{"id":4156,"date":"2010-12-06T10:05:00","date_gmt":"2010-12-06T10:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2010\/12\/the-most-bestest-video-game-ever.html"},"modified":"2010-12-06T10:05:00","modified_gmt":"2010-12-06T10:05:00","slug":"the-most-bestest-video-game-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/daffeythoughts\/2010\/12\/the-most-bestest-video-game-ever.html","title":{"rendered":"The most bestest video game ever"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>
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In my Freshman year, there was nothing I wanted more for Christmas than the Atari Adventure<\/em> game.\u00a0 It was 1980, and Reagan\u2019s election heralded the possibility that America\u2019s demise might still be three or four decades away, rather than just around the corner.\u00a0 Star Wars<\/em> was still reverberating through the popular culture, and whispers that those big old video cassette recorders we had in school might become available for your average peon\u2019s household.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/p>\n

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During this time, as Raiders of the Lost Ark<\/em> and E.T.<\/em> dominated the box office, another cultural phenomenon had broken loose on an unsuspecting public.\u00a0 Brainchild of a couple game aficionados, it combined a strange brew of war gaming and imagination based on anything from medieval history to fantasy literature and classical mythology.\u00a0 The game was, of course, Dungeons and Dragons<\/em>.\u00a0 And it brought a wave of fantasy based products to the forefront of the commercial market in the early 80s.\u00a0 This lasted until religious groups labeled it satanic and, worse, pop culture labeled it the domain of geekdom (before Bill Gates made being a geek quite profitable).\u00a0 <\/div>\n

During its heyday, several wonderfully imaginative products, films, and books were released.\u00a0 Chief among these were the aforementioned Adventure<\/em> video game.\u00a0 Even though I never counted myself a sci-fi or fantasy fan, the game captured my imagination.\u00a0 The box cover, always famously beyond anything that Atari graphics could deliver, was more than enough peak my interest.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

It was delivered to me rather innocuously by my eventual ex-brother in law who at that time merely wanted to make a good impression on the family.\u00a0 He walked in\u00a0through the living room door from the kitchen \u2013 I can still see the light brownish jacket he wore in defiance of the cold December weather \u2013 and whipped out the box.\u00a0 I leaped up, ran across the room and had it playing in no time.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s\u00a0amazing.\u00a0 The game design was quite crude, and even then, we were aware of its limitations.\u00a0 We knew there was more potential for what video games could offer.\u00a0 Nonetheless, I spent hours, and hours, and hours, and hours maneuvering that little square through the same mazes, the same labyrinths, the same crudely drawn castles, and all the while evading the same duck shaped dragons.\u00a0 Friends came over and joined the fun, playing it for hours on end.<\/p>\n

Even though technology has rendered such early visions of computer games obsolete, it\u2019s still fun to remember.\u00a0 I admit, the nostalgia packs of games you can buy that have games like this have a fast sell by date.\u00a0 You play them couple times, then quickly grow bored.\u00a0 And yet at the time, before graphics and Internets and multi-media allowed access to a million graphic renderings of such things as castles and dragons, what the imagination was able to fill in between the dots and pixels was really amazing.\u00a0 For it was more a guide for the pistons of our mental image making that really became the star attraction of games like these.\u00a0 <\/p>\n

As great as the graphics today, as advanced and awe inspiring as the games can be, I\u2019ve noticed one thing.\u00a0 I notice that no matter what is happening when I\u2019m playing a Call of Duty<\/em> or similar product, there is one thing lacking: Imagination.\u00a0 How can it be there?\u00a0 Graphically and visually, everything has been supplied.\u00a0 So I wonder what the creative ventures of a generation weaned on visual images to order at the tips of their fingers will be producing years from now.\u00a0\u00a0 Will it be beyond our wildest dreams because\u00a0they find inspiration from what is already there?\u00a0 Or will there be stunted growth because they never had to fill in the gaps where there was nothing to begin with?\u00a0 Time will tell I guess.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In my Freshman year, there was nothing I wanted more for Christmas than the Atari Adventure game.\u00a0 It was 1980, and Reagan\u2019s election heralded the possibility that America\u2019s demise might still be three or four decades away, rather than just around the corner.\u00a0 Star Wars was still reverberating through the popular culture, and whispers that […]<\/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-4156","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nThe most bestest video game ever<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In my Freshman year, there was nothing I wanted more for Christmas than the Atari Adventure game.  It was 1980, and Reagan's election heralded the\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, 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