Our Kids Will Never Have to Deal With These Gaming Problems Again!

Our Kids Will Never Have to Deal With These Gaming Problems Again!

I was talking to a friend--rather excitedly--about old school gaming problems that our children will never have to deal with. This was a very fun topic which brought back many memories. Now, to be clear, neither of us were children of the Atari--which I'm certain had its own host of issues--but we did share early memories and struggles associated with the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) and beyond. Most of these items we have all had to experience if you've ever owned one of the old cartridge gaming systems. Our children are the future, and they will undoubtedly have their own gaming-related struggles that they will one day reminisce upon themselves. However, our children were lucky, because they will never:

• Have to deal with blowing on a cartridge as a means to get it to operate properly. While blowing on the cartridge likely had little effect in 'actually' making the game operate correctly, that didn't stop mom from instructing us on the proper techniques for blowing and making sure we didn't spit into them. (No, I don't mean that mom taught us kids how to give blow jobs... ya perverts).
  
  
  
• Have to devise creative methods for wedging a game to one side of the machine or another to get the picture to come in clear, such as folded up paper, cardboard, pencils, etc. Anything that would 'hold 'er steady' and achieve that perfect working angle.
• Have to worry about misplacing a memory card (For all those post-NES systems) and having to start our game all over when we finally were able to afford to get a replacement card.
• Have to see a three page itemized list of actions they should NOT do while game is saving. For example: Do not turn off power, do not unplug power cord, do not remove memory card, do not pass "Go," do not collect $200, do not talk, do not blink, and do not consider breathing.
• Have to place their system in the middle of the living room floor so that they can sit on their couch due to to the wonderful invention that is wireless controllers. Deep down, we all knew that we were setting ourselves up for failure when we had the system power cord stretched from the television to the console, and our controllers stretched out from that, creating a twelve-foot trip hazard across the entire room. Inevitably, someone was GOING to trip over that cord, disconnect the power source, and piss us off cause we were just about to beat Mario 3!!!

These are just a few of the issues we had to deal with to get our games to cooperate with us. Nowadays, the biggest issues I worry about it that terrifying three letter word ...  Lag. It's the new number one reason people throw keyboards through flat screen monitors. lol

You remember the caveman days of gaming... Share some of your memories with us in the comment section below!

Daniel Wagner.
http://www.parentofprogress.com