©This story is property of The
CyBurr, the online version of The Burr,
Joystick Generation
The
children of the '80s have grown up, but not out of their love for gaming.
Story by Steven Hido
Photos by Pat Jarrett
Build a personal arcade
machine. Play football in a bar. Boogie the night away on a lighted steel
platform.
There are no holds barred
these days when it comes to playing video games, and there is certainly no age
limit.
Gaming has become a hobby, a
contest and a weight-loss plan. It has permeated the lives of young adults in
“Riding the Nostalgia Wave”
Building a custom arcade
machine seemed impossible to senior advertising major Pat Kellett
just last spring. But after some quick online research, he discovered the
venture would be quite possible. He spent the summer monopolizing the family
garage, sawing, hammering and wiring.
By
“It was sweet,” says Gross, a
junior accounting major. “We had finally achieved what so many could only dream
about: building the ultimate arcade machine.”
They dubbed it the Ubermachine.
“Every child who grew up in
the ’80s played a video game at some point in their young life,” Gross says.
“Building and playing that arcade machine brings back memories of our
childhood. It brings back memories of late-night sleepovers with friends
crowded around 8-bit Nintendo or the birthday parties at the arcade.”
After conjoining condensed
wood, a refurbished computer, a dissembled keyboard, a hard drive, a sub
woofer, four flat-panel speakers, two joy sticks, some buttons and a
fluorescent light to illuminate the machine’s moniker, Kellett
insists, “It’s not as complex as it looks.”
He says it just runs off a computer.
All its games are downloaded from the Internet, burned onto a cd and installed in the computer.
Complex or not, the Ubermachine is an impressive-looking apparatus. Kellett’s homespun machine towers over any human who enters
his dorm room. The sides are intricately hand-painted with the faces of
Japanese Anime characters and Marvel Comics heroes.
Despite its computer
hardware, no computer games are played on the Ubermachine.
“Computer games are fine,” Kellett says, “but they seem to be much more involved. I
don't have a whole lot of time on my hands. I’d rather just fire up the arcade,
play a quick game of Pac-Man and go back to my homework.”
The Ubermachine
houses about 1,000 games. That's about every game Nintendo has ever made plus
about 300 old-school games such as Pac-Man.
“I’ve been riding the
nostalgia wave,” Kellett says.
As illegal as his project
technically is, Kellett says he isn’t concerned.
“I built this arcade machine
to regain a wonderful part of my childhood and share it with everyone,” he
says. “So it doesn’t concern me that I'm downloading roms
illegally because I'm not making any money off of it. It's solely for my
enjoyment.”
As resident assistant for the
first floor of Centennial Court F, Kellett always has
students coming into his room to test his creation. Kellett’s
favorite experiment is to see how his supposedly technically advanced floormates fare against simple video games of the 1980s.
“They get so frustrated when
they can’t beat Donkey Kong,” Kellett says, smiling.
Gazing at his handiwork with
affection, Kellett says, “Some people have their
alcohol. I have my arcade machine.”
The Madden Tournament
The rules for the Paninis Bar & Grill open-invitation Monday night Madden
NFL tournament are stated in red marker on a white board. The board promises
the winner half of the evening’s jackpot. Every contestant puts $5 in the pot,
so tonight’s winner will walk away with about $30. Madden NFL is a game that
has two players controlling the electronic movements of opposing football teams.
Faith Hill’s voice fades.
From this point on, the jukebox belches more battle-friendly sounds. Rage Against the Machine’s Bombtrack
and Nirvana’s Come As You Are easily drown out the crackling of raw potatoes as
they morph into French fries. The games are set and will be played on two
4-foot screens mounted on the wall, separated by Heineken and Coors Light
mirrors.
“I’m Philly, and you’re not,”
Wes Purvis says, three inches from Paninis
owner Jimmy Tribuzzo’s face.
“Why are you Philly?” Tribuzzo asks.
“Because I won the coin
flip,” Purvis responds. “You made the rules, now live ’em.”
Purvis doesn’t usually like
to play as
“No matter how good you are
at home, you might fold under pressure here,” Braxton says. “It’s like, if
you’re watching a game, you know all the answers. But if you were there, you
might freeze up.”
Adding Madden NFL as an
attraction took some tricky rewiring through the bar’s ceiling and walls, but Tribuzzo says it was well worth it.
“It’s a good opportunity for
guys to get together for some friendly competition,” he adds.
Or
not.
Upon being jettisoned from
the tournament for the second time in one night (early losers can buy their way
back in for $2), Ross Slovenec, senior justice studies
major, kicks over a bar stool and mutters the f-word. He then proceeds to fling
the bathroom door open with his fist, letting loose a second, much clearer,
much louder, f-word. Tribuzzo shouts a reminder that
it is only a game while returning the stool to its upright position.
“I’ll be back next week and
collect my money back,” Slovenec says after a pee and
a breather.
Jamal Nickens
of Macedonia owns 1,200 games, typically spends 30 hours a week mastering them
and sleeps on public concrete when a new system hits the stores so he can be
the very first to experience it.
As a sales associate for E.B.
Games, as well as master of ceremonies to his own in-home, five-day-straight
video game festival, he understands the camaraderie video games can induce.
