Makes you feel old...

I'm not a fossil quite yet, but my consciousness in this life almost coincides with the birth of electronic gaming. I remember Pong. I remember those games at parks with the light rifles. The introduction of Boot Hill, Space Invaders, Star Castle, Battlezone. The shift from vector, to bitmap, to even laserdisc graphics in arcade games. The rise of electronic toys such as Merlin, Simon, and those awful black and white quartz games. The growing of computers, the Sinclair, the TRS80, The C64. The introduction of multigame consoles, the Atari2600, Intellivision and Colecovision. 256 colors to millions of colors. Raytracing. Rendering. Colored lighting. I've followed it all from the start.

What's to come? Some predicted holograms, others virtual reality. Some predicted large online worlds where people could congregate and explore, and they'd have been right. It's to be expected there will always be better graphics and better physics around the corner. Currently video games are more accessible than ever before.

This is both good and bad. It's great because you can get all the gaming goodness you want at home. It's bad because it signalled the death knell of the arcade, which could be social hangouts just as much as places to play games. I don't know if they can be revived in America- and that's a little sad.

Once Windows 95 set in, I was essentially a PC gamer. I seemed to get one console per generation; a Sega Genesis, a Nintendo64, a Playstation2. I never got many games for them though. I always preferred PC gaming.

Why? Likely because of the style of games I like- RPGs, FPSs, MMORPGs. These were all much better suited for a PC, with mouse, keyboard, and online connection. I also liked to create mods for games, and you can't do that anywhere else. If you take that out of the equation however, consoles may finally rule the roost. I know someone with a PS3, and it eliminates a lot of the advantages that a PC has. Online connectivity? Yup. Can use a keyboard? Yup. Latest graphics and sound, without need to mix and match components? Yup.

Consoles are output only however, you can't create on them, and that is why I will continue to use a PC. With the rate things are going, who knows how long that will last though...