Since the widely publicized outage over at the PlayStation Network and the possibility of said outage lasting for at least another 24-48 hours, many gamers have taken to threatening Sony with a PS3 boycott and head over to the Xbox 360 as well as writing strongly worded complaints in the hopes that this will somehow speed up the process of bringing PSN back to life.
However, amongst the hundreds and thousands of comments, a thought suddenly occurred to me… What did we ever do before playing games online. Thinking back to my first mobile – the Nokia 3210 with lightning strike fascia, I couldn’t help but wonder what I ever did before mobile phones came around.
For starters, nobody knew where I was unless I specifically notified my parents beforehand (usually) and if someone were to try and get hold of me, they’d have to wait until I was in reach of a land line. Times were definitely simpler, whatever time you agreed to meet at a specific place was the time and place that you’d invariably meet and I was able to spend that little extra money I had on renting out games until such time I would have enough to purchase it.
Ok, so that’s not the particular path I’m wanting to go down but rather how we generally coped without our games console being attached to the internet.
It was always between me and the TV screen though occasionally a few of us like-minded individuals would get together (usually around 2-4 others as long as a multitap or two was available) and mash it out on games like Micro Machines. Though once the Xbox appeared on the scene we found ourselves with a new found ability to pretend we were playing against someone we couldn’t see when they were only in the next room by way of additional consoles, television sets and the humble link cable.
Times were merry and we enjoyed many an hour of merriment, merth, doritos and jaffa cakes.
But what about now? Do you get that same excitement today with your Xbox or PS3 constantly tethered to the world-wide-web? I can only assume that the reception would be a mixed one. It was with games in the same vein as Final Fantasy VII, VIII and IX that my days were swallowed up hour by hour, then after that it was Halo: Combat Evolved and then Timesplitters.
With the advent of the online multiplayer experience, many guys and gals don’t need to go to someone else’s house to play a 2-on-2 in a Halo deathmatch and why bother if your comfy in the safety of your own bedroom with surround sound, favourite drink on tap and don’t have to worry about trying to find a spare place to sit on your mates springless sofa-bed with no food in the fridge.
So what did you do before online gaming? Any fond memories of pre-web gaming? Let us know what you think and leave your comments below.
