When David Ellis was in high school, he, like millions of other teenagers, became mesmerized by videogames. That was back in the 1980s, however, when the most popular place to play a videogame was in an arcade.
These days, Ellis, who is today a game designer for North Carolina-based Vicious Cycle Software, is at the forefront of a very retro trend: installing those grand old game playing consoles at home. He bought his first game console, Star Trek: Strategic Operations Simulator, in 1997. Since then, Ellis has snapped up more than a dozen and has even written a book, The Official Price Guide To Classic Video Games. "I like the older games because they are so much more creative than what is in the arcades now. Today, everything is a fighting or shooting or driving game," he says.
Home entertainment today is squarely focused on the kinds of high-definition graphics offered up by systems such as the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. The graphics and speed of those machines can't be matched by the arcade games of 30 years ago. But many people miss the thrill of arcade games--of getting swallowed up by the monstrous machines and immersed in the abstract graphics.
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2 comments:
Great, I found a place to rant! ...
I've been looking over many of the old arcade machines from the past and can't get over how beautiful they are. From the game graphics to the cabinet design, the originals are like going back into a time machine to my childhood. One of the few things in life that was 100% devoted to fun... at only 25 cents a pop.
Mark my words... someday soon those old arcade games are going to be worth some serious $$$. Every time I see my dad, he tells me about all of the '57 Chevys & '59 Cadillacs that he could pick up for $50 a piece ... "back in the day". Then the day came when everyone turned around and they had all been turned into scrap or were sitting in private collections.
Just like everything else, playstation, xbox, etc. get thrown to the waste side for the newest console as soon at the flashy graphics wear off. It is a fact... Pacman, Astroids, Space Invaders, Frogger, etc. are forever. Games like that were about 98% gameplay... which is why they still can't be toped to this day.
If you look on eBay now in 2009, you can find most of the old classics for around $500 (about the equivalent to $50 in 1969). Well just like the arcade scene in the 80's, nothing lasts forever...
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Yeah, I absolutely agree. Especially since a lot of the games are becoming a lot more difficult to maintain. It's already happening with a lot of the games that took advantage of Vector monitors. Most people probably scoff at the idea of arcade games as an investment, but as the consoles are becoming more and more complex, there is definitely a desire to return to some of the old school sentimentality that really drove the arcade business in the early-to-late 80's.
Great comment though. Thanks for checking out the site.
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