High Score
A co-worker of mine brought in a small black case the other day to show me one of his prized possessions: a Game Boy Color. The sight of it made me think back to when I had gotten my first Game Boy in the early 90’s. It was the Christmas gift that I had been dying for: a small, boxy gray console to play games on during the long marching band bus trips we used to take. Mine took four double ‘A’ batteries to run for about 8 hours of gameplay and when it got dark, there was no backlit screen to see what was going on. When I saw my friend’s backlit, colorized console that takes only two triple ‘A’ batteries, I was immediately jealous and impressed at the same time.
There has been a wave of purchasing classic gaming consoles and games for a while now. It’s my generation’s run at nostalgia. Memories of hiding from the brutal summer sun by going to your friend’s house to play the newest video game are common stories. I did a fair bit of playing outside, but I couldn’t wait to cool off by plopping down in front of the Florida room TV and trying to beat my dad’s high score in Demon Attack on our Atari 2600. Kids these days will never know the pain of hearing the egg timer going off, signaling that the game system needed to be shut off ‘or else’ and not being able to save your progress. It was physically painful to flip off the power switch when you still had three lives left and you were so close to getting the high score.
I’m proud to say that my kids have an appreciation for my old consoles, which I never disposed of. Yes, I realize that I can get $80 or more for my original Nintendo, but there is no price I can put on playing Super Mario 3 with my kids. My 6 year old son asked for a Kirby game as a report card reward. He only knows the character through Super Smash Bros. So I found a reasonably priced ‘Kirby’s Dreamland’ cartridge for the Game Boy Advance I still have and gave it to him for his good grades. He couldn’t have been happier to play that game on a tiny, colorized backlit screen while my daughter was blinging up her ‘Minecraft’ castle on the family room Xbox. I love sharing the things that brought me joy when I was younger with my kids. With that love comes the customary limit on screen time but with the added bonus of being able to save our progress. What a time to be alive……..
