When you were a kid, what did you think games would become?

[Cronozilla]

Tangent response:
The problem with cyclical timelines is there's no beginning. That, or we're only seeing iteration n where n is greater than zero.

However, if the timeline changed once ... why wouldn't it continue to change every time it was repeated? I'm not saying it, in fact, doesn't in Ecco or 12 Monkeys. But it's not how it's portrayed. It's always portrayed in a Slaughterhouse V mentality of this is how it is, and always will be.

Which ... again, raises the question of ... how could it possible have happened the first time?

[Ivo]

The cyclical time travel issue is the same "issue" with the treatment in Gargoyles (and thanks Key_Glyph for the mention of Ecco - I forgot about that as the DC Ecco does not treat time travel the same, self-consistent way).

I have not watched 12 monkeys.

I think it is easy to see that at the very least self-consistency with this "issue" is better than no self-consistency without this "issue".

Cronozilla, I don't think you are interpreting it correctly when you say there is no beginning or that you only see iteration greater than zero. Iteration zero already has the time-traveller pop up in the "past" regardless. There is no change, not even once. It was always like that. Which would mean that the only time-travel possible is extremely restrictive and must be repeated exactly. This is the main issue I find with it. It would be arguably possible (but extremely constrained to set up) on a simplistic mechanical level (and even that makes one wonder about quantum mechanics) but with people I find it implies a very deterministic interpretation of human behaviour (which is a philosophical discussion in its own right and we should not get into it now, perhaps).

Imagine the following situation in a weird spacetime that is basically a pool table with two instantaneous time-travel portals and just 1 transparent ball that has a timer inside (this allows you to conveniently distinguish the time travel balls).
The original ball is heading uniformly in a trajectory that would not put it through the outgoing portal. Then another timer ball pops up in the incoming portal with exactly X seconds in its timer, hits the "original" cue ball and sends it to the outgoing portal when its own timer is at X seconds. For a short period of time, there are two "copies" of the ball in the table, in the end there is only one that has already done the loop, and in the start there is only one that hasn't been in the loop yet. Thinking about conservation of energy and momentum gives issues. But also, after choosing the locations of the portals, if they preserve the momentum of the outgoing and incoming ball, how can you make it that only "classical mechanics" trajectories that enable this to be cyclic are allowed? The incoming ball has to hit the outgoing ball in exactly the right way so that it enters the outgoing portal with the momentum of the incoming ball. It is not impossible to find such setups of portal locations, initial momentum, and "initial" momentum of the incoming ball that would lead to a self-consistent solution (ignoring all the other issues), but the huge amount of random sets of these key variables would not work cyclically at all.

Now imagine setting something like that up even with just one person

Tangent response:
The problem with cyclical timelines is there's no beginning. That, or we're only seeing iteration n where n is greater than zero.

However, if the timeline changed once ... why wouldn't it continue to change every time it was repeated? I'm not saying it, in fact, doesn't in Ecco or 12 Monkeys. But it's not how it's portrayed. It's always portrayed in a Slaughterhouse V mentality of this is how it is, and always will be.

Which ... again, raises the question of ... how could it possible have happened the first time?

[pakopako]

I dreamed that someday we would have a Nintendo console that would playing every Nintendo game ever made, I was right with the Wii and its virtual console.

And some HBC applets.

[foowrb]

I was a hardcore gamer when I was younger, but the idea of loving a video game has become a distant memory for me. I feel like a victim of the FMV and VR hype of the 1990s. The video games that I played combined with the VR themed movies that I watched, and the futuristic literature that I read was responsible for making me believe that the video game industry was going to evolve in a completely different way than it did. Since the year 2000 I watched as the industry evolved from something that I love into something that I hate. I think the captains of the industry wrote the rules for video games many years ago and most game developers have been following them ever since. It’s like they’re stuck in a cultural bubble that promotes redundancy and hinders innovation. You can find some amount of redundancy in all forms of entertainment, but I believe there is more creativity, diversity, and innovation in movies, television, and books.

If this was the year 2000 and you wanted to know what I thought the video game industry would look like by the year 2012 I would have told you that it would look almost exactly like it does today. I was an optimistic dreamer back then, but there was a part of me that was also very pessimistic. The world would be a very different place if some of my dreams became a reality by the year 2012. There would be several companies making non-existent forms of interactive entertainment. Video games would be more than childish distractions. Most interactive entertainment would have some kind of educational value. A significant percentage of movies and fictional Ebooks would be interactive. I won’t go into all of the details that I have in my mind, but let’s just say that they would be a significant improvement over the FMV games of the past. I would also have the option of going to high-tech entertainment centers where I could play skill-based games for cash (Improved versions of MLG or VirginGaming.Com) or pay for private rooms where I could view my interactive entertainment on a smaller version of the IMAX dome or with a good head mounted display, thus giving me a 180 degree field of view.

[D.D.D.]

Back when the SNES CD was coming out, I thought the TMNT cartoon intro was going to be on the TMNT SNES game disc. And I also really hoped that live-action games would never come out. If I wanted reality, I'd go outside.

[J_Wil]

I imagined that most actual gameplay would look as good as the FMV from games like Tekken on Playstation. Obviously, we've moved beyond that.

[Runefaust]

When I was a kid I used to imagine the day when we would have a game that looked as good as Space Ace or Dragon's Lair (full blown 2D animation) but plays completely responsive like a platform or fighting game. Growing up I learned a bit more about both animation and video games was I wised up but my dream was, more or less, fulfilled when I first laid eyes on a 3rd Strike arcade. The visuals were just too good!