Lewiston, Idaho circa 1987, I receive my first Nintendo Entertainment System. The box reads that it puts you in control of incredible fun! Boy they had no idea. The first game I played on it was Super Mario Bros. I was hooked day one, the moment I pressed that power button and heard that familiar theme I was a NERD.

Of course most children of the 80′s had an NES and gaming had finally gotten BIG. Sure atari, magnavox and several other companies had tried before and it lead to the infamous video game crash. Ninja Turtles, Transformers, Thundercats, Pizza and Nintendo. Thats what it meant to be a child of the 80′s. Every friday I would rush down to the local TR Video to rent a video game for my weekend. Back then you had to rely on the box art and the back of the game to decide if it was good enough. There was no internet to rely on, the only way to know is if you got Nintendo Power, and at the time my father couldn’t afford it so I had to rely on word of mouth and my imagination. Let me tell you that it didn’t always work out that way. Some box art was horrendous!

Fast forward to 1992. The Sega Genesis was out in 1989 and advertised it did what Nintendon’t. But I was unable to get my hands on one. I had only been able to play it a few times with the majority of my time with Sonic the Hedgehog. That year in ’92 I got my first SNES. I played Super Mario World until my thumbs bled. This was the life.

Gaming was a social thing. You were always playing with your friends, either at the local arcades or at each others house. Calling each other asking what your newest high score was or how far did you get on Mega Man X. Video gaming had turned into not just a fun diversion, but a way of life.

Soon after came the CD systems, Sega CD, Philips Cdi, and the Sony Playstation. Things were changing. Games were about more then just saving the princess and getting high scores. They had moving plots and storylines. You would be invested in the game and its characters. There was blood. The ESRB was formed to tell you what you SHOULDN’T be playing if you were a kid. It wasn’t just for kids anymore. Games were also taking longer to finish, with games like the final fantasy titles and other rpgs taking somewhere between 20-40 hours to complete.

The internet was a young and new thing, and little did we know that it would take the world by storm. With PC gamers being able to play games online

I could do little but imagine what the future would hold for gaming.

Fast forward to 1998 and the Dreamcast was released as the first console to be online-ready out of the box. Despite its short lifespan, the Dreamcast was widely hailed as ahead of its time, and is still held in high regard for pioneering online console gaming.

You no longer had to be in the same room, heck the same state to play with your friends. It only grew from there, online gaming became THE market with Xbox Live and now Playstation Network. Gaming is rarely about getting together with friends anymore, and more about pwning noobs and teabagging them. It seems a lot of fun has been drained from video games. Anti-heroes and dark environs are the cup of tea. Video games have been argued as an art form, and while I agree, I sometimes yearn for a simpler time when it was all about saving princesses and getting high scores. Where people got together and had all-nighters on the couch with pizza. When it was about having fun. So next time you’re bored and have nothing to do call some friends over, dust off that old NES or SNES and have FUN.