Tom Rhodes"In our society, it's all about the new and exciting, the shiny and freshly wrapped, the ones with the multi-million dollar marketing campaign attached to them." Tom Rhodes almost left behind his childhood games, but changed his mind.
Issue 33: Casual Friday - Childhood Lost
- Thread starter The Escapist Staff
- Start date
Original Comment by: Christopher Hunter
http://www.xanga.com/chunter
That feeling right before the sale is precisely the reason why there's a market for that stuff at all.
I now have a way-too-large collection of Commodore 64ish equipment because I always wanted one when I was little.
Anyway, I think you made a good decision at the time, and although it's far from perfect, I recommend the Game Boy Micro and any old-schoolish GBA carts you can find if you ever miss either the feel of older games or the feeling of trying to collect older games- especially since you can shove the result in your pocket and show it off at parties.
Best wishes
http://www.xanga.com/chunter
That feeling right before the sale is precisely the reason why there's a market for that stuff at all.
I now have a way-too-large collection of Commodore 64ish equipment because I always wanted one when I was little.
Anyway, I think you made a good decision at the time, and although it's far from perfect, I recommend the Game Boy Micro and any old-schoolish GBA carts you can find if you ever miss either the feel of older games or the feeling of trying to collect older games- especially since you can shove the result in your pocket and show it off at parties.
Best wishes
Original Comment by: Stefan Hall
http://personal.bgsu.edu/~stefanh/hall.htm
Hey Tom,
As a person who collects (pre-NES era) video games, I enjoyed your piece about looking back and hanging onto this particular aspect of your childhood. Pretty much all of my toys from my own childhood are gone, either sold off (to that genius in my high school who was buying up everyone's old Star Wars toys back in 1987!) or broken or just vanished (my mom still won't tell me the final fate of my Six Million Dollar Man figures), but one of the few things I kept were my Atari and Colecovision with their games. I started actively collecting games from that era back in 1993, and although I have a nice little collection (and finally got some games my parents never could have afforded to buy me in the past), it pales when compared to more of the die-hard collectors. Christopher rightly notes the burgeoning market for collecting video games, and so I was wondering since you are a filmmaker (I also live in Ohio, attending one of its many universities), if you had ever considered making a documentary about video game nostalgia and/or collecting? I think it would be a really interesting project.
http://personal.bgsu.edu/~stefanh/hall.htm
Hey Tom,
As a person who collects (pre-NES era) video games, I enjoyed your piece about looking back and hanging onto this particular aspect of your childhood. Pretty much all of my toys from my own childhood are gone, either sold off (to that genius in my high school who was buying up everyone's old Star Wars toys back in 1987!) or broken or just vanished (my mom still won't tell me the final fate of my Six Million Dollar Man figures), but one of the few things I kept were my Atari and Colecovision with their games. I started actively collecting games from that era back in 1993, and although I have a nice little collection (and finally got some games my parents never could have afforded to buy me in the past), it pales when compared to more of the die-hard collectors. Christopher rightly notes the burgeoning market for collecting video games, and so I was wondering since you are a filmmaker (I also live in Ohio, attending one of its many universities), if you had ever considered making a documentary about video game nostalgia and/or collecting? I think it would be a really interesting project.
Original Comment by: Tom Rhodes
Christopher:
Yes, that feeling of instant gratification vs. past nostalgia keeps that market alive and thriving.
Julianne:
Don't forget to blow into the open end of the cartridge, otherwise they'll freeze like a mutha!
Stefan:
Thanks for your kind comment (all of the comments). To answer your question, though I am a filmmaker, my plate is full right now. I've got a documentary that I've finished recently, and I'm starting pre-pre-production on a narrative feature film. However, seeing your web link, it appears you are a budding filmmaker yourself (or, at the very least, seriously studying the nature of film). So maybe you should try your hand at it? Just get a MiniDV camera (I recommend the Panasonic AG-DVX100B, since it records in 24P mode), an editing station (something with Final Cut Pro, perhaps), and make yourself a movie.
Christopher:
Yes, that feeling of instant gratification vs. past nostalgia keeps that market alive and thriving.
Julianne:
Don't forget to blow into the open end of the cartridge, otherwise they'll freeze like a mutha!
