Penny Arcade - Comic - The Upstairs Room

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Penny Arcade - Comic - The Upstairs Room

Videogaming-related online strip by Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins. Includes news and commentary.

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Johnny17

Awesome things you can do if you keep your kids away from other kids.

V1m

Tycho's kids are mainly kept in the cellar, I believe.

ironzerg

I got my kids a Switch 2 years ago. We were playing Mario Kart, and I told them that I played the very first version when I was younger. One of my kids legit asked me if it was in color.

A few weeks ago, I brought the Command and Conquer remaster to play with them. When I hit the space bar to turn it to the original graphics, they thought I broke the game. I told them that back when this was first released, these were cutting edge graphics.

My oldest was like, "Wow, that must've been a really long time ago."

My youngest was like, "The 90's?"

Which made me realized that C&C was released in 1995, over 25 years ago...which is about the same amount of time passed between Pong in the 70's and me being blown away watching the CGI on a TV monitor outside of Babbage's while drinking an Icee in a mall, and that teenager growing up to share stories about that moment with his kids.

Damn you time, you sonuvabitch.

Lucascraft

Kids these days can still get a taste of retro graphics, mostly from the indie scene. But even big hits like Minecraft, or the new Valheim, evoke a strong sense of the past with their intentional old-school vibe. Valheim looks like a game from 1999.

Personally, I love pixel graphics, and games from the 16bit era still look great in my opinion. And one of the most beautiful games of the current console generation is Octopath Traveler. That game completely blew me away with it's modernization of pixel graphics.

dennis

ironzerg wrote: »

I got my kids a Switch 2 years ago. We were playing Mario Kart, and I told them that I played the very first version when I was younger. One of my kids legit asked me if it was in color.

A few weeks ago, I brought the Command and Conquer remaster to play with them. When I hit the space bar to turn it to the original graphics, they thought I broke the game. I told them that back when this was first released, these were cutting edge graphics.

My oldest was like, "Wow, that must've been a really long time ago."

My youngest was like, "The 90's?"

Which made me realized that C&C was released in 1995, over 25 years ago...which is about the same amount of time passed between Pong in the 70's and me being blown away watching the CGI on a TV monitor outside of Babbage's while drinking an Icee in a mall, and that teenager growing up to share stories about that moment with his kids.

Damn you time, you sonuvabitch.

Yeah, it was somewhat of a tragedy for me to realize that to a kid who is 10 years old now, the 1980s were as long ago as the 1940s were when I was 10.

Tofystedeth

Lucascraft wrote: »

Kids these days can still get a taste of retro graphics, mostly from the indie scene. But even big hits like Minecraft, or the new Valheim, evoke a strong sense of the past with their intentional old-school vibe. Valheim looks like a game from 1999.

Personally, I love pixel graphics, and games from the 16bit era still look great in my opinion. And one of the most beautiful games of the current console generation is Octopath Traveler. That game completely blew me away with it's modernization of pixel graphics.

Yeah other than the absurdly aggressive, headache inducing, fuzzing around the edges of the screen (which thankfully can be disabled in the PC version with config edits) Octopath has a fantastic implementation of that kind of sprite based graphics from the SNES golden age of RPGs.

Steel Angel

ironzerg wrote: »

I got my kids a Switch 2 years ago. We were playing Mario Kart, and I told them that I played the very first version when I was younger. One of my kids legit asked me if it was in color.

A few weeks ago, I brought the Command and Conquer remaster to play with them. When I hit the space bar to turn it to the original graphics, they thought I broke the game. I told them that back when this was first released, these were cutting edge graphics.

My oldest was like, "Wow, that must've been a really long time ago."

My youngest was like, "The 90's?"

Which made me realized that C&C was released in 1995, over 25 years ago...which is about the same amount of time passed between Pong in the 70's and me being blown away watching the CGI on a TV monitor outside of Babbage's while drinking an Icee in a mall, and that teenager growing up to share stories about that moment with his kids.

Damn you time, you sonuvabitch.

Would this be a bad time to note that the All Your Base meme is now 20 years old?

Hevach

Johnny17 wrote: »

Awesome things you can do if you keep your kids away from other kids.

My 5 year old came home from preschool recently and said, "Michael's daddy has a better X-box than you, daddy!"

