One gaming father has posted up their story of how he made his son play through the history of games (chronologically) as part of an experiment to see how his son would took to playing videogames at a young age, and whether the boy would learn to appreciate retro and modern independent titles rather that triple-A games.
The father’s experiment was this: “ What happens when a 21st-century kid plays through video game history in chronological order? ” The experiment itself ran from when the boy was only four years old up until he was six, where the two compressed 25 years of gaming into a few short years.
The strategy was to introduce his son to arcade games and games for the Atari 2600, and then move onto the SNES, Game Boy and classic PC games a year after. Thereafter, he would then introduce the original PlayStation and box, the Nintendo 64, the Game Boy Advance and so on. The father planned to continue going through the different eras of gaming up until the two reach modern consoles and games.
To start things off, the father had his son play arcade games like Galaxian , Rally-X , Dig Dug and Pac-Man (among others) on his fourth birthday. After the first number of weeks of being introduced to videogames, both the father and the son were playing games like Ms. Pac-Man and Galaga together.
The duo then moved onto the father’s collection of Atari 2600 games, like Asteroids and the infamously broken E.T. . Four months later, the two had moved onto games like Mega Man 2 and the original Legend of Zelda . When the boy turned five, the father believed his son’s skills had elevated to a point where he could beat some parts of moderately-difficult platformers like Super Mario 3 on his own. By age six, the son could complete game son his own.
The experiment concluded when the two reached to 2000s, playing games like ICO and Shadow of Colossus on the PlayStation 2. The son has since moved on to play–and beat–challenging games like Spelunky and Nuclear Throne .
The father believes that because his son was exposed to retro games, the boy can appreciate retro games on its terms and not be drawn into the flashiness of today’s triple-A titles.
“ [My son’s] early exposure to games with limited graphics inoculated him from the flashy, hyper-realistic graphics found in today’s AAA games. He can appreciate retro graphics on its own terms, and focus on the gameplay, ” the father wrote after retelling his story.
“ The lo-fi graphics in games like VVVVVV , FTL , or Cave Story might turn off other kids his age, but like me, he’s drawn to them. My hope is that this experiment instilled a life-long appreciation for smaller, weirder, more intimate games in him.
At this point, you’re probably either thinking I’m a monster or a pretty awesome dad. Maybe a little of both. That’s okay with me. My son is amazing, he loves video games, and more than anything, he loves playing them with me.”
You can read the father’s story in full via the source link below. We’ll bring you more news on things like this should further information reach our ears.
[ Source(s): Medium ]