Stefan:
Thanks for your kind comment (all of the comments). To answer your question, though I am a filmmaker, my plate is full right now. I've got a documentary that I've finished recently, and I'm starting pre-pre-production on a narrative feature film. However, seeing your web link, it appears you are a budding filmmaker yourself (or, at the very least, seriously studying the nature of film). So maybe you should try your hand at it? Just get a MiniDV camera (I recommend the Panasonic AG-DVX100B, since it records in 24P mode), an editing station (something with Final Cut Pro, perhaps), and make yourself a movie.
Original Comment by: Tom Rhodes
Julianne:
Oh yes. Let's not forget, "Guys! Shut up, your talking is causing vibrations which make the game come up black. So SHHHHH!"
Julianne:
Oh yes. Let's not forget, "Guys! Shut up, your talking is causing vibrations which make the game come up black. So SHHHHH!"
Original Comment by: Nick Twining
I am a big fan of older games as well. Some of my fondest childhood moments were spent with my brother playing old games like Space Quest, Kings Quest II, Monkey Island, Bards Tale, or the odd console like River City Ransom. I used to believe that I simply thought these games paramount to most of our modern games but now I'm not so sure. I think modern games suffer from the same problems that the movie industry faces - too many departments with too many tasks makes it too hard to bring them together into a cohesive whole. If George Lucas didn't spend so much time worrying about what particulars outfits his characters wore and what that said about them he may have had the time to write a decent script, let alone watch some of the miserable performaces his actors gave. Yet with the first movie, Lucas seems to have the primary goal of telling a story, not marketing a proven concept to the greatest number of people.
The same goes for modern games like Halo 2, Half life 2, Everquest 2 and virtually any other 2 out there. And thats not to even begin to take into account titles like 50 cents Bulletproof or whatever that piece of trash was called. Granted all these developers have pressure to make a better game but why do they constantly have to worry about what a particular dress says about a character? Perhaps I missed the meeting but to me content is not usually defined by quantity but by quality. Old school game developers couldn't choose quantity because they didn't have enough space. Since they had limited budgets (compared to today) and since they could only pack so much content into one cartridge or (several) disk/s they had to spend their time, instead, on plausable, veried, interesting content.
So perhaps the real thing I'm nostalgic for is the days when games and movies could have content that I had never really seen before.
I am a big fan of older games as well. Some of my fondest childhood moments were spent with my brother playing old games like Space Quest, Kings Quest II, Monkey Island, Bards Tale, or the odd console like River City Ransom. I used to believe that I simply thought these games paramount to most of our modern games but now I'm not so sure. I think modern games suffer from the same problems that the movie industry faces - too many departments with too many tasks makes it too hard to bring them together into a cohesive whole. If George Lucas didn't spend so much time worrying about what particulars outfits his characters wore and what that said about them he may have had the time to write a decent script, let alone watch some of the miserable performaces his actors gave. Yet with the first movie, Lucas seems to have the primary goal of telling a story, not marketing a proven concept to the greatest number of people.
The same goes for modern games like Halo 2, Half life 2, Everquest 2 and virtually any other 2 out there. And thats not to even begin to take into account titles like 50 cents Bulletproof or whatever that piece of trash was called. Granted all these developers have pressure to make a better game but why do they constantly have to worry about what a particular dress says about a character? Perhaps I missed the meeting but to me content is not usually defined by quantity but by quality. Old school game developers couldn't choose quantity because they didn't have enough space. Since they had limited budgets (compared to today) and since they could only pack so much content into one cartridge or (several) disk/s they had to spend their time, instead, on plausable, veried, interesting content.
So perhaps the real thing I'm nostalgic for is the days when games and movies could have content that I had never really seen before.
Original Comment by: Tom Rhodes
Well, Nick, necessity is the mother of invention. It's my firm belief that if Lucas was more constrained (like he was back in the day), and had not written the films entirely himself, then it would ultimately have lead to a better series of films.
This is not to say that technology advancement in videogames or movies is a bad thing - quite the contrary - but when you can't see the forest for the technological trees, you've lost sight of the importance of the story.
Well, Nick, necessity is the mother of invention. It's my firm belief that if Lucas was more constrained (like he was back in the day), and had not written the films entirely himself, then it would ultimately have lead to a better series of films.
This is not to say that technology advancement in videogames or movies is a bad thing - quite the contrary - but when you can't see the forest for the technological trees, you've lost sight of the importance of the story.