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Five Games, Five Generations

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So before I get started, where the crap have I been? Well, after that last post on 11/16/18 I ran out of pictures and time to post anything more. The joys of helping run a family during the holidays. It’s been a rough couple of months.

I mean, it’s taking me almost a month to get to looking at this tweet we’ll get to into a moment.

Now, if you don’t follow this guy’s blog about gaming yet, I’d highly recommend heading his way. You can find him over at Adventure Rules.

So this challenge was to pull five games from five different generations (and challenge five people, which I’ll leave alone).

A tweet wouldn’t do my response justice, hence why I’m here.

You want generations of gaming? I’ve got generations of gaming.

Let’s get started!

1. Mario Bros (1983)

Generation: Arcade

Technically I played this on a Commodore 64 PC, but I also remember dropping quarters into it at a local pizza place in my early childhood. I think I’m probably the reason my parents stopped taking me there: they didn’t want to keep handing me quarters. 😉

2. Summer Games II (1985)

Generation: Commodore 64

I started as a gamer as an arcade gamer and a PC gamer. Those are my roots. It’s probably also why I can type at over 90 WPM and why I had to read pretty okay before going into Kindergarten. How else was I supposed to type those commands to actually start a game from a 5.25 inch floppy disk?

No mouse yet, just a keyboard and an Atari style one button joystick. (It’s actually really interesting to me that the Switch uses ‘joycons’. It’s like we’ve come full circle.)

The model of Commodore 64 that we had was pretty weird. It was portable.

Runner up: M.U.L.E. (1983)

3. Super Mario Bros 3 (1985)

Generation: NES

The groundbreaking, generation defining game, we still see games being released in this same format 34 years later!

The side scrolling adventure that took a young me ages to beat (just had to get that Game Genie plugged in first). Going from single screen adventure games like Jumpman and Digdug from the Commodore to this? It was amazing. The first screen my NES was connected to was a green monochrome computer monitor that Dad MacGyvered with one of those coax to UHF adapters translating the coax signal from my NES.

Runner up: Super Mario Bros 3

4. Super Mario World (1990)

Generation: SNES

Let’s take the formula that was created on the NES, refined in the later three Mario titles, and give a pack-in game with the next console? Sold.

I still remember the purchase of our SNES because it’s the first promise I can remember making: to never ask my parents for another console. Bought at a Sam’s Club with a mail-in offer sticker to get Super Mario All-Stars as a separate cartridge.

Little did I know that Dad would pass away in 1999 to seal the promise forever. I was very late to the N64 because I saved up for it and bought it used myself. The value of the promise has always been important in my family. It’s a value we have passed on to our children.

Runner Up: Super Mario Kart

5. Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri Alien Crossfire (2000)

Generation: Early Mac Gaming

This was a hard final choice. From when I started gaming to present day a lot has certainly changed. There are other games I would have loved to have featured because of the memories made, but SMAX holds special significance for me for a few reasons.

The first was that it was the first time I recognized a game publisher and trusted that because I liked what they’d made previously I would likely enjoy what they now made. I trusted the brand name of ‘Sid Meier’ and was not disappointed. (Looking at you Blizzard).

At Sam’s again, buying it from the bargain rack and installing it on my grandmother’s PC, this edition fortunately came with both a Mac and PC copy of the game so I was able to take it home with me and use it there after the summer was over.

2000 seems so far away now but it really wasn’t.

The other reason this game holds significance is because I started playing a round of SMAX after getting home from watching TJ be born (2002). I stayed up all night, amazed I was a father. That my family had started.

It’s a game that, while in college would lead me to my first foray into online gaming, stumbling across Apolyton and finding players for play by email sessions. Never did finish a game, but as always, I’d play matches received over email after work (and class).

Runner Up: Civilization II

So there you have it. My “5 games, 5 generations” post finally written, it was fun looking back at my gaming history, even if it reminded me of how old I am. Oh, and I am working on future posts and updates about the family. Just still finding the time to sort through pictures. Not too far behind quite yet and I don’t intend to fall too far.

-FF


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