Monday, February 11, 2008

Irony

I was at my local ex-servicemen's club for a meal at the bistro with the family when something occurred to me. There is a children's play area next to the restaurant where the little'uns can tear around and distract themselves while the adults get on with the job of gambling, drinking and becoming obese.

In that play area are a row of consumer gaming consoles locked into wooden boxes. I think I saw some PS2's and even a couple of XBox 360's. Cool. All free for the kids to play with. That must have cost some money.

Next to the new consoles are some of the older style arcade consoles. And if you want to play Galaxian (1979), Gyruss (1983) Point Blank (1994) or Virtua Racing (1992), that will be at least $2, thank you.

Is that insane or what? Why would I pay $2 to play a twenty nine year old arcade game when there's an XBox 360 sitting next to it for free? Never mind that arcade consoles used to be twenty freaking cents.

I feel old. So old. Because... I was tempted. The 8-bit glory, she did call to me. But that's just me. My son will have no such nostalgia.

3 comments:

m said...

They have arcade machines now? I'm there! Kids, get in the car! lol...

I miss the days of arcades.

Michael Sutcliffe said...

You think it's for the children, but I suspect the old diggers get liquored up late at night and play Halo on XBox.

Monkeytree said...

I'd say that your son will have a different nostalgia, for the games that he grew up with. Personally, I feel lucky to have "grown up" with computer games - I started out on such primitive systems - the sort of thing that you could (if you were inclined) print out the entire code and comprehend it.

In forty years, the current generation will be hearkening back to the days of hand-held controllers and little square light displays that sat on a table...