Introduction

Greetings all you vintage video gaming fans! This blog is started out as a class assignment requirement, but I do not believe it will end just as that.

I've played video games all the way back to the Atari 2600 and 2200 days, and grew up with the regular Nintendo Entertainment System. The gaming systems back then used to have a much longer lifespan than they do now. The NES was dominant on the market for almost a decade. (1985-1991, according the the Nintendo Corporate webpage) Wow! 6 years of just one system on the market. The original NES stuck around for a couple years later. I for one know of one game with a  copyright date of 1992 (Dragon Warrior IV) that I still play to this day.

There is something to say about a game that is over 20 years old still having great appeal even today! Sure, the graphics are very primitive, but the gameplay itself was revolutionary.

Atari really started it off however. Before the game console introduced by Atari, when you'd want to go play a video game meant a physical trip to an arcade.  Normal people couldn't afford the massive gaming units, much less could fit them inside their house.  A garage only has so much space when you park your car in there.

Atari solved this dilemma by producing a system roughly the size of a current day DVD player that could be hooked up to your television set. Then you could play any number of games that came on cartridges about the size of a common era Ipad.  A much better solution to having a single arcade game taking up nearly the same size as a full-sized entertainment center, and in some cases an entire couch!

Granted, looking back on it now, the graphics of these two systems were very limited, but they still revolutionized an industry that is now one of the most lucrative industries in the world.

I plan to guide all of you through the progression of the process we are now at with the new generation of the video gaming world. How video gaming is now an accepted and often celebrated culture; a stark contrast to the past viewpoints of video game nerds/geeks. How video games have permeated into movies and television, and you can't forget: the icons that still survive through these decades as staples that every video game "geek" can't be worth his salt without knowing about. Video gaming pervasiveness into the OTHER gender, namely the female gamer as well as any other tidbits of interesting things I can find and condense here in this one blog post. A one-stop shop for video game enthusiasts and the formerly endeared "geeks."

Enjoy the trip through time and witness with me throughout the decades, from the arcades that would eat away an entire roll of quarters in a single afternoon to the common era with games that are as open-ended as a real jaunt through a post-apocalyptic landscape invaded by zombies and bandits.