They don’t get it.
The Millennials, I mean.
Sometimes, it’s like they don’t even try.
So… lately I’ve been YouTubing. You know, like everyone else. In my case it’s a great thing to do while lifting. It’s not too involving, so I don’t get distracted, but it gives enough of interest to pass the time. It’s perfect.
One my favorite topics on YouTube is of course gaming, and most especially classic gaming. I think this’ll change when I get my new laptop, but for now, it’s what I’m into. So I spend my time watching videos on classic PC FPS games and also on the masterworks of other platforms, like Arcade games and NES and SNES games.
The NES videos take me back, or at least, they did, before I saw too many of them and started replaying the games myself. But it was pretty shocking at first. Amazing, even. All those old games of my youth- those ones I played and played again, so many times, to memorize them because I was sure that I’d never get the chance to play them again when I was grown up- are all there, still alive and thriving, still acquiring fans, and still the topic of discussion. It’s pretty damn incredible. Sometimes, things turn out better in the future than you could even dream they would.
In fact, it’s turned out so well that it seems almost… strange to play NES games on an actual console! I tested this myself the other day by unpacking my old Nintendo, hooking it up to the old CRT in the basement, and loading up The Legend of Zelda. My saved games were still there, incredibly.
It was a rush to play. I’ve played Zelda occasionally in the last 10 years or so on various emulators, but to actually play it on the console itself again was a revelation. The controller was clunky and too small for my adult hands, and the graphics looked pixelated on the big screen, but it was a nostalgic trip unlike anything else.
I don’t think I’ll ever, ever forget playing Zelda for the first time.
I was 6, and it was my big Christmas gift that year. And it didn’t disappoint. It was a magical world within a little box.
What I don’t think Millennials understand about the NES was how it was unlike anything else that came before, or could even be imaged by consumers before its release. It was new. It was unique. It was the original- the first modern console. It was truly mind-blowing. There were consoles that preceded it, like the Atari ones, but they didn’t have the capability to do much beyond display some text, draw a few tiny screens and bleep a few basic sounds. The NES was the first console with the technical capabilities to allow for world building.
And Zelda was the first game to really try its hand at that. And it succeeded fantastically.
The Legend of Zelda was awe-inspiring, back then. Here was a game that was actually long, as in, a full playthrough literally required using a “save game” feature because to play from the start to the ultimate end would take you weeks, as opposed to half an hour. And it had an actual, real storyline. And a protagonist you could identify with.
It was awesome. Playing Zelda for the first time upon its release was an eye-opening experience. It was witnessing history. I was only 6 back then, but even then I knew that I was seeing one of those unique, watershed moments.
I didn’t get far the first time playing it. I only got through a couple of screens. But it in playing it the first time it was obvious that the game had actual depth to it. It was crazy- a video game with depth!
It got my mind racing, that Christmas morning. I started contemplating things, like about how much potential video games might have. About how video games could actually be art. About what they might be like ten, twenty, thirty years from then.
Owning a NES console back then was to have the best toy on the block, yes, but it was more than that. It was to be on the vanguard. It gave you a front row seat to a mile long list of firsts.
Everything was new. Almost every game broke new ground, somehow. Even the bad ones.
And, impossibly enough, they were all written in Assembly. Freaking ASSEMBLY! For those who don’t know what this means, Assembly computer languages are one step above pure binary, meaning 1’s and 0’s. Incredible.
The fact that Zelda was written in Assembly, and it is as long and bug-free as it is, is… IDK. The game belongs in the Louvre, along with a good 20-30 other NES games, probably.
And yes, the games were hard. Many were brutally difficult, and were engineered to demand precise timing, lots of practice, concentration, and patience. They weren’t cheap- meaning unfair- but they were unapologetically tough. The game creators wanted to give the players a sense of real accomplishment upon beating the games.
This carried over into the playground, of course. The kids who could beat Nintendo games were treated with respect by the other kids. In a way it established a pecking order. And kids who could handedly beat the toughest games, like Contra, Punch-Out!, Legacy of the Wizard, Mega Man, and Ninja Gaiden, were like wizards. It didn’t matter if the other kids had never seen the games themselves, because the games developed a reputation. If a dude could prove to someone that he beat Legacy of the Wizard, well, that really meant something.
I think that much of this is lost on the younger generation. I’ve seen recently a couple of react videos showing kids playing NES games on the console, and it was clear that they didn’t have a real understanding of the importance of the games. Like, they would play Punch Out! and comment negatively on the graphics, while not taking into account that it was the first popular sports game ever. It’s kind of like people of my generation looking at classic cars, or something. We weren’t there so we don’t get it. I mean, we can look at restored cars and admire them, but the context is lost.
That being the case… maybe this is just something that happens when you get older. You wonder about the kids and if they’ll ever really appreciate what came before them. I mean, in the way that they should.
Hmmm…
They can’t, though. They just can’t.
Well, maybe that’s just how it is, then. Time rolls on, unavoidably.
Tonight, I think I’ll pop in Legacy of the Wizard.
Just to see if I still have what it takes.