Video Games - Yesterday and Today

The other day, I was talking to a friend about the fact that I am a die hard gamer and soon realised that I've been playing video games all my life - or atleast the part of it when Video Games were around.

I remember the first system that was out there - The Atari.

The Atari was a simple system, and played all the old favourites - starting with ping pong!

Ping pong was an instant rage. Moving those flat lines up and down the screen to to catch the ball was exilirating at the time.

Aside from Ping Pong, the Atari system had many other games that were worth playing, amongst racing little bunnies across a traffic-filled road avoiding cute death at every turn to boxing games with stick figures.

If you wanna see real progress, look at what the current Boxing games (Fight night round 3) look like:

I guess sports games were the first ones to make it to the gaming market. What came next you ask? Why I would guess it was the 8 bit consoles, which introduced a game that would become a household word in years to come. That game was - Mario Bros. 

The franchise was so popular, that it even inspired movies, and other games such as mario cart racing. Mario actually took a turn from Adventure to other genres with the advent of the N64. 

Now, Mario appears in various game titles, primarily made for Nintendo's proprietary system - the Wii. I beleive its Mario that inspired the genre of Adventure video games.

Another incredibly popular 8 bit video game that still exists to date is - Street Fighter.

Street fighter started in the arcades but quickly found its way into the homes of many on 8 bit consoles.

Street Fighter itself was a pleasure to play. Never before has you been able to pick a charector and pound the daylights out of a friend before. Especially no game where you could do flying kicks and throw fire balls.

This game too sparked a new genre of Beat 'em up games like Mortal Kombat.

But street fighter evolved too, and is still in the Game.

Heres what the newest street fighter looks like:

Another game that sparked the creation of one of the most popular genre's out there is a game called Doom. The first of the FPS breed (first-person-shooter) which was actually a computer game. 

I loved this game to bits. Doom I was legendary in every way, and Doom II was even better. The two came on 3 1/2 inch 1.44MB floppy disks.

Doom has opened doors to a variety of new games.

Every FPS and Horror Shooter finds it roots in Doom (and another game called Wolfinstien - both made by id Software)

Now days shooters are in my opinion one of the most Hyped genres in gaming. For example, Microsoft hold exclusive rights to it's shooter Halo to ensure continued loyalty to the Xbox(360) system. Sony's answer to this was to release a shooter called Resistance: Fall of man. The XBOX also has games such as the Gears of War series to increase the allure of said system.

The new kid on the block is KillZone 2.. 

Yeah. I'm a gamer. And I love it.

G

EDIT 30/3/2009: In a GDC talk Friday, author and Georgia Tech professor Ian Bogost explained how the iconic (Atari 2600) 1970s- and '80s-era video game console can be used for inspiration by today's game designers.