<div class="header-image"></div> <table class="table-header"> <thead> <tr> <th colspan="2"></th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>2026-03-02</td> <td style="text-align: right;"><a href="About.md" class="internal-link">About</a></td> </tr> </tbody> </table> # I Grew Up with Video Games (and they grew up with me)  I'm a GenXer, born right in the sweet spot between 1965 and 1985. Yes, I can actually remember the 70s. I have this memory of my family going into an arcade that was open from the street in Hamilton Ontario. The place was magical to me. From the perspective of my parents, I think it was really not a place they should have brought me into: Clouds of smoke hung heavy in the air, and the clientele was a little rough. My dad wanted me to stick by him, but I paid little attention, choosing instead to run around, looking and listening to all the commotion, choosing the best game with which to start. I was so small that, when I chose my game, my dad had to hunt around for a stool for me to stand on. The games from that era were vector-based, and the 8-bit classics: Space Invaders, Asteroids, Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and the like. These were all very simple games, usually with a stick to move and a button to shoot or jump. Video games were in their infancy. They'd only existed for a few short years, and to play them you had to physically go somewhere that had the cabinet. Home consoles existed for Pong, but but other games relied on LED trickery to give a crude facsimile of playing at home.  And when home consoles did begin to hit the market, the arcade ports were, by and large, poor imitations of the games found in arcades and corner stores. In order to keep prices down, the technology behind the consoles needed to be restricted. This made accurate ports impossible.  *A side-by-side comparison of Pac-Man in the arcade vs the Atari 2600* Even when console ports became near perfect replicas of the arcade versions, there were always newer games that showed up in arcades that consoles just couldn't match. Year over year, the games that were released in arcades got better and more sophisticated, while the current generation of console lagged behind. And too, over time, the games themselves appealed to an audience that was growing older and maturing. Childish games like Pac-Man or Donkey Kong gave way to violent bloody fighters like Mortal Kombat and satirical spectacles like Smash TV. These new games appealed directly to early teenage males, and were impossible 10 years previously, when games generally appealed to grade-school children.  *Smash TV playthrough* As we grew up, so did the technology behind these games, and the content matured too. With the release of the 5th generation of consoles — PlayStation, N64, and others — home gaming finally caught up with, and in many cases surpassed, the arcade. Games had already started incorporating puzzles that required some thought to solve. This began simply with games like Wolfenstein and Doom requiring the player to find colour-coded keys to open doors and progress. But with titles like Tomb Raider these puzzles became much more intricate and challenging. Silent Hill combined these intricate puzzles with visual horror and gore that felt edgy and taboo to play. While censorship boards were busy clutching their pearls over movies and music at that time, these games seemed to be flying under the radar.  *Silent Hill 1 screenshot* There was a time in the 80s when cesorship boards were considering banning cartoons like the Merry Melodies and video games like Mario brothers. That era was long past by the time the first PlayStation released in 1995, and most adults agreed it was a silly thing to suggest. So while the term "video game" invoked thoughts of Mario and Pac-Man, kids were actually playing Quake and Resident Evil. In hindsight, perhaps more attention should have been placed on the content of these games and who was playing them, but I also think it was important for game developers to have the freedom to flesh out some of these ideas. The concept of the video game itself was evolving here. Stories were being told as a part of the gameplay. It was becoming an artform unto itself. Game studios were growing larger, and were hiring separate writers, art directors, and artists. Musicians were writing the scores. Trent Reznor even wrote the soundtrack to Quake, which was very exciting to us fans! If censorship boards had started restricting what could be shown in video games back in the 90s, we might not have the industry as it exists today. But putting the mature content aside (I was into my 20s by the time these games were being made), intricate puzzles and story-telling kept my interest in games alive. If they didn't progress past the silly Mario-type platformers, I might never have continued with them, nostalgia notwithstanding. As it was, the graphics gradually improved, the complexity continually increased, and the content matured, all at the same rate that I was growing up. The irony of all this now is that at some point I stopped paying attention to it all. The games I want to play now are the same games I played throughout the 90s. I might at times play something as recent as Halo 3 or Portal 2 (or an "enhanced" version of some older game), but for the most part I'm replaying old arcade games via RetroArch, or running through Quake for the millionth time. It appears to me that games have stalled somewhat in the modern era. I truly don't see any (or very little, anyway) graphical improvement from the last 10 to 15 years and the mature content I used to enjoy has actually regressed somewhat. And yet the hardware requirements of modern games is ridiculous. The expense of keeping up with these requirements doesn't justify the meagre improvements made in the quality. Meanwhile there is a massive library of games from 10 years ago or older that look just as good and will run on a potato. They also have not gone through the woke censorship brigade that has replaced the family censorship boards of old.  *The woke censorship brigade attempts to restrict both content and source material* The above X post appeared on my feed immediately upon opening it. I was specifically going to look for examples of exactly this sort of censorship. It comes in all forms, from restricting language, to forcing the covering of the female form. The fact that I could simply open X and immediately grab an example is a testament to its prevalence. The end result to all of this is that modern games are more expensive to play, and all-around provide a poorer gameplay experience. Censorship succeeds in rounding off the edge of any artform until it's all the same: bland and boring. Perhaps this is a major reason why I'm nostalgic for games from 15 to 20 years ago: They all have a good 5+ year buffer before companies became too massive and had to appease a larger audience. They were unapologetic in their presentation, and unafraid to use humour their marketing:  *90s era Duke Nukem advert* Perhaps I'm less nostalgic for the games than I am for a culture that doesn't take life too seriously.