For nostalgia\u2019s sake, I purchased an Atari pack for the old\u00a0PlayStation\u00a0II some years ago. \u00a0It contains most of the old Atari games (Space Invaders\u00a0noticeably\u00a0absent) that came with the old 1600 console back in the early 1980s. As I said before<\/a>, the year I got the Atari system, 1980 to be exact, was as memorable for me as the year Ralphie got his BB Gun. <\/p>\n So after dinner, my 12 year old pulled out the old Atari set and asked to play it. \u00a0We had a go at Slot Racers, then went over to Maze Craze. \u00a0Both involved\u00a0navigating\u00a0mazes, though the Maze Craze game had decidedly more difficult mazes. \u00a0Plus, those mazes were always random. \u00a0Who knows? \u00a0Perhaps if I had played the game enough, I would have found a pattern eventually. \u00a0But for what I invested in it, they seemed ever and always different.<\/p>\n The point was, you were more or less a robber, running\u00a0though\u00a0a maze trying to evade the police. \u00a0You could play with two people, and that was most enjoyable, as you were both partners and competitors. \u00a0It had the old early game system beeps and buzzes for sound effects, and the actual characters were little more than small squares, with the two players having a little more detail. \u00a0In all, by today\u2019s standards, pretty crude.<\/p>\n And yet. \u00a0Somehow, in some way, it was both more challenging in some ways than modern games, and to be honest, more stimulating. \u00a0When I play Call of Duty, there\u2019s little left to the imagination. \u00a0I mean, at first it looks awesome. \u00a0The graphics\u00a0blow\u00a0you away. \u00a0But pretty soon, I realize that the game\u2019s environment, its world so to speak, is there, like a movie. \u00a0I mean, I can\u2019t imagine what the Death Star looks like \u2013 there it is. \u00a0Nor do I ponder what the desert might look like in\u00a0Lawrence\u00a0of Arabia<\/i>. \u00a0It\u2019s there. \u00a0Not that that\u2019s a bad thing. \u00a0Done right \u2013 like Lean\u2019s Lawrence \u2013 it can pull me in and almost make me forget I\u2019m sitting in broken down\u00a0recliner\u00a0in my living room, rather than standing in the vast Arabian wasteland watching Sherif Ali ibn el Kharish\u00a0<\/span>approach. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n But, on the other hand, I use little of my imagination. \u00a0In fact, sometimes movies can almost steal my imagination. \u00a0So it\u2019s impossible to read The Godfather <\/i>and not see Brando\u2019s cotton stuffed mouth, lurching his way to Oscar glory. \u00a0Nor can I read The Lord of the Rings<\/i> without seeing some of Jackson\u2019s choices for bringing that world to life. \u00a0But at least, they still\u00a0arrive\u00a0in my mind\u2019s eye, rather than an image played out before me.<\/p>\n Today\u2019s video games, with all their glory, stimulate my senses, but differently. \u00a0Video games in those days were often very eye-hand coordination focused, my mind was left to fill in the blanks. \u00a0So it wasn\u2019t just dots that were trotting along, running through a bunch of graphic lines. \u00a0It was cops and robbers all over again, me as the\u00a0thief\u00a0darting through rows of crates stacked high in a warehouse. \u00a0Though the focus of the game was eye-hand, my mind still did the work needed to add color. \u00a0My\u00a0imagination\u00a0was, therefore,\u00a0necessary\u00a0to keep it from descending into mere dots and pixels.<\/p>\n Of course, video game designers quickly knew the value of helping those of us with\u00a0somewhat\u00a0stunted imaginations. \u00a0Most of the artwork on the old Atari game boxes outpaced anything in the game itself, and even as early as 1980, we knew it. \u00a0We knew that the graphics were crude compared to the box art. \u00a0We weren\u2019t stupid. \u00a0We understood that the picture on the box for Space Invaders was a\u00a0million\u00a0times more\u00a0evocative\u00a0than anything that would show up on our screens. \u00a0Our minds would have to join the two if anything other than moving pixels was going to\u00a0occupy\u00a0our time.<\/p>\n Maybe that\u2019s why, in an age of almost\u00a0limitless\u00a0abilities graphics-wise, board games and other non-electronic forms of entertainment are still around. \u00a0Despite computer versions of RISK or Monopoly, there\u2019s still the old board games, their tokens in hand, the paper money on the side. \u00a0Maybe that\u2019s why I read that paper roll playing games are still popular (as popular as they ever were) despite so many advanced computer and video games based on that very genre. \u00a0Maybe it\u2019s why, despite everything that\u2019s out there, people still enjoy going to the library and curling up with a nice, worn and beaten book. \u00a0I don\u2019t know. \u00a0It just hit me as my son and I played a little trip down memory lane, with him taking on the roll of my best friend of yore, watching ridiculous blips darting about our television, while knowing that in my own mind, it was really so much more.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For nostalgia\u2019s sake, I purchased an Atari pack for the old\u00a0PlayStation\u00a0II some years ago. \u00a0It contains most of the old Atari games (Space Invaders\u00a0noticeably\u00a0absent) that came with the old 1600 console back in the early 1980s. As I said before, the year I got the Atari system, 1980 to be exact, was as memorable for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2805,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n![](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/715\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-52-sN71u7Ws\/URWzqHdAJ2I\/AAAAAAAAEUY\/UbLUP15AC7A\/s320\/AtariMazeCrazeBoxFr(2,3).jpg\")
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<\/a>What we imagined was that in some way, in the future, things would look better. \u00a0They would look more realistic. \u00a0The possibilities were endless!<\/a> \u00a0We would have forms of electronic entertainment that we couldn\u2019t imagine. \u00a0It\u2019s strange, and perhaps true with all inventions, but we knew it was only the beginning. \u00a0What I don\u2019t think we imagined was that as the graphics got better, as it went from squares to pixelated images to actual\u00a0computer\u00a0graphics to the breathtaking images on modern games, something would be lost. \u00a0That demand on our own imaginations, in a way that television and movies took away a bit of imagination from the story tellers of old. <\/p>\n