Antique Gaming
Welcome to Antique Gaming. A simple understanding of the title will tell you that this blog is not about brand new, state of the art games requiring massive amounts of processing power and a decent internet connection, it’s about those games which you played in the 1970s and 1980s, the ones which cost you 10 cents or ten pence in the local arcade and which now appear for free at any number of online emulators.
I’m old enough to remember Pong way back in the 1970s and I’ve followed the path of the video game industry pretty much since then. I don’t think I could be called a fanatic – I didn’t really get into PC gaming until the early 1990s but my family did have a Tandy TRS-80 in the late 1970s. That spectacular piece of hardware still provided me with a selection of games to wile away the hours although some of those hours were spent waiting for the cassette tape to load up the game – that’s right, a cassette tape which was accommodated in the built-in player. A small mechanical timer counted up while the loading process was taking place and I can still remember that one game, Obstacle, took until the count of 16 to be ready to play.
Anyway, enough nostalgia, we are now entering the fifth decade of computer gaming and I will admit that I do also keep up with what’s current. I have a PS3 and regard Battlefield 3 as one of the most impressive multiplayer accomplishments ever. The single player campaign is a load of toss but that’s another story.
As I said earlier, I’m no fanatic – I’m never going to have more than one console underneath the TV at any one time. I’ve had various PCs, a Sega Megadrive, a Playstation, a PS2 and my current console. As most people my age do, I also have to balance my use of said console with the demands of my wife who really doesn’t want to see me kill two enemies, then respawn, then kill two enemies, then respawn ad infinitum.
So check back when you like for my thoughts on games from the days of yore. See you soon…