Games of the 1980s vs Games of Today

Pac Man, Donkey Kong, Street Fighter and many more video were a big part of the 1980s. Today, I will move away from  discussing the differences between these decades and show how, in video entertainment, at least, they are similar.

Many of us today are that certain games are as old as they are, due to the fact that they are still widely popular today. Back then, games were played on arcade machines—some which are still in use in certain places—with a joystick and a couple of buttons.They were also played on game consoles, such as the Sega Genesis and the Atari.

Another big difference is in the graphics. The concepts were similar: The games had the same amount of violence as today’s games. We just don’t realize it because of the less-realistic graphics. Games of the 1980s were  full of pixels, and very slow to load.  They had very monotonous graphics, and some of the games would be dubbed boring by today’s youth; games like Snake and Pong wouldn’t hold our generation’s already-short attention span for very long.

Games of today, by comparison, are mind-boggling. My father is amazed by the graphics of today’s video games.

“It’s like you’re watching a movie,” he says each time he sees the demo of the newest first-shooter game. To kids living in this era, games with high amounts of graphics and high-def pictures are standard. Anything pixelated must be thrown out, unless the game itself is supposed to be retro. Games cannot have one goal; a game must, on average, have at least five or six goals to meet our short attention span. Lastly, the consoles of today are just awe-inspiring; I highly doubt that the people who made the Atari could even imagine the Kinect would be possible to make.

Like I’ve said before, the comment box is open. Feel free to post one, and I will surely reply.