Andrew Kamal

     There are many nostalgic Sega Genesis games, but here are literally some of the best. These games are what made Sega one of the missed companies of our time in terms of the consoles they released or the classic gaming vibe they used to have. There are known for many classics which we will cover in this article.

1. The Sonic the Hedgehog series: The whole Sonic the Hedgehog series turned into one of the biggest gaming franchises ever to exist. It is literally Nintendo’s Mario biggest competitor. The classic sonic games are one of the reasons Sega is still considered somewhat functioning and active today. Just not as much as they used too.

By Andrew Kamal

     Game and Watch is the predecessor to modern handhelds starting in the 1980s. Some of the games that were in this series all led to the modern NIntendo games that we have today. One of them being the very well known “Donkey Kong Series”. Donkey Kong, and Donkey Kong Jr. as well as almost all the mini-games were originally released on the “Game & Watch” series by Nintendo, which were basically series of handhelds meant to play single low bit games in the late 1900s.

     Gaming companies have this nostalgic value to them, and have been changing over the years. We all miss the Atari & Sega days, and Nintendo has been around for literally centuries. This list tells you what I believe to be the five best gaming companies of our time in terms of value, popularity and demand. Sit back, and enjoy the memories!

•      Nintendo: Nintendo has been around before any gaming company in the past, and even started as a trading card company. The Nintendo Switch is literally coming out soon and they have been known for classics such as the N64 as well. People are demanding Nintendo so much, they wish they might even start making phones or doing something with VR eventually.

Modern Tabletop Arcades

Tabletop arcading has now become a trend once again in the geek community after nearly 3 decades. Now we have Atari getting out of its shell and releasing its ICade tabletop case or people being obsessed with Raspberry Pi or Arduino custom arcade builds. Even sites like Etsy are starting to sell Tabletop MAME closures for the Rasperry Pi. The thing about Tabletop gaming is that us 70’s, 80’s and even 90’s kids remember going to the store with few quarters and trying to beat the local neighbor boy’s high scores. We used to play the classics, I am talking about: Pong, Pacman, Space Invader, Asteroid Belt, etc.

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Now, not only do we have arcade gaming back, but a modern turn on it. If you go to DIY sites like Instructables or even watch videos like the Ben Heck Show, you can see same style tabletops but with much better specs. Can’t afford time or money for a custom build? No problem, you can still play your favorite classics. If you visit Atari’s website you will see many of Atari’s old classics rendered in perfect 3D. I don’t know about you, but the closest thing I had to electronics at 5 or 6 years old was a single plug in joystick to the television that played like 12 games. Now we have the power of emulators to emulated thousands and thousands of classic games with much higher speeds. Andrew

Andrew Kamal is an app developer, programmer, and inventor who loves writing about historical technology and old games. He can be found in his free time hugging pugs and debating people about which pizza topics are better. 

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Discontinued Game Consoles Way Ahead of Their Time by Andrew Kamal

     Many game companies have vanished, or their ideas have long been forgotten. It is past the age where handhelds where as impressive and SEGA as well as ATARI are way passed any golden years. However one thing is for certain, some game consoles in the past made by different companies were way ahead of its time. For this, I compiled a list:

1. The Atari Cosmos- Atari was experimenting with holoptics and potentially going to release the first holographic/3D screened game console nearly three decades before the Nintendo 3Ds. This was known as Atari Cosmos. The biggest reason I believe it was never released, was the fact that it was going to go into production at the end of Atari’s popular legacy.

     One of the biggest things in any comic, game, show, etc. fan culture are the conventions. Many people use this to dress as their favorite character. Some professionally and some...not so professional. This includes making a male character into a female and vice versa. Most people just go to conventions to meet up with celebrities they like, or take pictures of the professional people who dress up, cosplayers.

      Comic Con in San Diego started in 1970 which makes sense considering that comics where still very popular around that time. It originally started with only a couple of special guests and comic, sci-fi, and movie fans creating a one day minicon. This minicon only had about 100 people came. Now attendance tops around 130,000 people. Comic con even has competitions and a separate film festival.

     Next, the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3. The first expo featured Sony's start in video games, the Nintendo Ultra 64 (Nintendo 64), the Nintendo Virtual Boy which was a commercial failure, and several games. The attendance has grown from 50,000 in 1995 to only 52,000 now. However, the number of exhibitors grew to 300+. Also, the low rate of attendance is more that now e3 has it's own website and is featured for viewing on television.

Finally, the Penny Arcade Expo which started in 2004, otherwise known as PAX. The first PAX was a 2 day event, and while it was a small event it had an attendance of around 3,000 people which is much higher than the first comic con. Although smaller than e3 it's grown to have an attendance of well over 70,000 and a separate expo called PAX East. Contributing Author for Passed Time. November 7, 2015 Delaware.

      One of the most amazing changes in gaming throughout the years is how much graphics have gotten better. I'm not sure if when games were originally made they even thought that it would come this far, or that a game would look so realistic now. One of the most important things for a games graphics are it's engine and the platforms capabilities. For example, a Playstation 2 couldn't handle any Playstation 3 or 4 games. The engine determines what actually occurs in-game. That includes things like physics, A.I., textures, player details, hair graphics, and more.

If you think of where we came from, like the 8-bit platformers to now, it's just truly impressive. The game series where it's most obvious in the changes are Final Fantasy and Metal Gear Solid because both have been around since the 1980's. Square Enix and Konami both have some of the best game engines of today. Konami has the FOX while Square Enix is moving on to use the Luminous game engine for the new Final Fantasy XV. This first link is a tech demo for the FOX engine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9i095tQ7QN8. This link is for the Final Fantasy XV trailer showing the Luminosity engine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ny69S-GWcU8. Comparing both to what they started at is truly just an impressive feat in technology when you think about it.

For those who do not know, Centralia was a town in Pennsylvania where they attempted to make a nearby pit into a landfill. When a state inspector gave the okay for the pit he had also said they that should fill up the holes leading to the mine with a non-combustible material so that a fire would not start in the mine. However, they had only filled some of the holes leading to a large underground fire leaking carbon dioxide and monoxide. There are many documentaries on this, some books and some videos, though the one I got this info from this video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGePjOv3OXI. While the event of the town was tragic I feel that the tragedy has been covered enough and the series that was made based on it is what I want to cover: "Silent Hill." The basis of "Silent Hill" is mostly a psychological horror survival game. While that most likely isn't appealing to many people it has many fans, myself included. The setting of the town the games are based in should sound very familiar. An abandoned town where an underground coal mine fire happened and everyone had to be evacuated. The only difference is that the game uses it as a way to get the player nervous by the atmosphere because the "fog" from the fire gives low visibility. While the setting is based off of Centralia, evident by the building structures and obvious coal mine, there are other historical thoughts that the game uses. Mostly Freudian Psychology is evident in the game by the use of the unconscious and repressed memories. Therefore, while I don't suggest trying to watch/play the game if you are scared easily or not very tolerant of the horror culture, it is important to see where the basis of the ideas come from. Many pop culture items that people may dismiss as "brainless" actually have a lot of thought put into them. Of course, there is also ones that have zero thought put into them so I don't suggest going and trying to find historical reference behind every pop culture item there is because that would most likely end in loss of faith in humanity for you.

For those who think nostalgia only hits the older crowd ....Everyone is susceptible. 

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