As I sit in my living room in 2024, surrounded by the latest gaming consoles and VR headsets, I think about my childhood video games in the 80s and 90s. I do have a powerful nostalgia for those simpler games, which I think today’s sprawling and immersive games cannot match.
When I talk of gaming in the 80s and 90s—even when I think and talk about it to myself—I am thinking and talking about one “game ecosystem,” if that makes sense. Yet today, my experience as a gamer is spread out over multiple gaming platforms, Facebook groups, and subcultures, most of which I know nothing about. This in itself is not a bad thing. In fact, embracing it has to be good. Owning these platforms represents an expanse of potential engagement—for both those who play and the ones who make all this stuff. But there is one bad thing. Today, the average gamer navigates all this through multiple layers of physical and platform-based multitasking. The art of paying close, full attention to one thing is the lost art of the gamer—art we seem to have left behind with the Sega Genesis and Nintendo 12-bit (as opposed to 64-bit) revolutions.
Early Beginnings: My First Encounter with Video Games
An 8-year-old kid was at the local arcade one Saturday morning when his parents took him there. He looked around, and since he was a shorter-than-average kid, he had to look up to see the entrancing visual spectacles on the screens. He also had to see what some of the more statuesque kids were doing. There couldn’t have been more of a contrast between the black-and-white Pong game that I was playing and the flickering, beeping video game room in the local club. It was the least colorful part of an otherwise vibrant day, and yet in at least one important way, it was one of the most memorable parts of our still-remembered Saturday trip to the club fifty years ago. Mostly because, as an 8-year-old kid, you don’t expect anything bad to happen on a Saturday when you’re living in Transcript-ville.
And maybe—just maybe—I shouldn’t have been surprised by the ways in which Trevor Shipley saved my life so soon after he arrived at our house.
Iconic Games and Consoles of the 80s
For many, the 1980s was a golden age for video games. The rise of iconic consoles and games during this time has left a lasting impact on not just the gaming industry but also popular culture as a whole. Console gaming took its first significant leap in the 1970s with the release of the Atari VCS, later known as the 2600. But the next big step came with the launch of the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1983.
If you ask me, the launch of the NES was what truly kicked off our shared love of not just console gaming but also the appearance of now-classic characters that are a part of something much bigger than the games they star in. Mario may have just been a little guy made of big, beige pixels, but he was my hero. Link may have been oddly colored and in a very limited number of pixels, but he was my hero. Samus may have had barely distinguishable body parts given the technology at the time, but she was awesome. And the way the games in which they starred mainly worked, from a design perspective, was incredibly inspiring.
The Rise of 16-bit and 3D Gaming
The shift from 8-bit to 16-bit consoles in the late ’80s and early ’90s marked a new phase in the development of video games. The most popular 16-bit consoles, the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES), offered a new platform for games with more advanced audio and visual capabilities, as well as enabling more intricate gameplay structures. For the Genesis, its most successful exclusive titles were the Sonic the Hedgehog series that combined platforming with speed. As for the SNES, it had exclusive access to such iconic franchises as The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Kart. The first popular 32-bit console, the PlayStation, sold over 100 million units and had the most successful games of its time, including the Crash Bandicoot series and wondrous titles like Final Fantasy VII.
The competition at that time served to push each company farther in terms of its innovation, performance, and content. Each new console sold was not just a more powerful piece of hardware but a milestone along the course of the industry’s development and diversification. By the time we had reached the end of the ’90s, the level to which consoles had gone meant that games could approximate the look and feel of the Hollywood VFX in The Matrix and the sequels that were to come.
Life Lessons and Skills Learned from Gaming
The world of video games never ceases to amaze us. The seamless storytelling and compelling characters, the innovative gameplay and problem-solving mechanics, the unmatched graphics and audio enhancing it all—by what other means did we even call something a “game” in the past? But apart from just offering magical amusements, video games also make their mark on us by presenting invaluable opportunities to learn, making us not only more skilled but also, sometimes, better people.
And when it comes to learning, surprisingly, games never seem like homework. Most of them offer laughs and fun, scary and tense moments, and exciting and exhilarating feelings. Sure, some video games can make you feel angry—especially when you end up losing to a particular boss or character countless times—but at the end of a session, you can often find yourself reflecting on what strategies you used, and what you could try next time, to play and “win” more effectively and also have more fun. You sometimes even feel like you’re lying in bed and thinking about them, even when you probably should be looking forward to getting a nice, full night’s sleep.
The Evolution of Gaming Technology
The past few decades have brought noticeable growth and evolution to the video game industry. Some may remember the almost rudimentary and straightforward style of the games of the 80s and 90s, while others may not. Either way, no one can deny the appeal that the industry holds. Games have always been about creating fun and engaging experiences for people. In the beginning days, developers had no way of delivering a graphical experience like the one we’re becoming accustomed to in our modern AAA (Advanced Technologically Artistic) games. The gameplay was also very primitive. But as technology advanced, the industry expanded too. Seemingly as if sharing in these technological advances, games began to increase in complexity, either through the use of stories or through world-building.
As hardware improved, so did the software. As technology gave the platform for creating large, immersive, and detailed worlds, developers ran with it. The industry improved, and the gaming experience along with it. The time we’ve spent sitting alongside the gaming industry’s growth and evolution has been nothing short of amazing. No one can deny that games—whether from the 80s or now—have an indelible appeal that makes their experiences worth remembering and their technological advances worth noting.
One can reflect on the industry’s growth, appeal, creativity, and technological innovation. When they do, they just might remember the games they used to play—if they’re old enough—and if the games they used to play were fun and if the experience was always “entertaining.”
For many people, the ‘80s and ’90s were the best of times for video games. This was an epoch when the games industry was reaching escape velocity in its ascent to the top of the entertainment medium. Not only was this period a time of incredible advances for graphics, sound, and storytelling, but it was also a time when the gameplay of the best games was generally hard to top. And when modern gamers find themselves pining for the good old days and are filled with an intense longing to revisit that time and space, they can do so with abandon. Thankfully, our 21st-century gaming unfolding in big-budget VR splendor is filled with countless cutting-edge opportunities, but the fateful totems of our low-res, ’90s gaming past can still work all kinds of magic. For the gamers of ’90s, every dualistic victory over one’s friends in the half-dozen most memorable console titles stands as a go-to for recalling that bygone time. In this way, when the past is resurfaced, one can make it feel like the present again.
