Electronic Gaming Monthly : Press Start : Child's Play

See original source HERE.
10/14/2003

Would today's tykes tolerate the classic games you grew up with? Kids do say the darndest things in this uncut version of an EGM article—now with a bonus game not included in the original story!
By Crispin Boyer and Shawn Elliott
Photography by Michael Sexton
Your average gamer these days is in his late 20s—young enough to still find new ways to destroy brain cells, old enough to worry about bills and 401ks, and wise enough to reminisce about the good ol' days of videogames. But was the age of Pong, Atari, Mattel handheld football, and Donkey Kong really all that great, or are we just blinded by fuzzy, warm nostalgia?

That's the question we asked—and answered—back in the November issue of EGM, in which we rounded up nine children of the PlayStation generation—ages 9 to 12—and forced them to play a variety of titles from the late'70s to the mid-'80s. Now read what the little scamps had to say, plus check their comments on a bonus game—Super Mario Bros.—that got cut from the EGM article. If you grew up with these classics, prepare to feel very old.

Note: Everything written here was actually said by these kids. Really. The only change we made was to remove the more gratuitous usages of the word "gay".

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Pong
Atari • 1975
Atari's home version of its simple ball-and-paddle coin-op became the first smash-hit console and made videogames a new pastime in the swinging '70s.

Niko: Hey—Pong. My parents played this game.

Brian: It takes this whole console just to do Pong?

Kirk: What is this? [Picks up and twists the paddle controller] Am I controlling the volume?

John: I'm just going to do this [twists the paddle controller as rapidly as possible].

Tim: John, don't do that. You'll die.

Andrew: This is a lot like that game. Um, whatchamacallit—air hockey.

Sheldon: Except worse.

Andrew: Blip. Blip. Blip. Blip.

Becky: I don't even see the point of having sound on this.

Andrew: Wow. The score is tied. It's so exhilarating.

Brian: I saw a documentary on this. The game was so popular in arcades that it got jammed up with quarters.

John: In this thing? [Points to the Pong game console]

Tim: I would never pay to play something like this.

John: I'd sooner jump up and down on one foot. By the way, is this supposed to be tennis or Ping-Pong?

Becky: Ping-Pong.

Gordon: It doesn't even go over the net. It goes through it. I don't even think that thing in the middle is a net.

Tim: My line is so beating the heck out of your stupid line. Fear my pink line. You have no chance. I am the undisputed lord of virtual tennis. [Misses ball] Whoops.

John: Tim, how could you miss that? It was going like 1 m.p.h.

Sheldon: Hey, why does it say Sears on the controller?

EGM: Sears sold it for Atari.

Andrew: Isn't Sears, like, a clothing company?

Becky: Sears makes everything. Actually, I've never been in there.

EGM: Guess how much this thing cost when it came out.

Kirk: Twenty bucks?

EGM: Higher.

Brian: $50?

EGM: Higher.

Brian: $100?

EGM: Yep.

Kirk: My God—I could almost buy a PS2 for that. I'm sure when this came out, it was better than whatever else was out. Want to play chess with me, son? No way, Dad.

Brian: I want to play Pong!

Tim: Oh, I'm starting to suck. John, you drained my skill.

John: Yes, I used a power-up.

Tim: What? There's no power-ups in Pong. The concept of a power-up hadn't been invented yet.