Videogames are evil? How things have changed since the early 80s .....

Random ewetube recommendation popped up earlier.

Its only a 15 minute video about people getting addicted to Arcades, how quaint.



"The history of video games goes as far back as the early 1950s, when academic computer scientists began designing simple games and simulations as part of their research. Video gaming did not reach mainstream popularity until the 1970s and 1980s, when video arcade games and gaming consoles using joysticks, buttons, and other controllers, along with graphics on computer screens and home computer games were introduced to the general public. Since the 1980s, video gaming has become a popular form of entertainment and a part of modern popular culture in most parts of the world. One of the early games was Spacewar!, which was developed by computer scientists. Early arcade video games developed from 1972 to 1978. During the 1970s, the first generation of home consoles emerged, including the popular game Pong and various "clones". The 1970s was also the era of mainframe computer games. The golden age of arcade video games was from 1978 to 1982. Video arcades with large, graphics-decorated coin-operated machines were common at malls and popular, affordable home consoles such as the Atari 2600 and Intellivision enabled people to play games on their home TVs. During the 1980s, gaming computers, early online gaming and handheld LCD games emerged; this era was affected by the video game crash of 1983. From 1976 to 1992, the second generation of video consoles emerged."

*If Pac-Man had affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in dark rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music* ~ Marcus Brigstocke

Then came the Rave era

a reply to: Cymru








I concur.

a reply to: LightSpeedDriver

Insert Coin!

Another ....

Defender Elbow? Pacman Pinkie? were they a thing prior to the Wii?

a reply to: Cymru

I was a video games child. I hated pacman though, notoriously difficult. Video games led to children (including my humble self) tinkering with computers back in the day. (Sinclair Spectrum was mine.) I progressed and made myself a career out of "playing" with computers for a while by becoming a system administrator. It paid the bills. Like most things, it has turned into a system of control that is easy for our glorious leaders to employ in various modellings of human behaviour and the prediction thereof. Think Cambridge Analytics, among others.

It can be a slippery slope, especially when the power grid goes down but they seemed to have worked out that they shouldn't let the power grid go down anymore. I remember power outages of the late seventies and early eighties in the UK.

Facial recognition and behaviour prediction are the next big thing when coupled with digital cameras. Slippery slope?

a reply to: Cymru

Simple answer to that one is "No".

People on the other hand they can be very evil, and on the flip side also especially good.

Part and parcel of the Human condition really and directly linked to our ability to emphasise with others.

a reply to: LightSpeedDriver

My first computer was a ZX Spectrum!

Then a C64 and on to the Amiga before the PC.

Good emulators with abandonware out for all of the above.

But if you loved the arcades and spent a small fortune in paper round monies there like i did, you should get "MAME".

www.mamedev.org...

Vince's Arcade. I wonder how much money in quarters I spent there in the 80s. The cool thing was to watch the evolution of video games as Vince was always getting new games.

a reply to: Cymru

Sooo much nostalgia in that video!
From the commercials to the video game’s themselves

As for the games, I used to spend hours playing Missile Command on my Atari 2600

a reply to: andy06shake

Haha , I've been into MAME since a Mate dropped off a few floppies late 90s or so.

Playing PacMan/Galaga etc with the real romsets was geek heaven.

Happily a ZX81 - C64 to Amiga 500.

Ah, those A3 padded envelopes of the latest games and demos dropping through the door most days of the week.

The Postie hated me

Pac Man wasn't difficult! You just needed to learn the pattern. Once you did, it was only a challenge to keep playing...

One game I was fascinated with back in the day, that WAS difficult, Dragon's Lair. Managed to find a reimage of it for the PC just the other week. Same graphics, same annoying difficulty, but the nostalgia is there.

When I play old mame games though, I can't get over how dated everything is. Something got lost along the way, same with the old 8086 machines, where you'd use masm to code directly to the hardware, was a lot of fun coding for the sound blaster with nothing but snippets of information garnered from old BBS's..

Kids these days don't really get the fun that you had to have coding something new, sure some are adept at coding and annoyingly so but I coded 6502/z80/8086 right with assembley..

Ahh those were the days.. couldn't write a clock these days in .net. :/

I first played videogames in tabletop form in bars. Pong, then DigDug etc. Got an Atari 2600. Early 90's got a Genesis and have owned most consoles released since then. Pretty much sticking with the PS5 these days, no Switch or X Box

originally posted by: jerich0

Kids these days don't really get the fun that you had to have coding something new, sure some are adept at coding and annoyingly so but I coded 6502/z80/8086 right with assembley..

Ahh those were the days.. couldn't write a clock these days in .net. :/

Never a truer word. I need to get my PASCAL and Assembler 5.25" beast converted.

I always found the argument, "video games leads to violent tendencies" an interesting one.

The only reason we had WW2 is because Hitler's mom didn't take away his Sega Genocide.

Pet , Vic , C64 ,C128 , Amiga 500 , Amiga 1000 decked out .....
Started me out on a career and I never looked back .

Now , a couple of PCs that rank somewhere in the top 2% in the world for performance.
660 games installed on one of them
I guess my limit is going to be 665 ?????
(keeping with the original topic)

I always found the argument video games are detrimental or lead to violence as a funny argument.

I'll preface with like anything, they can take up too much of someone's time. I've been in this boat before, so it's not to say there is no negative to games.

That said, 99% of people who play video games do so for joy. If you can experience joy, it's already a better occupyer of time than many things.

I'd say it's better than watching mindless TV too for kids. Video games force children to problem solve and stay mentally engaged. That alone in my mind makes it better than checking out on a couch and watching cartoons.

As for it leading to violence... I see ideology doing that way faster than video games. Even with "violent" games, most don't view what they're doing as violent. I'd say a vast majority know that it's just a game, and this is the construct of the game. People shot people and raced cars before video games, if anything, this offers something else to do with time instead of taking risks.

a reply to: Cymru



I play about more with Cemu, Yuzu, and Ryujinx than MAME these days.

a reply to: CriticalStinker

The "authorities" like to demonise. Video games make kids kill, playing records backwards summons the devil, drugs are bad mmkay. It's a all a crock of someone elses' sick mind. I played Postal, never strangled a soul while or not wearing a mask. I never did try playing a record backwards though. Maybe I missed out...

ETA Playing a record backwards seems like it would damage the needle, what;s the point of that?

I've started playing again.

I played Saints Row 4 and was astonished that un order to get ahead I had to massacre an entire town of innocent people.

Kind of enjoyed the freedom though

a reply to: Cymru

Recursive gameplay has to be an evil of some kind. A kind of digital addiction for just "one more hit" or "one more block"!

a reply to: LightSpeedDriver

At the end of the day all good things can be bad. So there's some truth to it. But people just get fixated on certain things.

People can be addicted and consequently negatively effected by TV, exercise, food, video games, drinking, drugs, ect. All of the above can also be beneficial for some people if practiced with moderation.