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

[J T]

I really thought the hologram thing would take off, but it choked.

[WallCrusher]

On the less practical side, I wanted the freedom to say and do anything I wanted, and have the characters and world respond appropriately every time.

That's something I've always wanted and still want, even today. Sigh...

[wip3outguy7]

I imagined giant mega-arcades that would allow linked play with people taking on various roles in large battlefields. Giant rooms filled with 50 battle pods.

I also believed that a relationship between console and arcade versions of games would have been in full swing. Buy a smaller version of the game on your console, build your character and take them with you via VMU like device to your nearest arcade to compete with others.

It did become this...in Japan.

Edit: Yeah, you're right. Now that I think about it, I believed games like Border Break would be filling (still thriving) arcades everywhere. An interface too expensive to bring home (well, maybe not for long) and you can buy cards to hold your data and scores to take with you.

I guess I just grew up in the wrong future.

[BoringSupreez]

I imagined giant mega-arcades that would allow linked play with people taking on various roles in large battlefields. Giant rooms filled with 50 battle pods.

I also believed that a relationship between console and arcade versions of games would have been in full swing. Buy a smaller version of the game on your console, build your character and take them with you via VMU like device to your nearest arcade to compete with others.

It did become this...in Japan.

Edit: Yeah, you're right. Now that I think about it, I believed games like Border Break would be filling (still thriving) arcades everywhere. An interface too expensive to bring home (well, maybe not for long) and you can buy cards to hold your data and scores to take with you.

I guess I just grew up in the wrong future.

[AppleQueso]

I wonder how many more BTTF references we can cram into this thread?

[wip3outguy7]

So then... who shot who? And how do we fix it?

[AppliCotton]

I've been thinking a lot about that. My childhood coincided 100% with the NES era. I hit puberty literally less than a month after the SNES came out. And I remember both vividly.

First, it must be said the the idea that video game development has a trajectory, so to speak, was invented in the mid-1990s. Hard to believe watching all those E3 press conferences, but it's true. Kids generally don't think about the future unless prompted to do so. So growing up in the NES era, I expected the future of video games to deliver more of the same, only with cooler special effects. Not more immersive game experiences, not to pop off the TV, not to imitate life. Point in case: the SNES and Sega CD. Mode 7 and transparency effects and the the handful of other cool special effects the SNES seemed to drive into the ground were in fact everything I expected from Nintendo's next gen. Note that in terms of the actual experience, SMW differed little from say SM3, but the big boo, the parallax, the mode 7 in the last boss fight... Like I said, more of the same only flashier. Sega CD on the other hand pushed FMV and all sorts of other stuff that, as the recent IGN article pointed out, would in fact go on to become the future of video games, but nobody cared because nobody was thinking in those terms back then. What everyone wanted was a flashier Mario (or a faster version of Mario named Sonic).

Also I think that a lot of that is how the Japanese look at games... and the NES was a purely Japanese console. Even now, watching the Wii U presentation, I couldn't help but think that even Shigeru Miyamoto can't really figure out how to do "asymmetric gaming", and all of Nintendo's ideas seemed bland, and then Ubisoft demonstrated ZombiU and it was like ok, these westerners really know how to innovate.

note: I can't stand Western games. I just imported an Xbox from Japan to play Cave games... like I said, same thing I've been playing for 20+ years, only flashier.

[Gunstar Green]

I always thought it would be all VR helmets and holographic tables like sci-fi always showed us.

Lawnmower Man and Quest World like Virtual Realities seemed like a sure thing.

I honestly never imagined video game graphics being as good as they are today. I remember thinking things couldn't get much better than Quake.

CD based games with great sound and FMV also seemed to be the pinnacle to me at one point. I remember thinking Wing Commander 3 was one of the most high-tech things ever.

[xan_racketBOY_fan]

While I never thought of it as what games would become, but when I was a kid I thought Shredder on the original NES game was a real life player waiting on the other side. Now we do have games that have us play against other players - more unique ones like Demons Souls play closely to what I imagined as a kid (laying in wait as another players' end stage boss - awesome!).

[BurningDoom]

So then... who shot who? And how do we fix it?

Since this what brought up, this was a flaw in the movie that I've seen that I've tried to explain to people and they usually just get confused:

Obviously Back to the Future embraced the alternate reality theory. Doc Brown explains it in this exact scene that the pic above is showing when he says that Biff created an alternate timeline when he gave himself the Sports Almanac from the future, in the past. So now we have Doc Brown & Marty McFly's native reality, and the Biff is rich reality. So then Marty and Doc go back in time and fix things. Except for the fact that if the movie embraces the alternate reality theory, then they didn't fix anything, all they did is create yet another reality where they fixed things, meanwhile they're original reality and the Biff is rich reality is still out there in the multiverse existing.

Did I just confuse everyone here, too?