Street Fighter II was my Woodstock
A theory:
Somewhere in the middle of a post-war economy, a new pop culture phenomenon is taking shape. It's mostly seen as a youth phenomenon, widely decried as artless and mindless by concerned parents who see nothing but delinquency in the future of those obsessed by it. But despite the best efforts of protest groups, it starts to grow in scope and profit until it takes over as one of the biggest cultural phenomena of its time. For its first few years, it's a simple but exciting trend, one that gives kids a visceral thrill for three minutes at a time. But then disaster strikes: the speculators get too overzealous, the market becomes flooded with cheap opportunists, and eventually this phenomenon enters a brief period of stagnancy. It's about this time that a phenomenon arrives from overseas, completely takes over this culture and permanently etches into stone an entire generation's notion of what the ideal of this movement really is. For the next several years, the ideas, personalities and style introduced by this invasion - furthered by advances in technology, creativity and the idea that rules were made to be broken - herald a shift in the preferred experience from the single-serving dose to experiences of long-playing, sprawling epic proportions. But eventually these grandiose aspirations grow to engulf this culture until nothing but the most gigantic, high-budget spectacles dominate, and while artistic endeavors are still flourishing, many people complain that simple fun has taken a backseat to high-minded pretensions. Eventually, two movements spring up in an attempt to counter this malaise: a do-it-yourself, back-to-basics movement built outside the spotlight of the culture's corporate aspects, and a populist fad-turned-phenomenon that, despite accusations of artlessness and superficiality, takes the world by storm thanks to its social aspect.
Now, a question: am I talking about the boomers' history of rock and roll as it stood in 1978, or the history of video games as it stands today?
Sure, you might need to expand or compress the timeline here and there, but all you have to do is replace the early rock'n'rollers with Space Invaders and Pac-Man, 7" singles and jukeboxes with arcades, the downturn of rock at the turn of the '60s with the 1984 video game crash, the British Invasion with the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Summer of Love and the rise of the album-as-artform with those halcyon days of the 16-Bit early '90s, the rise of heavy metal, prog and AOR with the first PlayStation and the 3D gaming explosion, the advent of rock as arena spectacle with the push towards this generation's consoles as graphical powerhouses, punk rock with the homebrew game scene, and disco with the Wii (or, if you want to be extra-ironic, Guitar Hero).
I might turn this theory into some kind of article, in which case I'll then go on to discuss how the Nintendo generation's narrow view of video gaming -- the one that came of age in the late '80s/early '90s and can't seem to stop fixating on how great the Mario and Zelda and Mega Man franchises are, and how modern games are soulless -- could be doing more damage to video gaming as a culture (albeit a relatively low one) than the much-fretted-over boomer/Rolling Stone version of history did to rock.
Somewhere in the middle of a post-war economy, a new pop culture phenomenon is taking shape. It's mostly seen as a youth phenomenon, widely decried as artless and mindless by concerned parents who see nothing but delinquency in the future of those obsessed by it. But despite the best efforts of protest groups, it starts to grow in scope and profit until it takes over as one of the biggest cultural phenomena of its time. For its first few years, it's a simple but exciting trend, one that gives kids a visceral thrill for three minutes at a time. But then disaster strikes: the speculators get too overzealous, the market becomes flooded with cheap opportunists, and eventually this phenomenon enters a brief period of stagnancy. It's about this time that a phenomenon arrives from overseas, completely takes over this culture and permanently etches into stone an entire generation's notion of what the ideal of this movement really is. For the next several years, the ideas, personalities and style introduced by this invasion - furthered by advances in technology, creativity and the idea that rules were made to be broken - herald a shift in the preferred experience from the single-serving dose to experiences of long-playing, sprawling epic proportions. But eventually these grandiose aspirations grow to engulf this culture until nothing but the most gigantic, high-budget spectacles dominate, and while artistic endeavors are still flourishing, many people complain that simple fun has taken a backseat to high-minded pretensions. Eventually, two movements spring up in an attempt to counter this malaise: a do-it-yourself, back-to-basics movement built outside the spotlight of the culture's corporate aspects, and a populist fad-turned-phenomenon that, despite accusations of artlessness and superficiality, takes the world by storm thanks to its social aspect.
Now, a question: am I talking about the boomers' history of rock and roll as it stood in 1978, or the history of video games as it stands today?
Sure, you might need to expand or compress the timeline here and there, but all you have to do is replace the early rock'n'rollers with Space Invaders and Pac-Man, 7" singles and jukeboxes with arcades, the downturn of rock at the turn of the '60s with the 1984 video game crash, the British Invasion with the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Summer of Love and the rise of the album-as-artform with those halcyon days of the 16-Bit early '90s, the rise of heavy metal, prog and AOR with the first PlayStation and the 3D gaming explosion, the advent of rock as arena spectacle with the push towards this generation's consoles as graphical powerhouses, punk rock with the homebrew game scene, and disco with the Wii (or, if you want to be extra-ironic, Guitar Hero).
I might turn this theory into some kind of article, in which case I'll then go on to discuss how the Nintendo generation's narrow view of video gaming -- the one that came of age in the late '80s/early '90s and can't seem to stop fixating on how great the Mario and Zelda and Mega Man franchises are, and how modern games are soulless -- could be doing more damage to video gaming as a culture (albeit a relatively low one) than the much-fretted-over boomer/Rolling Stone version of history did to rock.