I've got a bottle of Tullamore Dew waiting for the day he figures out that there was a whole other X-box after mine but before Michael's daddy's.

doompooky

Oh nice! They've got my two favorite 64 peripherals, the Badminton Pak and Reapsickle 64

lionheartssj

I have a similar plan to reveal old tech and TV programming to my kids.

Rhesus Positive

My future kids will be raised based on the Civ V tech tree

No learning to ride a trike until you've grasped agriculture and animal husbandry, young man - then tomorrow we'll move on to maths

shoeboxjeddy

From the newspost: "I asked him what he thought of the game, and he said that it was pretty good, but that it copied a lot of stuff from Fortnite."

https://twitter.com/afraidofwasps/status/1177301482464526337?s=20

some rando twitter user "Guy who has only seen The Boss Baby, watching his second movie: Getting a lot of 'Boss Baby' vibes from this..."

Preacher

I like that gabes kids are like gabe himself with him claiming warhammer ripped off warcraft.

MarcinMN

This comic seems fitting for the discussion in this thread.

BillieVee

MarcinMN wrote: »

This comic seems fitting for the discussion in this thread.

This year, the PS2 becomes old enough to drink. How time flies.

dennis

And... err... the NES is old enough to be elected president.

Bropocalypse

Unironically, maybe we *should* make a little effort to expose the next generation to, well, the previous generations. It's an art form, isn't it? One worthy of preservation? And a formative part of our microcosmic culture. And if the old games are fun, they'll still be fun, even if age has exposed a little awkwardness around its edges.

Zenigata

The only problem with going back and playing old games now, a lot were somewhat cryptic. They expected you to read the manual before playing. Design kind of followed the tutorial/teach by playing approach in most cases as time went on, so playing some old NES and SNES/Genesis games can be a trying experience for someone who never played them originally.

I was around for those old point and click adventure games where you had to type the commands like "Open door" or "Grab thing" and my brain does not work well trying to do those even now. If you grew up with it, seems pretty obvious.

dennis

Zenigata wrote: »

The only problem with going back and playing old games now, a lot were somewhat cryptic.

This is very much true, but not the problem at my house. Here, the old stuff is lacking in that you can't design your own levels, or modify the code in any way.

Your nine year old may vary.

cB557

Solid chance the kid knows that the stuff isn't copied from Fortnite, but knows that saying that they are hurts Gabe.

Incenjucar

Bropocalypse wrote: »

Unironically, maybe we *should* make a little effort to expose the next generation to, well, the previous generations. It's an art form, isn't it? One worthy of preservation? And a formative part of our microcosmic culture. And if the old games are fun, they'll still be fun, even if age has exposed a little awkwardness around its edges.

There are a number of museums of old games, including online museums. For example, the Museum of Soviet Arcade games. Notably, video games are somewhat descended from other kinds of arcade games that are increasingly obscure.

YoungFrey

Zenigata wrote: »

The only problem with going back and playing old games now, a lot were somewhat cryptic. They expected you to read the manual before playing. Design kind of followed the tutorial/teach by playing approach in most cases as time went on, so playing some old NES and SNES/Genesis games can be a trying experience for someone who never played them originally.

I was around for those old point and click adventure games where you had to type the commands like "Open door" or "Grab thing" and my brain does not work well trying to do those even now. If you grew up with it, seems pretty obvious.

And some of them expected you to talk to other people and get hints. Or read tips in a magazine. I believe The Legend Of Zelda was designed with that in mind. But I might be thinking of Mega Man.

MarcinMN

Zenigata wrote: »

The only problem with going back and playing old games now, a lot were somewhat cryptic. They expected you to read the manual before playing. Design kind of followed the tutorial/teach by playing approach in most cases as time went on, so playing some old NES and SNES/Genesis games can be a trying experience for someone who never played them originally.

I was around for those old point and click adventure games where you had to type the commands like "Open door" or "Grab thing" and my brain does not work well trying to do those even now. If you grew up with it, seems pretty obvious.

Fortunately, I actually still have all the printed material for pretty much all of my games. Now if I just had some kids....

MichaelLC

MarcinMN wrote: »

Zenigata wrote: »

The only problem with going back and playing old games now, a lot were somewhat cryptic. They expected you to read the manual before playing. Design kind of followed the tutorial/teach by playing approach in most cases as time went on, so playing some old NES and SNES/Genesis games can be a trying experience for someone who never played them originally.

