When I think Classic...

[Ouroboros]

When I think of classic gaming I think of the NES and arcade games. I know the NES wasn't the original gaming system, but it revitalized gaming to where it is today. Of the original launch titles, I remember playing Duck Hunt, Excitebike, Gyromite, Kung Fu, and Super Mario Bros.

Gyromite, perhaps the most gimmicky of them with Rob the Robot, was also perhaps one of the most fun. I remember playing it without using Rob (I have 2 brothers) and the game took on a whole new aspect. The game became much more dangerous and about trust. If I screwed over one of my brothers by crushing them, I knew there would be retaliation when it was my turn to control the guy, which made it harder to advance in levels but also made it so much more exciting.

Super Mario Bros and later Zelda were and still are 2 titles that continue to have an almost cult following. Super Mario Bros took side scrolling games to a new height by introducing action, collecting, and secret finding (running across the top of level 2 is familiar to anyone who's played the game).

Zelda did the same for the top view games by intruducing upgradable gear, weapons that functioned as tools or vice versa, and again secret areas to discover.

Though these two games were not the first of their genera, they took their respective play styles to the next level.

There is something about seperating people from their money due to a compulsive need to win or beat something that just strikes me as being classic. Pumping quarters non-stop until you have either beaten the game or run out of time/money fits my above belief to a T, which is why arcade games will always be classic gaming to me.

[Mr Fro]

Ah yes, the biter sweet trips to the arcade where money would fade before your fix was filled so you would spend the remaining hours scrounging for quarters, or tokens, in the return well. On the greatest days, very rare days indeed, you would find a machine that had flipped a switch and all you had to do was hit the start button. Oh sweet salvation!

[LD]

"It's a gelatinous cube that eats villagers and you need to save them to get to the next level. But here's the great part... you CAN'T get to the next level. So these retards just keep pumping in their quarters into the machine."