For some of us, playing video games is a hobby. You sit down and immerse yourself into a story about this amazing new world, and inside of this great new adventure, and of course about an amazing hero or heroes. There is so much detail that goes into the stories of video games and most of us don't even notice. Years ago they didn't have detailed stories about the video games they made. Arcade games lacked stories, but they did not lack entertainment.
Some games like Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pong, etc did not have stories written down, the stories were in the titles. Space Invaders was a game about aliens from space invading the world, and you were a lone ship who's mission was to stop the invaders from landing and taking over the world! Asteroids was just a game that involved you defending yourself from large masses in space... SHOOT!! PEW PEW!! The list goes on.
The great thing about these video games though was the fact that you did not have to know any story with them. You paid your money and took your chances at getting the high score. That was another great thing about arcade games, high scores. Games could just go on forever making your quarter, to you, worth a whole lot more than what it seemed. The game just kept getting harder and harder until you messed up or until you just could not handle the speed. Some of the arcade games were made by mistake and were never meant for the public.
Take Tetris for example, that game was originally made for programmers to wind down after a long day of thinking about numbers and equations. Its background has many legal battles as to who actually created it and why it was distributed and from what company of the gaming industry. Also you had arcade games that would spawn other arcade games. The original Donkey Kong was the creator of Mario, who was known at the time as jump man. You might remember jump man as the little guy who jumped the barrels trying to save the princess, yes she was in trouble even before Bowser came along.Some games like Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pong, etc did not have stories written down, the stories were in the titles. Space Invaders was a game about aliens from space invading the world, and you were a lone ship who's mission was to stop the invaders from landing and taking over the world! Asteroids was just a game that involved you defending yourself from large masses in space... SHOOT!! PEW PEW!! The list goes on.
The great thing about these video games though was the fact that you did not have to know any story with them. You paid your money and took your chances at getting the high score. That was another great thing about arcade games, high scores. Games could just go on forever making your quarter, to you, worth a whole lot more than what it seemed. The game just kept getting harder and harder until you messed up or until you just could not handle the speed. Some of the arcade games were made by mistake and were never meant for the public.
What I remember the most was the countless hours of entertainment. I couldn't put Frogger down once I discovered it, PitFall took many hours of my time, Galaga was just too intense for words. My memories will always bring me back to those games and the times I spent hours in an arcade, or on my Atari. Now-a-days we have those amazing and new arcade games. But now they have been given steroids and a big jug of muscle milk to not only visually entice you, but still provide those hours of fun you remember from the pixel-ages. I recently purchased one on the PlayStation 3. It was not expensive, just reminded me of a game called Tempest. Sometimes you just need to forget about all of those big name games and sit down and spend some time trying to beat a game that you just cannot beat. Currently the top score on this new arcade game I have is 19 million and so far the furthest I got was 4 million, which seems like a fluke. I will take my time and surely at least get close to my goal, which is 10 million for now. Are there any games you remember from yestur-years that gave you that thrill of wanting to be the best?