I was around for those old point and click adventure games where you had to type the commands like "Open door" or "Grab thing" and my brain does not work well trying to do those even now. If you grew up with it, seems pretty obvious.

Fortunately, I actually still have all the printed material for pretty much all of my games. Now if I just had some kids....

Just like an NVIDA RTX 3090, you can expect delivery in about 9 months...

Ringo

YoungFrey wrote: »

Zenigata wrote: »

The only problem with going back and playing old games now, a lot were somewhat cryptic. They expected you to read the manual before playing. Design kind of followed the tutorial/teach by playing approach in most cases as time went on, so playing some old NES and SNES/Genesis games can be a trying experience for someone who never played them originally.

I was around for those old point and click adventure games where you had to type the commands like "Open door" or "Grab thing" and my brain does not work well trying to do those even now. If you grew up with it, seems pretty obvious.

And some of them expected you to talk to other people and get hints. Or read tips in a magazine. I believe The Legend Of Zelda was designed with that in mind. But I might be thinking of Mega Man.

The GameFAQs revolution saved us all

doompooky

dennis wrote: »

Zenigata wrote: »

The only problem with going back and playing old games now, a lot were somewhat cryptic.

This is very much true, but not the problem at my house. Here, the old stuff is lacking in that you can't design your own levels, or modify the code in any way.

Your nine year old may vary.

This is the most Montessori kid problem I've ever heard and I love it

dennis

doompooky wrote: »

dennis wrote: »

Zenigata wrote: »

The only problem with going back and playing old games now, a lot were somewhat cryptic.

This is very much true, but not the problem at my house. Here, the old stuff is lacking in that you can't design your own levels, or modify the code in any way.

Your nine year old may vary.

This is the most Montessori kid problem I've ever heard and I love it

Thanks, though I probably have to chalk it up a bit more to him being non-neurotypical.

BillieVee

Bropocalypse wrote: »

Unironically, maybe we *should* make a little effort to expose the next generation to, well, the previous generations. It's an art form, isn't it? One worthy of preservation? And a formative part of our microcosmic culture. And if the old games are fun, they'll still be fun, even if age has exposed a little awkwardness around its edges.

My son has discovered a few old school games on his own by watching let's plays. He hasn't tried playing them himself yet, but it's a start, I think.

Zoku Gojira

Just the other day, I watched someone stream Wing Commander (1990), which will turn 31 this year. The first grainy photograph of the Earth from space turned 31 in that game’s release year.

shadowysea07

Lucky kids to be playing the gamecube for the first time. Some of my favorite entries in most series were on that. Tales of symphonia, mario kart double dash, smash brothers melee, pokemon colosseum and gale of darkness, fire emblem path of radiance, paper mario ttyd....

azith28

Honestly, one of the smartest ways to raise a kid on video games, assuming you could get away with it. It also makes the violence realism ramp up slowly so your kids wont mistake games from Real life.

dennis

azith28 wrote: »

It also makes the violence realism ramp up slowly so your kids wont mistake games from Real life.

Isn't that the textbook way of desensitizing someone to something?

Seriously, though, he seems to be mainly focusing on Nintendo. Kids might be a little too unprepared for violence.

Sterica

dennis wrote: »

And... err... the NES is old enough to be elected president.

Mario/Luigi 2024

Djiem

Sterica wrote: »

dennis wrote: »

And... err... the NES is old enough to be elected president.

Mario/Luigi 2024

They have my vote; I don't recall either of them ever saying anything stupid.

dennis

Djiem wrote: »

Sterica wrote: »

dennis wrote: »

And... err... the NES is old enough to be elected president.

Mario/Luigi 2024

They have my vote; I don't recall either of them ever saying anything stupid.

Yeah, but Mario's been caught on film doing a LOT of mushrooms...

Steel Angel

dennis wrote: »

Djiem wrote: »

Sterica wrote: »

dennis wrote: »

And... err... the NES is old enough to be elected president.

Mario/Luigi 2024

They have my vote; I don't recall either of them ever saying anything stupid.

Yeah, but Mario's been caught on film doing a LOT of mushrooms...

That's the least of his issues as a candidate

https://youtu.be/RlMVmITMM70

https://youtu.be/PcRAYRirtZQ