Everyone else is doing retrospectives at the end of the year...
Ten years ago, I was single, living in an apartment, and my home theater consisted of a 27" CRT TV, Dolby Pro Logic receiver, HiFi VHS VCR, and a cobbled-together surround speaker system from Acoustic Research, Yamaha, and an AudioSource subwoofer. Despite non-discrete surround sound and letterboxed VHS -- probably the lowest resolution format for movies of all time -- it rocked! Other than the lack of a laserdisc player, it was reasonably cutting edge. DVD, digital front projectors, HDTV, home THX, Dolby Digital EX, automatic room callibration, DLP and LCOS... none of that existed ten years ago.
Still, I suspect if you played a video on that system with a bunch of today's kids they'd eat popcorn and enjoy the flick. Apparently, the same can't be said for video games (despite nostalgia and my long-held assumption that game play was better back when designers couldn't rely on graphics to carry the game). Electronic Games Monthly did their own retrospective on gaming by gathering a group of today's kids, having them play classic video games, and recording their comments. This year's version (Part II) is here; incredibly funny stuff. If possible, the original (Part I) is even funnier, if only because they had the kids try out Pong and ET: The Extra Terrestrial.
Happy New Year,
-avi
I suspect if I played a video on that system with a bunch of today's kids they'd eat popcorn and enjoy the flick. Apparently, the same can't be said for video games.
Posted by: wechseljahre | October 12, 2009 at 01:21 AM