August 10, 2018
Growing Up Gaming
When you are born into a family that loves board games (Risk, Catan, Life, Monopoly, Scrabble, and Poker are serious around here), discusses Star Ocean and Nancy Drew mysteries as if they are reality (if you walk in and we’re discussing Ned, Bess, and George and whose clue to follow, that’s Nancy Drew, but if we’re debating the character traits of Claude, Dias, and Leon, that’s Star Ocean), gets into serious nerd debates (you know, book versus movie for classics and bouncing theories about Rey’s parents, Gandalf’s childhood, or what cool stories Superman had as a youngster doing chores), and it’s pretty routine to hear someone say, “no, no, he’s a book person,” (unless both parties know the book, which is more common) you are likely to grow up gaming, reading, and being rather serious about such fun.
This is a family thing, since there has probably not been a get together where the verbatim replay of “Meat’s back on the menu” by the uncles and the older cousins didn’t happen. (It’s entertaining, but a bit freaky if you don’t know the movie!)
For me, it was Zork, Teddy Boy, and 3D Adventure (Atari, the huge ducks or dragons that ate you and the castles where you saved the blocks).
My younger siblings introduced me to Playstation (Star Ocean and Legend of the Dragoon) as an 18-year-old. That was cool, except I kept trying to look around the monitor screen instead of turn the view with the controller! My kids know both of those… with their Playstation 2.
We are rather old school when it comes to games… the newest is probably Minecraft. It’s a building exploration game that the girls create elaborate homes and castles in since they can’t run out of bricks (we have a finite amount of Legos and their imaginations are way bigger than the few bricks we have). We actually have two old computers and keep them up because they run our 90s games (and the educational software I own runs on 32 bit instead of the new 64).
It’s always easier to learn something when you smash your head in between their head and the screen…
Lucas considers himself very independent. He likes to load the girls’ Minecraft lands and explore their castles (they call it “destroy” the castles – just like with Legos).
He is very happy when someone discovers him doing this.
(Game rules say electronics after dark… notice the daylight?)
Christina thinks it’s hilarious and calls him “gamer dude” when she sees him with the game phone that was put away for the daytime.
I’m going to slide back into the gaming world… a furious game of Pictionary is happening on the kitchen table right now – and even Lucas is jumping around as Becky sketches two triangles, a round thing, and dozens of dots… this is supposed to represent “Star Wars.”
And this is supposed to be peanut butter… Becky yelps, “Can’t you see Peter Pan?” and circled it…
Thanks for reading!
Type at you next time…
~Nancy Tart