A dive into the past as a gamer...

If there is one thing I miss, it is the games from when I was younger. I mean video games, the "coin-ups", the ones where you put in a coin, which I played from about 13 to 25 years old (so from '84 to '99). What will be hard to convey to the "new generations" is the feeling you had playing those wicked little games, so I'll try to give an overview...

The point, which can be applied to many other fields, is that it wasn't the game itself that made the difference, but the context in which everything fell into place.

The euphoria of skipping school while your friends were being questioned in class, the chance of not seeing that unpleasant teacher who had been supposed to question you for months... the idea of being isolated (yes, without a mobile phone, because they didn't exist) and of leaving a black and white world to be catapulted into a world of colours... very colourful ones... where you could live unreal adventures, kill zombies, blow up monsters, and save the planet from aliens aboard a spaceship, all accompanied by strange and unreal sounds. Sounds you could only hear there, because the only way to reach that virtual world was to go, physically, to the "arcades" for example: more or less big places where many video games were crammed in together. In Rome, for example, at the Luneur (the "Luna Park") there was an arcade called "Las Vegas" - it was a huge place, on 3 floors of at least 200 sq m each (in the photo, the version before the renovation). When I went there, there must have been maybe 200 or 300 video games, each with its own cabinet different from the others, all next to one another, attached and all along the walls and then scattered around.

Getting to these places by moped, far from home and from school, without anyone knowing where I was... and measuring myself against other kids of the same age (or older), was a satisfaction too... and each arcade had its own very specific "target" of visitors depending on the area and the games, and they were really, really crowded. Inside, the most popular video games had so many people around them that it was impossible even to understand which game it was - not to mention the very long waits to be able to play... Also because there weren't any little numbers to queue with... you won your fighting spot with elbows, often by arguing, and other times thanks to the complicity of friends who confirmed it was your turn. Some games (see "Dragon's Lair" and "Space Ace") even had a second monitor in parallel, above the cabinet, so that everyone could see well even from a distance. And at the end of the game, if you had reached a score worthy of the ranking, you could enter your initials (strictly only 3 characters, at the beginning) so that everyone would know you had passed by. Mine were "DAD" (there is a story behind it, but it wasn't for the English meaning) and for everybody it was a bit like marking territory, but anonymously. A sort of "graffiti", let's say. Which stayed up for only 24 hours, because the next day the records were reset and you started over...

Another characteristic that made them unique was that in some of these the skill lay in knowing "the right combination" or "knowing the move" - and since there was no internet, you had to either discover it by yourself (at the cost of many tokens) or get someone to tell you, and then pass it on to others. So you became "wise", an "expert" in a game, and you handed out wise advice from that knowledge to perfect strangers, whom perhaps we would never see again. This forced us to "socialize" with people, and sometimes to create micro-friendships.

The need to put in the 50 lire coin (later the 100, 200 and 500 ones), which had a charm of its own, with that characteristic sound you heard when it reached the other coins... and marked an inexorable limit, which made us understand that we couldn't play more than that --anyway--. The coin represented the beat of unreal, virtual time, under my control but still defined, because when I had finished those 4,000/5,000 lire (Dad's money for snacks, deliberately skipped for several days), there was nothing else I could do but go home. So I had to learn to manage them well, choosing the games that lasted longer but that were also good in quality, obviously.

And each game was a world of its own... and there was so much imagination in those games that it really felt like entering a parallel dimension every time you stopped to look at a new game. The way of controlling the characters changed, the perspective, the aim of the game, the style, the music, everything... And yes, there were also "bloody" games at the time, the ones where you went around beating up everyone who came in front of you, with baseball bats, rifles, and so on. And being able to do it without harming people or things was another great satisfaction for me, it was a "healthy" outlet that had no consequences, and especially in those years when I wanted to go against everything and everyone, it was a real cure-all. Then, however, once out of that world and back in the real one, I helped old people open doors and at the first chance I always tried to help everybody. I laugh every time the press points the finger at "violent" games said to be the cause of the madness of many figures in the news. I think that for a healthy mind there is no danger of confusing the two worlds, while for a sick mind a video game is not needed to trigger the spring of madness (and that some of them imitate games in the massacres they commit, I believe is only a matter of form and not of substance).

The games of the earlier periods would deserve a post of their own, like the "scacciapensieri" (little handheld toy games) I played when I was 10, the period of "computer games" that you bought at the newsstand, and the period after the "coin-ups", that is, the ones that arrived thanks to ethernet connections first (starting with F29 Retaliator, then moving on to Duke Nukem, Warcraft, Starcraft, etc...), and then to the ones that arrived with the internet, like World Of Warcraft and the like...

But to get back to us, in those few minutes of play, I understand it now, an infinite series of factors converged, which overall made that experience a unique one. It wasn't only the game itself. The whole package was the real game.

How has the world of video games changed since then ?

Well, today I open the Internet and I have at my disposal all the human knowledge of games, and I can buy any game I want: they are all here, in front of me, within reach. Nine games out of ten are all the evolution of "Wolfenstein 3D", of "Double Dragon", of "Tomb Raider" and of "Street Fighter". There really is no difference any more in my eyes. Today the nuances that make the difference are represented by other details, much more microscopic. I can play them as many times as I want, sitting at the computer, at home, with my mobile phone on next to me. They have nicer graphics, ok, but was that really the most important part ? And, mind you, I hate making generalizations: there are certainly still very original and "playable" titles even today (one among them that I liked and played recently, incredibly, is Awesomenauts), but then... what do I miss ?

Simple... I miss the whole package... I miss all the rest! I have changed, the context has changed, and the games have changed too. I no longer play to escape from being questioned at school, I don't have to take the moped, I don't have anyone to hide from where I am, I no longer have a limited time to play, and that time is not tied to how many days without snacks I had to go through. And besides, the market has evolved in the meantime, the producers have evolved, and as a consequence, the games.

I admit I remember those times with a bit of melancholy, but I am also certain that what made those moments beautiful and unique in my mind today, much more than they were back then, is precisely the fact that... they no longer exist.

Luis.