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Sunday, January 29, 2017

EDTECH 532-Video Game Graphics Quest

In this quest I watched a series of videos that described the evolution of video graphics.  Although I did not understand all of the technical aspects of this video series.  I did recognized many of the games throughout the video game eras mentioned.  I just turned 46 and as I watched these videos, I realized my life paralleled the evolution of gaming graphics.

I still remember the simple Pong console my parents purchased in the mid-70's.  As simple as it was, my brother and I played tennis the three games available, Tennis, Hockey and Handball.  I also remember playing many of the simple arcade games of the time.  Asteroids was one I played often and I was introduced to Space Invaders on a family trip to Hawaii in 1979.  There was one in my hotel lobby and a put every spare quarter I could find in that machine. One vector game that wasn't mentioned but that I enjoyed was Lunar Lander.  The player had to control the speed and pitch of a space craft and land it safely.  (see image below)


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Lunar Lander
In terms of Sprite games I remember playing 1942 and Mortal Combat but I was in High School during most of this era and Video Games had taken a back seat in my life.,  I do remember wracking my brain playing Myst on a friends computer and being totally hooked.  The same friend also had the original Doom and we spent many hours blasting terrible creatures to bits.

The third era of games mentioned in the video series however bypassed me.  This was the early 90's and I was in University.  Money was tight and didn't get back into gaming until I won an original Sony PlayStation and NFL'98 was my game of choice.

The FPS hit me hard with the Medal of Honor series and then Call of Duty.  I was sucked into these games and if you asked my wife, this wasn't always healthy.  I belonged to a Clan and participated in Forum conversations, played in serious tournaments and spent a lot on upgrading my PC's.  It is probaly her where I really started to understand the true power of the modern computer.

Like many people, I got a Wii console for my kids and that has been the extent of my gaming recently.  To be honest, my recent gaming as been limited to my iPad focussing on simple games like cribbage.  After watching these videos, I may start looking into a new gaming computer:)


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