Video Gaming In a Nutshell

Disc Operating System (DOS).

I think DOS is a good place for me to start.

I was raised on Apple and Nintendo. I had a strong bias towards those two machines. So much of a bias that when I was 7 years old, and was required to take a DOS class at my school, I scoffed at the teacher.
"CD/?" I would ask. "you mean double click?" and also "Where's the mouse? This isn't like my computer at home."
I told my teacher at one point that everyone will be using a mouse like apple in the next 5 years. He disagreed with me, and then over the next 5 years he had a hard time finding a job as a DOS specialist. (That's my guess at least.)
One thing of great worth that I did learn from Dos class was a GREAT multilayer game that you can download still. It was called Scorched Earth, but now they call it XSortch.



I learned, however slowly, that Apple was not something to be too excited about, and also that Nintendo was not the only worth while gaming company.

Being 23 years old now, and having existed during the infancy of what has become the video game revolution, I have watched the industry shape from the NES to the failed Jaguar, to the fatality of the Dreamcast and now the PS3/Xbox360 generation, and not just watched, but actively participated; saving up allowances and blowing them on Kung Fu, Street Fighter II (BEFORE TURBO!), Final Fantasy VII, Mario 64, and Uncharted 2.

What really defined my video game experience was Final Fantasy VI, or what we used to called Final Fantasy III.
My brothers and I would sit for hours on end, grinding in the dinosaur forest, capping all of our characters at level 99. Pining over the question of if you can REALLY bring General Leo back to life.
Some of you are probably reading this uncertain of what most of that means if you never played Final Fantasy III, but for me and my brothers, it meant options. It wasn't a side scrolling towards the next set of platform jumping obstacles or a boss that you would jump on a dozen times so that you could side scroll some more. We were being told a story, and a good one. It wasn't cliche, and it wasn't mediocre. We were playing a visual book; an interactive movie.

Games like Final Fantasy VI had the same effect on their time that Uncharted 2 has today. I don't know if video games are going to help define the minds of our future leaders. It might make me feel slightly uncomfortable to think that come March 9th. Barack Obama will be spending time on completing Final Fantasy XIII. I do, however,hope that there is some kid somewhere in the world saving up his allowance to buy it. At that kid, I smile, and I hope he enjoys spending time getting his characters to level 99.

I believe that video games should be challenging, and most importantly fun. If someone is playing a game for any other reason, and is not getting paid, then they should be mauled by a blood thirsty horde of vikings.

Z. W. Van Kleeck