Re: Has today's games ever made you feel...

Oops, I was away and didn't follow this thread.

> Well put.  The 80s was indeed a *cue British accent* FANTASTIC time to
have
> grown up in.

All of my 80's memories are good ones.  Even, in my memories, the weather
was always fantastic.
I can't seem to recall any days other than sunny days and snowy days when
school was cancelled.
I know it rained in the 80's, but its funny how memory works. :-)

> I wouldn't change a thing.  I can't imagine growing up in the late 90s,
having
> the internet when I'm 5 years old, or starting out with the power of the
> Dreamcast.

I was fortunate in this regard.  I was using the internet as early as 1986.
My mother was a professor at a university at the time and let me use her
VAX/VMS account.  Dialing in with a TRS-80 Coco and a 300 bps modem (later
1200 bps), I eventually learned more about using it than she did.  (She
wasn't a computer-science professor, she taught English.) This, of course,
wasn't a PPP (or even SLIP) connection, it was simply a terminal connection.
I used a terminal program called VTerm since it supported VT-100/220 text.
Once logged in and at the command line, there were many things to do.  The
web didn't exist yet but you could telnet, ftp, gopher, irc, ect.  All text
based, of course.  I wonder how many people remember the telnet BBS's Mars
Hotel (mars.ee.msstate.edu) and Quartz Rutgers (quartz.rutgers.edu)?  How
many remember the VMS IRC program xxyyzz.com?  Had I known what I we all
know now, I would've been registering domain names. LOL. Of course, at the
time I couldn't as an individual.  Also, at the time I didn't even put any
thought that it would explode to where it is today.  I didn't think of it as
any more than just a network for academia, the government, and the military.

> I'm grateful there was no net when I was 5, and that I started out
> with the NES, and let's not even start to mention cartoons...
Transformers, GI
> Joe, Ninja Turtles, Thundercats anyone?  ;-)

Thundercats, Ho!  Oh, I remember watching that cartoon every weekday at 4PM.
Transformers were really cool back then.  They were so solid and made
completely out of die-cast metal.
GI Joe was excellent, up until they started to incorporate all the "space
stuff" into it.

> i.e. Halloween back in the 80s was the shit.  Today... ugh.  No one trusts
no

No doubt!  Halloween remains one of my favorite holidays.  Halloween has
become more of a time for celebration for adults than kids.  I remember we
would be trick-or-treating until 11PM.  The unwritten rule was if people
kept their porch lights on, then they were still giving out candy.  Today,
it seems the last group of kids shows up on your porch only around 8PM.

Overall, it was a cool decade and I had fun in it.  I think the quality of
many things is much better today though, mainly due to fierce competition
that exists today.  Even restuarants seem much better today.  This topic
came up with some friends I recently.  Back then, if you wanted to go out to
eat at a really good steak restuarant, you had only a couple to chose from.
Today, you have at least a dozen.
Many tangible goods seem to be much less expensive today than they were back
then.  Although, this might just be because I am financially independent
now.

If you want to feel old:
http://www.80s.com/ChildrenOfTheEighties/

-Eric