A Brief History of Wasting Time

The first generation of video game consoles came out in the mid-70's, about the same time I arrived. Most of these systems I've never heard of and had a small menu of games hard wired into them. Pong was about as complicated as it got.

• 2nd Generation (1977-1983) - Atari 2600
My earliest video game experience goes back to the Atari and similar systems. My older cousin, Bret, and a few families we knew were playing games like Pong, Kaboom, Pitfall, and Pole Position, which drew me in like a moth to the flame. Near the end of this period, our family bought an Atari 2600 and I cut my teeth on games like Realsports Volleyball, Combat, and Pac-Man.

The Atari was one of the first to use programs written on ROM chips encased in plastic cartridges. It ran at the blazing speed of 1.2 MHz with 128 bytes of RAM.

• 3rd Generation (1985-1989) - Nintendo
Just a few years later, Dustin and I received a Nintendo Entertainment System for Christmas. Absolutely everyone was playing Super Mario Bros. and Duck Hunt (the one game I remember Dad actually playing). This is the system that Dustin and I spent the most time on together as he was in grade school and I was in junior high. To this day I can still hum the music, find the hidden secrets and remember the cheat codes to dozens of games (Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start). I can remember which friends owned which games and the first kid at school to beat Super Mario Bros. (Thanks for the help, Tyson W.) My favorite games were Double Dragon, Excitebike, Contra, Tecmo Bowl, Punch-Out, Double Dribble, Bionic Commando, and the little-known and under-appreciated Jackal.

The Nintendo still used plastic cartridges but introduced the multi-button controller and special controllers like the Zapper light gun. It sported an 8-bit processor with 2kB of RAM.

• 4th Generation (1989-1996) - Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis
At some point (maybe eighth grade?) a Super Nintendo replaced our beloved original. Though distracted by high school, sports and a cute redhead, my favorite game was Super Mario Kart, which is also the first game at which I remember Dustin being as good or better than me. We also played Madden NFL, Mortal Kombat, NBA Jam, and Ninja Gaiden. This became more Dustin's console than mine as I left for college and left console gaming behind for a couple of years.

These home video games consoles were 16-bit with 128 kB of RAM and began to catch up to what we played in the arcades, robbing the luster from these hangouts.

• 5th Generation (1994-1999) - Playstation, Nintendo 64
While in college I skipped the first Playstation almost entirely. Dustin had one while he was in High School and spent an inordinate amount of time playing Tomb Raider. He's still a solid Sony guy today. When I got married I did occasionally borrow or rent a Playstation to play Myst or C&C Red Alert. But our first purchase as adults was a Nintendo 64. The 64 was probably my favorite system of all time. I loved the controllers, the games, and the memories of being young, married, in college and playing Tetris 64 or StarFox 64 with up to four players. We also enjoyed games like GoldenEye 007, Perfect Dark, Super Mario 64, Mario Kart 64, the Legend of Zelda, and Rainbow Six.

The Playstation was only 32-bit but used CD-ROMs, allowing a massive amount of game information to be stored. The Nintendo 64 was, you guessed it, 64-bit but was limited by the plastic cartridges Nintendo insisted on using. The 64 could be upgraded from 2 MB to 4 MB of RAM and both systems used additional plug-in memory cards to save games.

• 6th gen (1998-2005) - Playstation 2, Game Cube, Xbox
When the kids arrived (2000), we put the video games away because Brennan liked to chew on the cords. Dustin upgraded his Playstation to a Playstation 2 and we've been playing the latest Madden Football every year since. Though Dustin has owned several games, when I've borrowed the PS2 I limited myself to renting a few of the 8,500 titles available worldwide. I like strategy, war, and sports games while Dustin seems to gravitate more toward the racing games and first person shooters.

The PS2 has a 128-bit processor and 32 MB of RAM and the games came on DVDs. At $300 I couldn't bring myself to buy one, though they cost less than half of that now.

• 7th Generation (2005-present) - Nintendo Wii, Xbox 360, Playstation 3
I've had very little experience with these new consoles. They are powerful and expensive ($600), and frankly I'd rather have another home computer for the money that could be invested in these things. In fact some people figure home computers and mobile gaming to replace the traditional game console. I don't know if that will happen, but none of the new systems are selling like the companies had hoped. Until the cost comes down, my kids will stay on the family computer.