Collegiate Times

As Nintendo turned 120 years old on Sept. 23, I am reminded of my early experiences with video games and how gaming has evolved over the years. Society has seen video games change from a technical fad to a form of mainstream entertainment. This is a result of how society values technically-gifted individuals and the overall improvement of video game technology. Blowing a cartridge is now done as often as changing the tubes on a television set.

Up until I was about 11, I was an arcade junkie. The victories and tragedies of my early youth occurred in the poorly lit, soda-stained and extraordinarily loud environment of the video game arcade. I am too young to have enjoyed the heyday of stand-alone arcades, but I'm just old enough to have basked in the glory that was the mall arcade.

My earliest memories of the mall arcade feature my father giving both my brother and me a single dollar bill with which to play the games. At six years old, I was learning the value of a dollar and some simple division. My eyes would scan the cost of each game, and I would begin the calculations for the greatest fun per quarter. Usually I would settle on a fighting game. My father, God bless him, would have to hold me by the waist so I could reach the controls. One time, my father was holding me up, and I lost on the first round of some fighting game. Not only did I lose on the first round, I lost with my last quarter. Fun time was over. I was mad, so I smacked the screen. My father noticed my miniscule rage and quickly put it out. I was six years old, and I got ticked off at a machine for taking 25 cents that five minutes before was not even mine. I attempted to punish an inanimate object by slapping my tiny, child-sized hands at what I considered the machine's face. My future was looking bright.

As the years passed by, and my financial status in the arcades grew, I learned several things. Firstly, never smack the screen when you lose or when a machine takes your money. Instead, give the coin slots a well-delivered kick with the toe of your shoe. If there aren't too many people around, or the game is just a piece of junk and you should not have even bothered to play it, give it a good strong side kick and relish in your organic superiority. Secondly, always accept a challenge in a fighting game. Inferno and Shao Kahn can wait; it's time to give a lesson in violence to someone twice your age. I say twice because I have always destroyed those who were older than me and little kids who could barely reach the controls would crush my bones into powder.

This is just a tiny flashback into a portion of my childhood that is locked in history. By the end of the '90s, console and PC gaming were leaving the arcades in the Stone Age. I have enjoyed these types of gaming and do not question their superiority as far as quality and game play. But those who have played Halo on Xbox Live know there is something wrong with pre-pubescent children talking smack. Scrawny suburban white boys don't talk smack when face-to-face with a 6-foot-3-inch, 200-pound black guy and his three equally big and equally black brothers. There is a much more personal bond when making friends with a fellow gamer in real life than there is online.

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