Build Your Own Arcade Controls Forum
Main => Everything Else => Topic started by: yotsuya on January 10, 2015, 12:24:11 am
-
I really enjoyed reading Louis' story about Kaboom and his dad, and it reminded me of some of the stories people here have told in the past. It made me think of my own parents and video gaming.
My mother is actually the one who got me into games. She bought our first console, an Atari 2600, via a mail order catalogue and was the one I would play games with, like Space Invaders and Missile Command. She basically took over my little brother's Game Boy to play Tetris and Super Mario Land. She's the one who made the push to get our first PC. I definitely got her love of technology and her inquisitive nature.
My dad, while not into games, always gave me a quarter or two to play cabs when we went to pick up dinner. One of my favorite memories is a vacation to Disneyland we took. The day we got there, we checked into the motel and went to a Pizza Hut to get dinner. They had a Mr. Do there, which I had never seen before. My dad gave me a quarter to play, and it's always been one of my favorites since then.
I'm lucky to still have them both, still married after 41 years. They love my game room, and enjoy sharing it with them.
What about you guys? Did your parents influence your life as a gamer?
-
That's cool about your mom getting you into games. I have the reverse story. My parents couldn't have been the least bit interested in games when I was a kid. When my mom retired 20 years ago we bought her an NES on a lark and she really took to it. Over the years she became a big time gamer and huge Nintendo fan. She just turned 72 and is now into games like Assassin's Creed and Drake Uncharted.
-
My mother has always been a gamer. Took me years to realize that we always had the most recent system not because I wanted it but because she did. Starting with a wood panel Sears Atari whatnot she was casual but once Legend of Zelda hit for NES she was hooked. We used to fight over whose turn it was to play lol. Then we discovered Final Fantasy and Dragon Warrior. I still like games where you grind, I spent hours with my mom often sharing a quest and we'd both grind for all the extras. Really funny, we never really thought of it as bonding, we just really wanted silver swords or Nuke spells or whatever.
PSOne hit and we split up for a while, me on the tomb raider while she was battling through Ocarina or Time or something. She playing mostly Nintendo titles until FFVII came out then we were back at it. Even today, she's in her mid 70s, and every time we go to dinner if there's any wait she's likely to pull out here psp or other handheld and get in a few quick battles.
When I was 11 or so we were on vacation and game across a Superman arcade machine in the hotel lobby - we quarter fed through it. I never think about this stuff. Cool that you brought it up as I see my mom in a renewed light. Dad was one of those, "infernal contraption" people, still is. As is my wife. Odd that. Odd and disturbing. Ah ---fudgesicle--- me, I'm my mother and I married the chick version of my father. Christ. Where's the brain bleach?!
---fudgesicle--- you yotsuya. Now I'm ruined for life.
-
:applaud: damn, only 3 posts long and this is the best thread I have read in a long time.
-
.
-
My grandmother was a pacman addict. She'd take me to the arcade as an excuse for her to play.
When I'd run out of quarters, she'd have money ready to hand me without having to look away from the screen.
The games were too hard for me at that age. I'd pretty much just put a quarter in and watch the frog die.
She was the first person I know to buy an Atari 2600. Of course it was "for the grandkids when they come over", but she was known to regularly stay up until 2am playing it. She quit playing around the time they stopped selling cartridges for it and never did pick up on any newer consoles.
My father is an antique dealer. When I was a kid, he frequented yard sales and flea markets.
He was always bringing home oddball systems. Usually a store brand with 8 or 10 built in games (the kind you get bored with then sell at a yard sale). The one that really sticks with me is the Colecovision. I'd never heard of it. Fired up Donkey Kong and freaked out because it actually looked like it does at the arcade! This thing must have cost a fortune!
My father will play a game of pacman every once in a while, but doesn't really play games.
My mother wouldn't know where to put the quarter or how to start a game.
-
My parents never played any games, Just hand me 5.00 and Id go hang out at the local bowling alley.... My mother is gone now, but my dad is still like " :soapbox: OMG Jennifer, whats wrong with you, Sell those stupid games and get on with your life".
-
Ah ---fudgesicle--- me, I'm my mother and I married the chick version of my father. Christ. Where's the brain bleach?!
---fudgesicle--- you yotsuya. Now I'm ruined for life.
Aint it a great feeling knowing you married a female version of your father?
My folks were always of the same 'you'll rot your brain playing video games' club which why I was surprised when dad brought home a NES when they first came out. Mom was a little upset but once she saw it wasnt spawned from hell fire she was cool with it. She still stood strong and wouldnt buy my brother and I any newer consoles. I didnt pick up on gamong again until I spent my own money and bought a PS One. I still got a sideways glance when I set it up.
The best memory I had with gaming and my parents was more recently. I had just gotten my FIF Jr cab in a playable state and my nieces were plugging away at it when my brother (their father) and our mom and dad all crammed in my daughters room (11x13) in front of the cab while everyone would take a turn playing and when they were done playing would step back and cheer the person who was playing on. Funny to have three adults and two kids sound like an entire football stadium.
-
I never think about this stuff. Cool that you brought it up as I see my mom in a renewed light. Dad was one of those, "infernal contraption" people, still is. As is my wife. Odd that. Odd and disturbing. Ah ---fudgesicle--- me, I'm my mother and I married the chick version of my father. Christ. Where's the brain bleach?!
---fudgesicle--- you yotsuya. Now I'm ruined for life.
Cool to see you got some weird reverse Oedipal Complex going on there, bro. :cheers:
-
My memories are attached to the Atari 5200 we had. My earliest gaming memory is my dad playing Pac-Man on it to the point the ghosts would stay blue forever (that version of the game had a weird glitch that at a certain level the ghosts wouldn't change back if you didn't eat any more power pellets- which gave me a weird backwards initial view of how arcade games worked, getting easier the farther you got).
