Olde Games

I have recently been paying small bucks for old games – not used ones, but old ones. You need an old computer to play them on, but luckily I have been buying computers (and hoarding or discarding them to the floor) for many years now. Maybe it is because I am getting middle aged that I like old games like Simcity 4 – which needs an old computer to run strangely. You would have thought newer computers would handle them easily but with newer versions of Windows, they are far too snobby to run them.

Will the future breed other retro games? Angry Birds and Minecraft and games like Jelly Splash that my mum plays religiously have old style graphics. Even VR games may use graphics of the last century, who knows what the future will bring? Even more retro games, where you have to put coins into slots and punch them on the side when they don’t work.

It has been advantageous to make better computers – so we can play games on them and pretend there is no outside. Were they the reason we went to the moon or won the war? Did Mario inadvertently provide us with ultra modern weapons? If so, hang your head in shame. Or be happy that the terrorists never played him and developed their own computer-game style weapons themselves. My brother in law talks to his phone – and asked it the answer to the universe. It even understood and replied – that the answer is 42. Somewhere Douglas Adams is laughing.

Apparently the universe could be a hologram – could it also be a computer game? Are there advanced beings out there that have played Simcity so much they have developed an actual real life simulator? Who knows? Maybe these games exist because of our need to control others and now because the old ones were good they just churn out more of them?

I miss my NES.