Video Games
Written on Mar 27, 2026
I'm not a fan of modern video games, especially the multiplayer kind. I play games on my phone today that can hardly be called video games. They're card games in a video format.
My children and grandchildren are all video game addicts. My younger son likes to say he's a "gamer", like that means something to me.
The Video Games I Remember Playing
The first video game I ever played was a home video game called "Pong". That was in the early 1970s. I only played video games in arcades from 1979 to 1984. I briefly had an Atari game console in 1985, giving it away when I bored of the only games that came with it.
The games I remember most during those years were "Pac-Man", "Space Invaders", and "Asteroids". There were others that I didn't care for, like the original "Mario Bros.". The first game my family played together in 1988 was "Super Mario Bros." on the Nintendo Entertainment System.
I've played a few video games over the years, with fond memories of "Doom" and "Duke Nukem 3D". I briefly played video games with my younger son when he still lived with me in the Philippines.
Watching Video Games
That's mostly what I do today, other than playing card games on my phone. I watch my older son and his children playing "Fortnite" on occasion. More often than not, I see my grandchildren playing "Minecraft", "Roblox", or "Rocket League".
I've seen my younger son playing online with my older son and his children, but I can't tell you which games they play. My wife and my daughters-in-law never get involved. My youngest grandson doesn't get involved, but only because he can't understand them at his age.
PC Video Games
Although I owned Commodore computers in the 1980s that were capable of playing game cartridges, I never used them for that purpose. It was much more interesting to me to learn how to program in BASIC and machine language code.
After "Doom" and "Duke Nukem 3D", I stopped playing PC games. If I wanted to play video games, I would buy a console designed for it. To this day, I've never felt the urge to do so. Perhaps someday I will, but I doubt it. I'm getting too old to care about things like that.
Image by Perlinator from Pixabay