The gaming market is already more profitable than film, television and music combined. There are about US$ 300 billion moved per year by the games. What appears to be something recent, in fact, is the result of decades of research, development, improvement and, of course, gamer loyalty.
In the 1980s, children, teenagers and adults were introduced to electronic games. Atari reigned at that time. Video games gained more traction in the market with the news from the 1990s.
It was in this decade that some of the most beloved consoles to date, such as Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, Sega Saturn and PlayStation, emerged.
It’s no exaggeration to say that fifth-generation consoles—those released between 1993 and 2002—have changed the gaming world. Thanks to them, 3D games have become recurrent and popular. In the case of the Nintendo 64, for example, some titles from the main Nintendo game franchises, such as Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Donkey Kong and Pokémon, caused a frenzy in the East and West.
But it wasn’t just Nintendo that thrilled young people in the past. Environmental analyst Felipe Melo Rezende, 43, says that he was one of those children who got up early to play a little before the day actually started. In the 1980s, Felipe would jump out of bed and go straight to the video store behind his house to play Fantastic Voyage no Atari. At the time, he lived in Pereira Barreto, in the interior of São Paulo, but today, he lives in Imbituba, Santa Catarina.
“The game took place inside the human body in which a spaceship, inside veins and arteries, was fighting invaders. At the age of 5 I discovered my first “cheat” [forma de burlar as regras do jogo]: if you kept forcing the ship against the vein wall, when it shrank, you would be left out of the challenges, earning points and passing phases without taking any risk. When my father woke up, I remember his congratulations and his pride for my high score and for the wit of discovering the shortcut,” he says.
Ladislau de Sena Junior, 49, also lived great moments with Atari. Now living in Montreal, Canada, Ladislau says he shared his routine between internship, school and playing video games. His favorite games on Atari were Odyssey, Enduro, Pac-Man, Frogger and River Raid, but there was always time for Nintendo’s Mario Bros.
José de Assis Oliveira, 38, did not have the money to buy a console, but he was passionate about arcade machines. “I must have been about 12 years old. And since I didn’t have any money, I used to sit around the machines watching my friends play. I used to earn some change, sometimes, when I carried gallons of water to neighbors and spent all the money on chips”, he says . “Each chip cost 10 cents and lasted 10 minutes.”
Gabriela Torres, 44, who lives in Recife, has never had a console to call her own either. She played Pac-Man, River Raid and F1 on Atari at her neighbor’s house. “My mom never agreed to buy me a video game, so I would join other kids at the neighbor’s house to play games for hours,” he recalls.
Journalist Helena Carnieri, 43, who lives in Curitiba, says that for a short time she was able to take advantage of her three years more than her brother to beat him at Atari, “but he went beyond me and became an ace at Super Mario Bros. Nobody surpasses my super brother”.
Fan of Nintendinho, Fabio Moyses Lins Dantas, 51, who lives in Rio de Janeiro, remembers Masayuki Uemura in a message sent to leaf. “I would borrow the video game from a friend and spend several hours playing it. I was an Arcade player and I was passionate about being able to play it at home. My deepest thanks to Mr. Uemura.”
Masayuki Uemura, who died on December 6th at the age of 78, was the creator of the system that gave rise to Nintendo and the reason for the leaf have asked their readers about their best gambling memories. See some more reports sent to the newspaper:
Games have always been part of my life. I was born in the late 1970s, and in the 1980s I got my first video game, an Atari that I plugged into tube TV and played with my brother and friends. At the beginning, we thought those squares that we imagined were heroes and race cars were fantastic, played always after finishing our homework and at times that didn’t compete with the newspaper and the soap opera, since we only had one TV at home. In the 1990s we got our first 3rd generation video game, a Nintendo that was a special member of that phase of my adolescence. I miss swapping tapes with friends, playing games with popcorn and soda, and stopping by the video store to rent a tape combo to face a long weekend. Super Mário was a companion at this stage that I always remember with nostalgia, perhaps because time makes us remember the good times more sweetly. Today I play when work and chores with the house and small children allow, but much less than I would like. I believe it’s a way to keep that dreamy and imaginative child and teenager inside me. My little one, 3 years old, already accompanies me as an observer and I want to teach him how to be a conscientious player who can get the good part out of this form of entertainment.
January 13, 1992. My father walks through the brown gate of his house at lunchtime, carrying a huge white package on top of his motorcycle tank. The difficulty he had in driving the vehicle to bring me that package on my birthday passed lightly through my mind. Nor did I think of the sacrifice he made to buy such an expensive gift back then. What I wanted was to see soon working that device so desired and that gave me so much joy during that summer and for the next five years: the Mega Drive. In the years that followed, I rented many cartridges, fought and reconciled with my brother, made new friends and learned English naturally, all thanks to the device. I am witness that video games develop intellectual and motor skills and serve as a balm in a phase of life that can be the most difficult of all: adolescence. Today I have my small collection of consoles, and Mega Drive is there among them, working perfectly, as a witness to a time when everything could be so complicated even though it was simple.
I played a lot of SNES, actually I still play. Video games are a hobby I will take with me for a lifetime. I remember that when I was 7 or 8 years old, in 1995/96, my joy and mine were Friday nights, as sometimes my father would let us rent tapes at a video store in the center, close to where he worked. Waking up on Saturday morning to play Megaman X2, X3, Mortal Kombat 2, Super Mario RPG, Street Fighter Alpha 2, Bomberman 2, among others, was an immense joy. Also, I remember that the street gang gathered at my house to reset Megaman X (only the older ones played, of course, and the little ones just watched, but it was really cool). Today I have a penultimate generation console. I don’t intend to buy the newest one, it’s too expensive. I really play it’s my retrogame with thousands of games from my childhood, not to mention cartridges and SNES consoles that I made a point of buying, but they are kept as a souvenir.
.
I have over 8 years of experience in the news industry. I have worked for various news websites and have also written for a few news agencies. I mostly cover healthcare news, but I am also interested in other topics such as politics, business, and entertainment. In my free time, I enjoy writing fiction and spending time with my family and friends.
_134804.jpg?fit=%2C&ssl=1)
