes gaming might take, better AI, immersive headsets, that sort of thing. If we're going to go really Philip K Dick on this, then I like the idea of removing controllers altogether. No, not kinnect. I mean mind-reading games, extension-of-your-body games. Imagine not being restricted by input at all! I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I just think that graphics can only go so far. It seems that the master-work, the magnum opus of the industry has always been photo-realistic graphics. I honestly don't think that it's worth the trouble. AI is a term thrown around way too much in the video-game world. In gaming, all it really means is the set of commands a non-player character follows. Shoot this one. Run behind this thing. Help him if he's hurt, etc etc. What about real AI? You know, Yale university shit. Something that actually thinks and learns. There are some really amazing avenues that gaming can travel in the future. I have faith in humanity- as long as enough people reward steps in that direction, I think some very cool stuff is coming. It might take 10 years, it might take 50. But hopefully I'll be around whenever it does.

"Is 50 years a long time?"

Image links:

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http://megagames.com/sites/default/files/game-content-images/tatm.jpg
http://satoshimatrix.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/nes-system.jpg