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Taking a Gaming Holiday (or why some things were better in the past).
14 August 2009
Firstly I should probably point out that this post is not about the ultimate gaming holiday for most seasoned Western gamers – Akihabara in Japan. I’ve always wanted to go but the long flight puts me off. One day maybe!
Rather this post is about going on my normal family holiday; how gaming came with us and how much it’s changed since I was a boy.
Confused? Let me explain.
You see we recently packed up for our annual holiday which this year was a trip up North to North Wales. My whole family are avid gamers (naturally!) and so to a large extent gaming does not get left behind when we head off on our annual trip.
The obligatory handhelds (3 X Nintendo DS Lite’s) were placed in the car for the journey and we already knew the caravan we were staying in (rented from family) housed a flat screen LCD TV complete with a modded Xbox. I also put out our small Asus netbook (and promptly forgot it).
In hindsight forgetting the netbook was probably a good thing. Although underpowered, its more than enough to run Steam for playing the original Counter Strike and Half Life which would have been more than enough to have Dad off hunting for Wi-Fi hotspots!
Anyway, off we went. Dad drove the 250 odd miles there whilst listening to the radio and the incessant sounds of Mario collecting his riches (just how big must his pockets be with all those coins!). When we finally got there the DS Lite’s went promptly on charge and the first trip to the camp shop was for a set of AA batteries for the Xbox wireless controllers. 250 miles and it seems nothing has changed.
But holidays have changed. And I should know because at 33 years of age I remember.
You see when I was younger, more often than not a family holiday involved a trip to a caravan located somewhere in the British Isles. So far so similar. But back then we didn’t have flat screen TV’s in caravans (or for that matter at home). You might have had a TV if you were lucky (or paid extra) but these were inevitably crap, sometimes black and white, and would never in a million years contained a gaming console or home computer.
In the early days we had no true handhelds either, there were no Gameboy’s and the best we had was either a Nintendo Game and Watch or a somewhat battered, always out of batteries Astro Wars tabletop with a knackered fire button. And the Nintendo batteries would die and nowhere would sell the specialist watch type batteries.
So my kids today are laughing! A Nintendo DS in their pocket and an Xbox in the ‘van’ takes care of their gaming needs; technological progress has ensured that their ‘gaming holiday’ would be far better than mine ever were. Wouldn’t it?
It was only later I realised just how lucky as a kid I actually was. And it was not until the evening I remembered when we ditched our day shorts and donned the night jeans for the nightly trip to the camps club.
The entertainment was as crap as ever, poor cabaret acts alongside a couple of poor bastards trying to keep a mountain of kids entertained whilst dressed as some mascot rabbit. You don’t care though, the adults drink and the kids run round causing mayhem for a while. Later the kids creep back, hands out stretched and begging for change for the arcades.
Arcades! Dad finishes his pint rather sharpish, and runs off with the kids to get in some gamage! It was then I realised just how lucky I was.
We got to the ‘arcade’ and all around lights fluttered and the sounds of coins dropping could be heard. My kids abandoned me in their quest for entertainment and I promptly grabbed some change for myself having already been mugged by the wee ones.
15 minutes later and my change pocket remained untouched. This wasn’t the arcade I had in mind. The fruit machines were there as they were years ago, flashier and more expensive but essentially the same. But now as then, they were of no interest to me.
Then there were the cranes, surrounded by kids who couldn’t understand why despite the most acute alignment, that small teddy toy could never be rescued from his glass tomb. The coin topplers were present fooling everyone into thinking they were winning complete with the ever present oppurtunistic mob strolling round looking for those machines which randomly drop a few pence when no one is playing them.
And then there were the games. Or at least there should have been. That’s how these things were in my memory.
The games were there of course but in far fewer numbers than the arcades of old. I approached several but at a £1 a go I never found anything that justified the cost for a few minutes entertainment. Even all the kids in the arcade seemed pretty non-fussed. These games were expensive, limited in choice and there were superior versions either waiting at home or in the various visitors caravans. I sighed and went back into the main club for another beer.
As I sat down with my fresh pint I shut my eyes and remembered the excitement of going on holiday as a kid. It didn’t matter that the Game and Watch had died or the Astro Wars didn’t work. For back then I had a pocket full of ten pence pieces and I was surrounded by the dark and smoky atmosphere of a real arcade.
Spaceships were being destroyed, barrels were being jumped, Death Stars were exploding. Joysticks were being bent out of shape by the more heavy handed fighter players and new friends were made when the 4th player slot was being filled by a gamer looking to explore some dungeons whilst Elf shot the food. A few pounds that wouldn’t last 5 minutes today could keep me entertained for hours.
Progress in gaming has always been mostly a good thing. Better graphics, better sound, better games. More ways to play, more ways to interact.
But sometimes, in an occasional moment of disappointment and clarity, sometimes you realise gaming was better in the past.
