Keep Calm and Insert Coin: Old As Pong

So I will admit, there have been a small handful of women I have dated.  And sometimes I like to see if they share the same interests as me.  Be it video games, movies, Legos, etc. I mean, my current wife and my kids love Legos.  That really makes me kick myself when I sold close to $15000 in Legos on Craigslist for $800.  DON’T ASK!!!

But back when I was in high school, I dated someone who had a sweet Nintendo collection. I even dated someone who had not old a Defender but a Tron machine in her family room.  Really thought that was the one I was going to marry.  If the wife reads this, I have to point out that it was a joke.

But I remember turning on a Playstation several years ago. (I won’t say which one to protect the person).  But Anyway, I turned it on and started to play NFL Blitz.  Oh man how I loved that game.  Beautiful graphics, awesome sound, awesome control.  Not much more I could have asked for.  But anyway, while I was playing this, the woman… let’s call her Stacy, was sitting with me and blew my mind away with the conversation that followed.

Stacy: What game is this

Me: NFL Blitz.  Pretty awesome huh

Stacy: Not bad

Me:  Isn’t amazing how games have progressed since Pong?

Stacy: Since what?

Me: Since Pong

Stacy: (Pause for 3 seconds) What’s Pong

Me: What?

Stacy:  I have never heard of Pong.

Me: SMH…Ummmmm, isn’t amazing since games have progressed since……Mario?

Stacy:  Oh yeah, I totally agree!

It’s incredible.  It’s like talking to a non-football fan and when you ask them which team they like you would hear “I like this team because their butts are a cute.  Or they can’t relate to a book unless it was a movie.

This is not picking on women!  This is picking on the age of the person involved with the conversation because she was younger than me.  Don’t worry, she is still alive.  Don’t freak out about the WAS part.  But As I get old… again, SHUT UP, I realize that when ever you talk about things, you have to get to the persons level.  And this has nothing to do with intelligence or anything else.  It’s just a fact of life.

I totally relate to my son when is playing games because we can talk about Star Wars Battlefront or Transformers games because that is their time.  It’s about as depressing as the thought of, you have had your fun, now it’s time for the younger generation to play the games.  But mark my words, if I could, I would push a kid away from an arcade game so I could play it and not get into trouble.  This is an analogy of I love video games as much as the younger generation.  Except when they kick my ass at Street Fighter or Mortal Combat.

Normally my blogs are about my memories of playing certain video games.  But it was just a strong flashback that I had this past weekend when I was going through the Playstation Online catalog and noticed that you can play a updated version of Pong. Times are a changing and I guess all I can do is….

Keep Calm and Insert Coin