A Tribute to Video Games (dedicated to my father)

The very first video game was invented while dinosaurs still roamed the earth, and computers still took up an entire room. It was a tennis game that used a cathode ray tube from an oscilloscope. William Higinbotham was the creator, and the year was 1958.

Since then video games have come a very long way. From Pong to Ms. Pac-Man to Mortal Kombat. From the Odyssey to the Nintendo to the X-box 360. I always used to look at video games as being in three categories. The first category is the Arcade Game. I grew up on these classic arcade games because of my father's business. His business is called "Unicorn Enterprises", named after one of my mother's obsessions. He always had a garage full of arcade games like Russian Attack, Street Fighter, NBA Jam, Fighting Golf, a variety of pinballs and many others. During the summers he would open the garage door and kids from all over the neighborhood would come to play video games for free. By the time I was five I was a master of Q*Bert.



This type of game that comes in a wooden cabinet and you need to stand up to play is the all-time classic of video game styles. The second category would have to be the video game console. I am a huge fan of the original Nintendo with games like Tecmo Super Bowl, Bubble Bobble, and who could forget Excite Bike? These games will live on, along with my dad's arcades, in many of my childhood memories. But now I feel that this category of gaming is more for either kids that can't get to an arcade, or lazy adults or parents that would rather spend $50 dollars for 1 game rather than going to an arcade or taking their child to an arcade and spending $10 dollars and playing a variety of games. It is more convenient to sit at home getting fat and play your games, instead of standing at an arcade game which definitely burns more calories. There are the rare few that stand while they play their consoles, and Nintendo has tried to make their customers more healthy with the introduction of the Wii.

Now days however, console games have gotten much more serious with options to connect to the Internet. This brings us to, what I believe, is the third category of video game. The interactive, role playing, computer game. Games like World of Warcraft. I feel that these games are designed more for people that are already married and have a lot of time on their hands or people that will never have the chance to be married because they are social outcasts. They argue that they are meeting new people everyday from all over the world when they play these games. Give me a break. They just want to sound cooler than they know they are. I guess you can chat to people on the game, and it happens more often these days where people will get married after finding each other in a chat room. Maybe this is the nerd's only chance to find love, and they know it. Sorry, I am getting off track. I work in a laboratory, so by default, there are many "geeks" that I work with that are totally into this game. It is all they talk about and all they do with their time. YOU ARE ON AN ISLAND IN A DIFFERENT COUNTRY! GO TO THE BEACH OR SOMETHING! You can take yourself out of the "geek" crowd if you do not begin every sentence with, "so, last night on WOW..." I am not against the game or most of the people that play it. Just the fanatics. I haven't even played the game, it could be good. Don't get me wrong I do enjoy a good game every now and again, but it should not be a life or occupy all of your thoughts and time. So, I choose not to play a game I can't finish in an hour or two. Ok, now that I got that off my chest, I can get on with the real reason I am writing this blog. I have come to find that there is a fourth category to the video game world, and that is Japanese gaming. they have entire shopping malls dedicated to video games, but nothing like I have ever seen. They take it to a whole new level. I will have to show you what I have seen, because not all of it is easy to explain. This one is a fishing game of sorts. That is, it has a big screen laying horizontally and players can be on all four sides and fish for "Nemo" and other fish. the second picture is of the screen itself.

This one is some sort of power ball machine. I think they gamble with this one, but you get tickets by inputting the correct number. I didn't get this one.

I still don't know what this one did, or even what it was, but it was very neat-o. It wasn't a crane machine, but it was almost all 3-D kind of like a pinball. Players could play on all four sides of this one too. Not sure on this one either.

Crane machines are my favorite, and they do a lot of those over here too. Cheetos anyone?

What should I get? Soccer ball or chips?

They also have this game that isn't too out there because nintendo came out with something similar, and there have also been the guitar hero and dancing games that have been popular in the states. This one was fun.

Horse Racing? Those aren't real horses. But you can bet on them like you are at the Kentucky Derby. Again, I think they gamble with this one, or win tickets.

This one I thought was interesting. Do you remember those Magic the Gathering cards? Well, this game is a game sort of like that, but you play against the machine. You still buy and use your cards and everything. Some of these games were for the famous Pokemon cards. I will never be into that, but it looked radical.

So this may not have been a great tribute to video games, but Japan definitely is. Dad, you need to get out here and check some of this stuff out. Unless, of course, they already have these games at those game shows in Vegas.