I’ve been an avid gamer pretty much my whole life. I started with my neighbor’s Pong game that screwed into the back of his TV. Then I moved on to games on my father’s Commodore 64. They loaded off actual cassette tapes like you’d listen to the latest hit single. And sometimes they didn’t load at all. Then came the Intellivision and the Atari 2600, followed by the NES, Super NES, N64, GameCube, Playstation 2, Xbox, Wii, WiiU, PS3 and Xbox 360. The next generation of consoles are about to come out and I’ll get those too.
I’m currently playing through the most recent Tomb Raider game. It’s pretty fun. As I walked out of a cave into the bright sunlight, I was struck but how amazing the visuals are.
That’s a sun ring that only appears when you look at the sun, which isn’t always in the sky. I remembered one of my favorite games back in the day was Forbidden Forest for the Commodore 64. That game came out in 1983, 30 years ago. Here’s what it looked like:
Courtesy: giantbomb.com
Both games take place in outdoor environments. Both games pit you against overwhelming odds. Both have day and night cycles. Both games even feature a character with a bow. But look at the difference.
Today I play games like Tomb Raider on a regular basis without giving the graphics a second thought. It is incredible that a box that’s the same size can do so much more, and all within my relatively short lifetime.
And now my son is playing games. And even though he enjoys the occasional retro title, he also looks as Tomb Raider without a second thought. What will he think of that game 30 years from now? What will his games look like.
I hope we’ll be playing them together.