Another good memory is always asking my mom to get me to the level in Kangaroo where you got to punch the big pillar of monkeys.
They never really played games after the 5200. I did!
-
My Grandmother had a ColecoVision. The entire extended family always went to her house for the holidays and all of us grand-kids would sit in a semi-circle on the couches in the living room and pass the controllers around. She never played it, ever. But she got all the extras for it so that all of us could have fun when we visited. She had the steering wheel setup, the big sports controllers that looked like boxing gloves with a joystick, the Atari 2600 adapter, even the keyboard... Maybe that's where I got my interest in computers?
-
Gaming was always difficult in my house and with my immediate family.
My brother tended to sneak over next door for a bit of weed and some gaming on the Atari Football and BiPlane, neither of which ever ---smurfing--- worked when I came around about ten years later. Instead I pumped quarters into Tempest, Tail Gunner and, if anyone was there, which was an astonishingly rare occurrence, four player pong. Guy had four or five cocktail pongs only one ever worked. The weed was also gone, which I'm not entirely sure helped or made things worse. :-\ Tempest and Tail Gunner took a ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- soon after some remodeling the owner did (claiming sawdust short circuited the cabs still kicking myself for never offering to buy them off of him).
So I bought myself an Atari XEGS with the quarters that didn't go into the cabs a few years later. My dad wasn't too keen on it, but my mom was a little more forgiving having taken a computing class at a nearby center a few years prior. The XEGS stayed in their bedroom for years with many a weekend spent trying my hand at AtariBASIC or playing Dark Chambers, Moon Patrol, Star Raiders or a handful of other games.
I eventually graduated like most people into various other console generations (never trying any programming other than back on the XEGS until I entered college). My father was truly adamant that the family would not get a "true" computer since the $2,000+ price tag could be put to better use elsewhere, like the snowmobile he never bought or the house insulation he always promised. ::) I love my father, but I'll be the first to say, he was a cheap bastard. The year I broke my arm, my father wanted to wait until the next day to make sure it wasn't a sprain because he felt the hospital visit would be too much. Pure ---smurfing--- agony trying to sleep that night with a broken arm. :oldman
Enough ranting. I got my first "true" PC entering college and I spent way too much for it. Around $1200 plus interest on my first credit card for a, IIRC, a 500MHz AMD K6II+DVD (no actual drive, just the hardware based decoder) from Rat Shack.
It was around that time I realized that my my own grandmother always tried her hardest to hide my, "nasty gaming habit," from my cousins. Some of which have gone off to work for various game companies around the bay area years later. "Dear old Grandmother" made every effort to prevent me from gravitating to the living room or one of the kids room every holiday to play, "those nasty dirty games." This was the NES era so I'm not sure what was nasty about Link or Mario. ??? My grandfather was far more supportive but yielded considerably to my grandmother.
That was the status quo until I obtained my PS2 and brought it to my mother's house one holiday. My mom was hooked for the first time, on all things, GTA:VC. Her favorite thing to do? Hijacking cars... go figure.
Not long after that, it came out with the rest of my extended family that I was a hard core gamer. Unfortunately, it was that same time I decided to severe nearly all ties with the rest of my extended family. My father and both grandparents are long gone by then. My mother's side has unfairly chastised me for my choices in life and my father's side well... I don't know what they think of me. They like to invite my mother, still, to holiday parties, but not myself or my immediate family. So ---fudgesicle--- 'em.
My gaming is largely private. Most of my family know very little about what I play or collect outside of what the immediate cousins on my wife's side find out from my kids. Ah well.... :dunno
-
My parents pretty much hate games. I got my dad to play one of those Jakks TV games of "deal or no deal" and he actually played it for like 2 weeks. I think thats the only video game he's ever played. My mom is a little more tolerant. She doesn't understand why I have so many arcade games, but she was super happy when I gave her the mini ms.pacman I made her. I dont think she's actually played it yet; but its good bragging rights to her friends I guess.
Now that I think about it, I dont know why I have so many arcade games either. :(
-
My mom is a little more tolerant. She doesn't understand why I have so many arcade games, but she was super happy when I gave her the mini ms.pacman I made her. I dont think she's actually played it yet; but its good bragging rights to her friends I guess.
Now that I think about it, I dont know why I have so many arcade games either. :(
Didn't you give her the extra Neo Geo Pocket Color I sent you?
-
Didn't you give her the extra Neo Geo Pocket Color I sent you?
Yup, and I got her the pacman game for it, she ended up going out on her own and getting magical drop and some sonic game.
-
I was talking to my mom tonight about video games. She has been after me to play her favorite game Drake: Uncharted for a while. This weekend I finally got around to starting it. Anyway I had this really surreal conversation with my mom giving me advice about which guns to pick up and how to win a gun fight. My favorite part was when she said you get a bonus of some kind for taking a bad guy down with a single shot to the head. :lol
-
My mom now owns an arcade machine! :o :o :o :o
She pretty much begged me to buy my Blitz cab, so its at her house now.
Cant wait for her to actually pay me for it!
-
My mom used to play tex adventure games on our Commodore 64. Later she, my two brothers, sister, and my self played throw Shadowgate and Déjà Vu on the NES. Then Monkey Island and Dracula unleashed on the Sega CD. We would come home and all come down stares to work through what ever game we were playing as a family.
Being a person with dyslexia she decided it would be a good idea if I played FF7 when it came out. My reading speed was improved more by that game, and the earlier FF titles that I played later, then any interventions that was tried before.
Just before I moved to Africa, I was staying with my parents. I bought the Indiana Jones scum games off steam and my mom and I played them before I felt.