The Winter Olympic Games [2] start on Friday. Thousands of athletes from around the globe will compete for the gold and the glory. I certainly won't be one of them, but at least I can still compete when it comes to video games. Sort of. I could kick some pixels in the days of Space Invaders, Bubble Bobble, and BurgerTime. And if something went wrong, I could always blame the controllers. "It's the button! It's sticking!" or "I'm telling you, this joystick is messed up." Admit it. You know you did it too. It's what you said when you were playing Tetrisand you just couldn't get that s-block to fit in the row. Trying to blame the controller doesn't get you too far anymore, but you can still reminisce about the days when it was a real possibility.Take a trip back in time with these books from the Harris County Public Library system:
The Rough Guide to Videogames [3] by Kate Berens & Geoff Howard
Supercade : A Visual History of the Videogame age, 1971-1984 [4] by Van Burnham
The Ultimate History of Video Games : From Pong to Pokemon, The Story Behind the Craze that Touched Our Lives and Changed the World [5] by Steven L. Kent.
This special Guinness book contains some interesting and unusual video game records. If you can beat them, you could find your name in the 2010 edition:
Round out your nostalgia trip with some symphonic versions of your favorite video game music:
What are some of your favorite video games and gaming memories (classic or otherwise)?
- competition [8]
- Nonfiction [9]
- video games [10]
