When someone asks me what do you remember in your old school gaming days. I think of a game that is on the NES, SNES, or Sega Genesis. Games that some people still play to this day. It was the days that marked the turning point in gaming. That we all take for granted now.
I mean seriously. We did not have one mindless first person shooter after another being produced. They were not dubbed down for the mass market.  Nor were they chocked full of movies that tend to play them selves.

It was a small hitch of what the media is of this day in age.
So lets fire up that DeLorean. Were going back in time to when gaming was good.
Side note:(We may need a microwave & a flux capacitor for this blog.)

Back in the holidays of 1993. My Grandfather brought home a big package. The package was as big as a VCR box. Turns out what lied inside that box. Was going to be the gaming system that sparked my gaming craze for years to come.

Enter in the Nintendo Entertainment System(or NES for short). Upon receiving my gift for Christmas.
I realized that this was possibly the best gift a 5 year old could get. I quickly took the package down stairs to the basement where my grandfather soon followed.
Back in those days before I was technology inclined. I did not know how to hook up this bastard. So me and my brother quickly made short work of the packaging to get to the system. So my grandfather could hook it up.
The TV we had at the time was in color but was a nightmare to hook up the NES too. It took about an hour for my grandfather to finally get the NES to work. That felt like a eternity to me since I was 5.

Finally after my grandfather dicking with the NES and TV for over an hour. Super Mario 3 booted up.After it booted to the title screen.
A title screen that would be scared in my brain forever. I quickly ran to the couch where the controller laid.

After I figured out how to make the game work and play. I spent the next 8 hours playing the NES. Something that I still have fond memories of still til this day.

About a year later. I remember going into a Sears with my Grandmother. Soon to be amazed by what was called the Sega genesis on display. The display unit had in it 6 games you could play for 10 minutes at a time. I remember begging to get one. Thought my grandmother quickly said “no”.

When I hit the 2nd grade. My brother played a dirty trick and asked for a genesis on his birthday. The game the system came with was Sonic 2.
I remember playing sick one day so I could play that god damn game.
Which I beat at that time.

Our games library for the genesis back then was pretty massive. With over 20 games in the collection by Christmas of that year. Sadly I don’t own any of them now.T-T

About a year later Sega released what was called the 32x. Which flopped quickly and was on clearance at toys R US for 20$. I ending up getting that. Which included the first Virtual fighter in the package. There were only 2 games we had for the 32x which were Virtual Fighter and Kolibri.
So the 32x did suck. That is why it went down as one of the worst console failures ever.

Side note: I never owned the Sega CD until I found a CDX for 12$ @ goodwill a couple months back.XD

Now while me and my family were on the sega hype. Sega released another console which was the Saturn. We all know how that ended since that era in the console wars was with the Playstation and Nintendo 64. Sega quickly lost and pulled the Saturn from the US retailers 18 months later.
Burning everyone that bought the console and including game makers.In fact EA was so pissed off at Sega. They voed never to make another game on a Sega console. Which is why you didn’t see Madden on the Dreamcast.

I thank god. I was very furtunate not to be burned by Sega back in the day.
(owned a Dreamcast but not a Saturn)

Most people remember the SNES or NES.
I still love the old Genesis. Games like Altered Beast, Vector man, and Streets of rage 2. I will fire up a emulator for.
The Sega Genesis may have some of the worse add-on failures of all time, but that little system was actually pretty damn cool.
(-minus the bull shit.)

Since I recently aquirred a Sega CDX.
(the genesis and sega CD combined into one unit)
I’m going to start collecting genesis games again.XD
-Darren

So I figured he needed a change or rather some else to play from my growing library of games.

Today I let him try out Mass Effect..
Truthfully I think this game is a little bit to much for some one of this age, but he is doing alright in it.
He doesn’t read quite yet. So we need to read everything to him. But that hasn’t stopped him yet now has it? =D

If this game was only just shooting he would be fine. The trouble he has is with the cut scenes or talking to people. Since this game is very Cut-scene heavy. I have to read the commands or dialog(for your character to speak) to him. Then tell him to make a choice of what he would do.

I have a feeling..
He will be bugging me a lot on this game.

-I think I created a monster-
-deathafterkarma

Pretty cool huh?
I feel Ubiquity is going to be the way of the future for browsers like Firefox.
It has so much potential.

What I found really interesting was he got stuck in Bioshock on one of the pass coded doors.You have to find the pass code hidden in the level. They can be in the audio logs or in the level. Well I showed him using a dry erase board to write it down code for the door.
After that, he figured it all out on his own.
This past week he mastered the hacking mini game puzzle..

Now Half-life 2 I didn’t have to help @ all.
For some reason that game clicked with him.
I thought the physics puzzles stop him. I guess I was wrong.

Since he has a talent for First person shooters.
I will be picking up halo 3 next.
Will see how he does.

For some reason he does not get scared when playing these types of games.
You would think Ravenholm would have scared him in half-life2.
It doesn’t.. not a flinch or anything. Most kids would have had nightmare over something like that. Not this kid.
He thinks it as a game first of all and knows it.
Maybe that’s why he is not scared of video games.

Now a kid movie like Monster house he will cower and hide.. For some reason movies scare him.. Just not games

When you think about it.

I don’t have to worry about Mysql backups.
Wordpress.com takes care of that.
I don’t have all the technical “know how” in the web development department.(sure the pixel theme was nice but I can live with out)
So I’m going to leave this all to wordpress from now on.

You can look here for more info.

http://support.wordpress.com/com-vs-org/

I miss everyone…
hopefully,
I will see all you real soon.
-|)arren

P.s Homesickness kicked in like 4 months ago.

I love it.. The ability to watch videos on demand thanks to sites like “Youtube, Hulu, and, Veoh”.
The community I think has grown more since the media boom of the net.
(as the time of writing over 100 million registered youtube users)

That brings up the question.
“What would you do to make the media experience more enjoyable for the average end user?”