Back In My Day…

Here I sit, resting my arthritic limbs after picking up my medicinal provisions from my local pharmaceutical for my catalogue of attenuate complaints and various lacerations incurred from vigorous pruning of the rose bushes. Returning home and reclining in my chair as I delicately caress the contours of fibres beautifully woven into my sculptured valour upholstery, before wistfully discharging a rooted moan of content for my impending lethargy and consolidating the scarcity of my existing energy, limply manipulating my motility functions. You begin to sip your double cask, matured whiskey like an orally distributed dialysis, hoping that the adhesive bonds that solidify your dentures remain assured in your gums as the worsening state of dementia slowly corrodes the collaborative sinews of your once assured mind. This pedantic assessment of graceful maturity inscribed so robustly, I feel is the perfect accompaniment for narrating the relevance of technology in regards to gaming, particularly when evaluating between the present state of technological prosperity, in contrast to compromising limitations of gaming 20 years ago.

“Looks like you’re doing the dishes tonight honey?”

You can’t digress your own faded adolescence with aplomb and fluidity to younger generation of gamers without sounding, well, old. Though I’ve yet to stagger into the predictable realms of maturity by beginning sentences by exclaiming “Back in my day”, which solicits the usual juvenile rotation of the retinas and diminished posture that derides the implication of another stilted anecdote, brimming with righteous indignation and condescension for their fortuitous circumstances. Because back in my day (damn it!) gamers were restricted by a conglomerate of issues; limited technology, encumbered imagination, diminutive television sets that were so weighted it required the swift removal of your living room window, a crane to hoist the lumbering, transmission device with several energetic and athletically capable individuals to manoeuvre the rigid apparatus into the appropriate alcove. We suffered with adverse controllers that accommodated 2 buttons and a directional toggle, attached to some slender cord which prevented gamers from moving more than meter from the television set, which in reflection was a beneficial impediment considering the negligible 14 inch screen, where high-definition resolution was upgrading from a monochromatic TV to Technicolor. But such restrictions didn’t burden us one bit.

“This was my Call Of Duty!”

We were genuinely content with the more rustic sensibilities of games consoles at the time; the more docile, family orientated nature of games, contented to manipulate 2 pixellated blobs that represented gallant mercenaries. These moments are so acutely ingrained in your memory that you can remember with vivid clarity almost every triumph or failure, with each of us retaining differing perspectives on what constitutes as endearing nostalgia. We all preserve purgative memories; collaborating with a relation in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and derive further social parity with your family, or observing your parents competing in a hostility sustained race in Daytona USA, to determine who would wash the dishes. Gaming was a compelling advocate for paternal disobedience too; as you attempt to continue your nocturnal gaming through furtive reticent, so as not to alert your parents to your extra curricular activities. There is something inherently endearing about gaming at such a juvenile age, something so ardently mythical about its enduring presence in your life even now. I can only speculate as to whether gamers of that same adolescent disposition, experience the same sensory piety from games like Call of Duty or FIFA, that I did from technically inferior titles of my youth.

What are your most vivid gaming memories? And do you believe that younger gamers will remember games with the same sentiments? Let me know what you guys think. Cheers.