“Human interaction in many
games is so important,” Nickens says. “Like that one
time with five seconds left in the game. You’re on defense, and your opponent
throws up a Hail Mary and wins. Or you’re at the bar, it’s the 18th hole and
you sink a 40-foot putt to win the round. These things will be discussed
amongst everyone who participated forever. It’s just another bonding experience
but through the use of video games.”
As the majority of tempers
are kept in check, alcohol keeps flowing at the bar—a fact not lost on the
consummate strategist Braxton.
“What I’m hoping for is that
as the night goes on, everyone keeps drinking,” says the social drinker, who
claims to not touch the stuff in an arena like this. “Then maybe they’ll be
indecisive. If I had a little more money I’d buy everyone drinks.”
The Revolution
Upon stumbling onto a home
edition of Dance, Dance Revolution for the first time in July, Jason Jones had
no idea how much the game would eventually deplete his free time—or his
waistline.
“I was drunk at a party and
decided to make an ass out of myself,” Jones, a 22-year-old gas station
attendant from Streetsboro, says. He says he has been a long-time video game
fanatic and that the video game tricked him into exercising.
At first, I was like, ‘This is
fun.’ Then I was like ‘Wait. Why am I sweating?’”
“I’m sure it was out to get
you,” says Erika Dearman, a 25-year-old
“I know,” Jones replies. “I’m
sure the machine was like, ‘I’m going to make this pudgy kid work out.’”
After discovering the art of
DDR that fateful night, and after deciding the Atkins Diet “sucked,” Jones hit
the public arcade-style machines full time. With 10-pound weights latched onto
his ankles, he danced, danced for six hours a day until an astonishing 50
pounds melted from his frame.
“I’m like the Subway guy with
goggles,” Jones says, referring to the yellow swim goggles wrapped around his
forehead.
DDR is a decade-old Japanese
interactive game in which players keep up with streaming arrows that dictate
which of four hot spots the player must hit with his foot. The 3-by-5 metal
platform is divided in two sections with a total of eight squares so two can
play side-by-side, each at his own level: beginner, light, standard, heavy or
the master’s realm known as “oni.” Then players
choose from almost 200 songs (some American standards like “In the Navy” and
“We Are the Champions,” but mostly Japanese tunes), each of which has three to
four difficulty levels.
Garon Niehaus, senior history major, then points to Jones, who
has already mounted the DDR machine in the
“And he can probably do them
all,” Niehaus says.
Niehaus,
like most everyone else in the clan, has played ddr
for about two years. But the stern dedication Jones has put into the game has
left his more experienced friends in the dust.
A sincere sense of dorkiness unquestionably unites Jones, Dearman
and the bunch. As they take a break from ddr, sitting
between the bowling alley and the pool tables, they delight in mocking a couple
who unknowingly step onto their turf.
“First
date?” Dearman quietly asks the gang.
“Wow,” Jones wonders.
“If you take your first date
to play DDR … That’s umm … Yeah, that’s what I would do.”
His tone doesn’t quite reveal
if he is kidding. He confirms the joke by saying he would like to have his
wedding reception at an arcade.
“That would be sweet,” Niehaus replies.
The look in his eyes reveals
he is definitely not kidding.
After the young lovers move
to the air hockey table, Jones reclaims his post. Only this time he paces
across the entire platform, not just the left or right side. Jones is about to
cover the entire board. That is, he is going to do the work of two DDR players
dancing side by side.
“This is gonna
make me sick,” Niehaus says.
Freshman computer science
major Jordan Smith, a two-year veteran of the game, shakes his head in awe.
With Jones’ display of
showmanship over, Niehaus steps up. His hulking body taking up just half the base, leaving the other
half empty. He programs the machine to play La Bamba
on a medium speed.
Niehaus is
not nearly as graceful as Jones. His bulky boots thump the arrows like Godzilla
in a freshly painted
Back at the Ubermachine
Video games have been with us
since the early 1970s. But just as technology has grown in the last 20 years,
so has
“We are in the middle of a
technology revolution now where games are becoming more and more mainstream,” Kellett says. “People have been addicted to arcade games
and home console systems since I was a baby. It’s just becoming more mainstream.”
Kellett’s Ubermachine has garnered him much attention. He predicted
that would happen. It has also brought a few unwarranted slurs his way. He’s
heard everything from “rich snob” to “weird” to “Oh, my God, that kid’s got an
arcade machine” as people leisurely pass his dorm room.
The Ubermachine
was named in honor of Kellett’s friend, Gross, who he
describes as “real German.”
“And I’m pretty sure it means
super or great,” Kellett says.
Steven
Hido (shido@kent.edu)
The Future of Video Games
Video games have surpassed
the film industry in revenue, says Thomas Jung, academic director of media
arts, animation, game art and design at the Art Institute of California-Orange
County.
Jung currently teaches a
course on designing backgrounds for video games. He has worked on designing
such titles as Oddworld: Abe’s Exodus and Diablo 2
Expansion.
Jung says he sees the future
of video games expanding in who they appeal to.
“Eventually, there will be a
game for every market, from a 5-year-old to a 70-year-old. The Japanese market
has already begun to exhibit that,” he says.
Matt Twogood,
vice president of Triggerfingers Games, an Internet
game rental company, says he sees the future of gaming as becoming more
interactive.
“Things similar to the sci-fi
world like holodecks and virtual reality,” he says.
Twogood
also says he envisions video games within the next ten years will resemble the
technology in the film Minority Report.
--Steven Harbaugh
©This story is property of The
CyBurr, the online version of The Burr,