Today’s kids have it good. When I was younger I played with toy soldiers, dirt, and sunlight, but nowadays technology is so advanced that my kids have no idea what those three things are. Following are kids have nowadays and what I had to settle for instead.
- The iPad vs. The Etch-a-Sketch
Back in my day, if you wanted to have a tablet in your hands, there was no other option but the Etch-a-Sketch. The Etch-a-Sketch had two little navigation knobs, a red frame, and a gray interface where all of the drawing magic happened. It took excellent precision, lots of time and tons of sweat to create a picture on an Etch-a-Sketch, and without undo button, you’d have to have kick-ass skills with an Etch-a-Sketch (and future cases of arthritis) to impress your friends. You’d also go “full ape s#@*t” if someone shook up your Etch-a-Sketch midway through your project.
Nowadays, technology has taken the tablet to a new extreme and the Apple iPad totally Pwns my Etch-a-Sketch. Kids will be able to play HD games, read books, surf the internet (something I didn’t have as a kid), and even draw pictures with full multitouch display support – only if they get bored enough to.
- Nintendo 3DS vs. Game Boy
Ahhh, the nostalgic days of the Nintendo Game Boy. I must have clocked in over 12 years of gameplay playing Pokémon, Tetris, and Kirby’s Dream Land. The black and white graphics was all that I needed and two buttons and a directional pad were the only requirements for some kick-ass gameplay.
Today’s kids will see the rise of the Nintendo 3DS – a full 3D handheld gaming device. To get 3D as a kid, I had to wear those papery plastic bifocals with red and blue lenses, but technology will give my kids (those spoiled little brats) a 3D handheld gaming system? In addition to 3D gaming support, the 3DS dons 2 screens, touchscreen support, and comes with a stylus. Back in my day you were “doing it big” if you had a Sega Game Gear, but now my kids are all “Sega who?”
- Netbooks vs. the Portable Casio Keyboard
Yeah, so when I was a kid, there were no laptops or netbooks and the only computers we had were those funky egg-shelled colored Tandy computers that only ran on DOS (orange or lime green text) and if you wanted to play games, you’d need one of those large D-Drive discs. The only thing kids in my day had that were portable and had keys were those annoying portable midi sounding Casio keyboards that drove my parents nuts. The Casio keyboard was the netbook of my day and every parent bought their kids one. No one could play the thing worth a lick, but the small size and hours worth of rocking out to Mary had a Little Lamb made the Casio keyboard a must have for kids in the olden days.
Like the Casio keyboard, parents nowadays are rushing into stores to buy their children netbooks. Netbooks are those small “laptop-looking” portable computers that most people call “notebooks” (which are different things entirely). The netbook is small and seems made for kids (like the Casio keyboard), but other than size, netbooks aren’t really for kids. Much like the Casio keyboard, netbook computers are devices with a keyboard that parents are rushing to buy for their kids – that kids really don’t need.
- The Nintendo Wii vs. the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES)
After the Atari, kids in my day and age were introduced to the Nintendo Entertainment System – and Mario. I shot endless amounts of Ducks in Duck Hunt, learned about “natural enhancement” with Mario and his mushroom and fire flower addiction, kicked tail in Double Dragon and Battletoads, terrorized Hyrule as Link in Zelda, and almost went asthmatic trying to blow out faulty NES cartridges to get them to work again.
I had a blast with the NES and Nintendo is still doing well with their current Nintendo Wii system. Kids nowadays are all about motion controlled gaming, Mii characters, Wii Sports, and active gameplay. When I played games as a kid, it had to sit down and focus on playing mind-numbing games; but nowadays kids are more subject to ruin a home while playing the Nintendo Wii than when not.
- Project Natal vs. My Imagination
Project Natal will be released for the Xbox 360 soon, and like the Nintendo Wii, Project Natal will feature motion gaming – unlike the Nintendo Wii, Project Natal will include full body motion sensing, no controllers, and face and voice recognition. Kids nowadays will be able to kick and punch at their TV with real-time effects, talk to Milo and have full interaction, and do crap that I only did with my imagination as a kid.
When I was a child if I jumped and kicked in the air, it was only because I just watched a Kung-fu movie and felt that I could beat up all of my bullies and I never had the opportunity to meet Mile; my imaginary friend’s name was Ernie.