The Nintendo Generation: All Grown Up

[Gamer]

The first time I heard the term, “Nintendo Generation”, was in the movie “Hackers” and I remember thinking at the time, “what a great description for my group of friends.” But now that I am more than a decade older I see that it’s not an accurate description at all. I mean I’ve always loved video games and computers, but most of my childhood was spent banging away on text adventures and space invader style games on a TI99/4A hooked up to the family’s spare black and white T.V. I remember how ecstatic I was when dad brought home our first PC with a whopping 240M hard drive. My family wasn’t poor, but with four kids it was hard for all of us to get the toys we really wanted so I spent most of my time at friends’ houses playing NES, Sega, SuperNES and eventually bought myself a Playstation when I was living on my own.

But I look at everything “videogame” today and realize I graduated from the Nintendo Generation long ago. I saw the rise and fall of many Sega consoles. I remember Commodore 64’s, Turbo Grafx 16, and Colecovision. And now when I think of Nintendo I’m reminded of Mario and Luigi, Link and Zelda, and all the other childish characters I fell in love with. But I don’t watch Smurfs on Saturday mornings anymore, and I crave stronger heroes like Master Chief, Solid Snake, and Sam Fisher.

Nintendo did a great job raising me, but they’ve since lost control and I don’t think they define me and my generation. Age wise I’m probably considered a Gen-Xer (a group Microsoft obviously targeted with their Xbox) but when that wonderful moniker was being thrown around I wanted nothing to do with the general lack of respect most of those kids showed. And getting back to the gaming industry, there really are too many variations of computer and game lovers to label us all with one simple name. Some of us like FPS’s, some RPG’s, and some just like puzzle games they can play on the net while they chat with friends.

Maybe those of us who grew up on videogames (and were never weaned) are stuck in the multigenerational category of “gamers”, but I like that. The Flower children are getting older, the Baby Boomers are getting older, hey even the Gen-Xers are getting older, but gamers remain ageless.