Let’s take a trip back in time. When we would all rush home from school, finish or push off all of our homework – that really foreshadowed what type of student and person we would be now. Waiting those six hours to finally be able to play our favorite games, between a basic tic-tac-toe at a diner or the fancier Wii games. Let’s take a look at the comparisons from games we cherished as children versus now.
Pokémon. There I said it. During our youth, waiting in the line at Walmart and having those packaged Pokémon cards glare at us and make us beg our parents to get them for us. The binders that we would carry to trade cards with our friends. We would battle our best and strongest Pokémon. This definitely triggered our strategic knowledge we know and use today. We shoved our binder in the corner of our bookshelf to collect dust when the Nintendo DS, then the Nintendo Switch came out. We are now able to battle, trade and play Pokémon for hours on end through the technology that has developed over the past few decades. Let’s be honest, we still hide our device under our pillow and pretend we are asleep when someone comes into our room.
Classic board games, ah nostalgia. “Chutes and Ladders”, “Apples to Apples”, “Guess Who”, even “Go Fish” and “Checkers”. The games that you could grab out of the game closet when you knew that your best friends were coming over for the night. They became “baby games” and evolved into “Sorry”, “Monopoly” and “Catan“. These games included strategy rather than just guessing all the time. This was our preteen years where losing meant the end of the world to that person who is overly competitive now.
Now in 2022, it is “Cards Against Humanity”. There are so many ways to play that game and it changes with every new member that enters. There are endless laughs that remind us of how easy it was to giggle at something, just like in “Guess Who”.
There are hundreds of games that we would even come up with on our own. Ghosts in the Graveyard, Man on Woodchips, and more that we would play during recess or even when it got a little too late and our parents would scream to have us come inside. Those were the easier days. The generation coming up will only know the days of Xbox when we had the basic old game of tag.
Maggie McInnis, ‘23, sums up the difference between the games we played then versus now: “Then, I loved sitting and playing games. Now, I’m going for blood.” We have definitely become more competitive with the games we play now. Even with online videogames, talking trash to someone halfway around the world. No matter if you’re still a lover of Jenga and Twister or a supporter of God of War or League of Legends; do what you love and go for blood while doing it.
