Last year, Electronic Gaming Monthly magazine had a feature in which they got kids to play classic arcade and console games, eliciting some pretty frank comments of disgust from kids used to the much higher-tech games around today. The feature was popular enough that they have posted the results from Child’s Play Part II, in which kids’ hilarious reactions to Mike Tyson’s Punch Out (NES), Adventure (Atari), The Legend Of Zelda (NES), Star Wars (arcade), Defender (arcade), 720° (arcade), Grand Theft Auto (Playstation), Gunstar Heroes (Genesis), Galaga (arcade), and Street Fighter II: Champion Edition (arcade) are showcased. Here’s one of my favorite exchanges, in this case about Galaga:
Electronic Gaming Monthly: Now imagine you’ve reached the 10th stage, and you’re on your last life. Once you die and you put another quarter in, you don’t just continue from there-you start all over.
Parker [age 11]: Are you serious?
EGM: Yup. When you lose all your lives, you have to start over. You don’t keep going.
Parker: And you guys back then were OK with this?
Man, I feel old… 🙁
