Word: atari
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Until very recently, emulators had a more innocent image. They were--and to many gamers still are--a way to connect with a simpler computer era and play legendary games for long-dead consoles like the Commodore 64 or Atari 2600. Like so much of late-'90s culture, the emulator scene became cool by being retro. Nick Vigier, 19, a computer-science major at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., last summer found and downloaded a classic version of Frogger and an Atari emulator. Sounding like a member of a previous generation who collected Pez dispensers, he explains, "You can relive...
Picture the good old days of video games. Arcade games were still found in places other than seedy bowling alleys, and "Pac-Man" had his own T.V. cartoon. Formerly cool Atari was being phased out, and an upstart company named Nintendo was emerging. Even better, they were manufacturing something dazzling and new: 8-bit home video games. Crisper graphics, better sound and enough games to make you dizzy with anticipation...
...hopelessly out of control, computers again arrived to rescue Bennahum. For his Bar Mitzvah, his dad promised him any gift if he would not invite the friends who got him into trouble. He followed his Dad's advice, and, moreover, he cut ties with them. Thus he received an Atari 800 with 48K of R.A.M. and a dual floppy disk drive. It was a turning point in his life: as his interest in computers grew throughout high school, his grades rose in direct proportion...
...sense, teenagers of that time and computers grew up together, experiencing the same growing pains. "Together, computer and kid existed in a golden age, a time when the machine was available to us unconcealed, stripped to its component parts, when adults barely understood what we were doing...for the Atari generation the evolution of the machine briefly matched that of our adolescent selves, becoming a vessel and partner, a coconspirator in our mutual coming...
Likewise, it's easy to imagine Gomez, 27, who grew up in Southern California, chuckling and whispering "Cool!" to himself as he taps away at his keyboard, adding another reference to Atari nostalgia or the triple-X ads at the back of L.A. Weekly into the novel...