The History of Gaming... to me.

As far as I am aware, the history of games spans all the way back to around 1950. As this wasn't long after VE day, the games had quite a significant military undertone with the player trying to stop a missile attack on a radar style screen or similar  themes.

 Later on, games became less war based and started to feature simplified versions of sports such as tennis (or table tennis) and athletics. I think this was due to a lack of inspiration as well as technological limitations. In other words; rather then think of an original idea for a game, the developers used existing games (sports) as a base plate to begin building the industry we know today. That is only one theory however and I think it is also possible that the developers who perhaps favored intelligence rather then physical skill may have developed these specific games as a way for them, and others in the same situation to compensate for this.

 I think games, like all art forms, take inspiration and draw from the changes in times around them. A good example of this is the increase of Sci-Fi games produced around the early 70s which was about the same time that Art Deco took off. Both of which took inspiration from the Space race between America and the Soviet Union as well as the birth of other advanced technology. This trait can still be seen today but is perhaps less visible then it was a few decades ago.

My history of gaming began on the Christmas of 1992 or 1993. my dad bought me a Snes with Super mario Wold and I can remember thinking it was the most amazing thing in the world. My collection of games grew over the following years and included titles such as Mario Kart, Battle Toads and Super Metroid. I also remember going round to my Nan's house and playing on the Sega mega Drive that she had bought for me and my cousins to play on. I think it was the simple notion that i could do things on these games that I could never do in real life (at least not without breaking the law... or a few bones) that kept me hooked. 

I became a bit of a Nintendo fan boy favoring the N64 over the Playstation despite its obvious superiority. Being able to do those things in 3D just made it even better. 

Between then and now, my interest in gaming rose and fell with the quality of the games produced. The most recent game i can recall playing has got to be halo 3, having nothing to do at the start of uni saw me picking up the controller again and trying to complete the game on legendary. I did it in a week.