Every moment in history has some sort of allure and mystique, some romantic mythology that has built up around it – except for the 1970’s. (Star Wars and the birth of heavy metal notwithstanding) To chalk it up to nostalgia is to sell these moments in time short. Nostalgia implies that things really weren’t that good, and we’re just remembering being happy. Some things really were that good though. Pop culture icons like Star Wars, Led Zeppelin, Star Trek, and Mickey Mouse, just to name a few, continually find new audiences.
There are cultural gems to be found in any era, but most of what we got was crap. The best got distilled into greatest hits and “best of” albums that Time/Life used to sell before iTunes killed off the business model. The rest was forgotten only to be occasionally dug up in someone’s basement and tossed in a landfill.
Then there’s the dark side. Once you get past the romanticism, you get to see the ugly parts. People reminisce about late 1960’s and "peacing" out with hippies, but kind of brush aside the deep political strife. That’s human nature. It’s more fun to listen to The Door’s than really think about how much of a crapfest Vietnam or life behind the Iron Curtain was.
All that really changed between the arcade days and online gaming is that we traded one set of jack-offs for another.
Video games are no different. We remember and talk about the best from the past, and forget the worst as we brush it under the rug. The newer generations, whose first controller was a hand-me-down Game Cube or PS1 instead of a well-worn arcade joystick, learn most of this lore from us old timers. It’s nice to know how awesome some things from the past are, but it’s just as important to keep things the less than awesome parts in perspective, otherwise newer generations get an unbalanced view of the past. That’s kind of happened now.
5. Arcades Were a Shangri-La of Gamer Unity and Harmony
5. Arcades Were a Shangri-La of Gamer Unity and Harmony
Let me start off by saying that arcades were great, and I truly feel sorry for the younger generation that missed out on their heyday. Gamer pubs and retro arcades just don’t have the same thrum of energy that existed in arcades back then when people packed into the neon-lit rooms deep in the malls knowing that you were going to see and play games that were light years ahead of anything you could play at home. I had some of the best times of my life in arcades, along with a few scary ones.
It’s been said that, back in the old arcade days, people had to keep a certain level of politeness and decorum or else they would get their asses kicked. True, but that generally applies to any sort of face to face interaction in society. Arcades were just like anything in life. There were rude people, the bad kind of weirdos, and the basically annoying. Also, the usual drama from school tended to follow you there.
All that really changed between the arcade days and online gaming is that we traded one set of jack-offs for another. Online games have their flamers and trolls, but arcades had the bigger kids who would beat the crap out of the younger kids for their quarters. The arcades where management gave a crap and went out of their way to keep things trouble free, ended up making them a safe haven for all the smart ass little twelve year old brats to run their mouths without consequence. Sound familiar? Not to mention arcades were a mecca for drug dealers and child molesters. I have no problem is an adult wants to smoke weed but selling it to middle schoolers is not cool.
4. Game Companies Weren't as Greedy Back Then
Here is a quick business lesson. The only reason any for-profit company exists is to make money. How they make money is just a means to an end. I’m not saying that there aren't dedicated and passionate professional game designers out there, but none of them are working for free are they? If EA found a sure fire way to double their earnings each year by abandoning their AAA game production and switching to making smartphone wallpapers, they would do that. That’s how the game industry has always been, and how it always will be. We just have a better view of how the sausage is made. If data storage and the internet as we now know it caught on in 1980’s, we would have had World 10 as DLC.
Games Were Harder Back Then Because Game Makers Wanted to Challenge Players. Nope - Games were harder because game companies wanted kids to drop as many quarters in their machines as they could.
Don't believe me. Google the antitrust lawsuit that Nintendo got hit with in the late 1980’s, early 90’s. They strong armed retailers into keeping SEGA games and game systems off the shelves, and pressured game makers to keep any games they make off the SEGA Master System for two years. Nintendo had a ton of money and good lawyers and only got what amounts to a slap on the wrist, while SEGA got a strong kick in the nuts that it never fully recovered from. It could be easily be argued that Nintendo’s actions were a major part of the ultimate demise of SEGA as a console manufacturer and the early death of the beloved Dreamcast.