Sometimes you can't afford owning a console, depending on your situation, the country you live, or that you are so young to work and buy one. That was my NES / SNES era, even tough my parents did a big effort on buying my first NES, getting games was also a big issue. I was living in a rising middle class in south america 90's deformed capitalism, with no internet (not like now), just a few magazines with some screenshots of those beautiful pixelated graphics. That was a generation of rising latin gamers. we didnt even knew what it came from Japan, Usa, or China, it just was freaking awesome!.
Human nature found a way to play videogames at latinamerica, either by stealing a console or by going into a friend's house you still could know what mother brain looks like. But there was this option of going into a place "arcade" like where you could play an amount of time your fav consoles, the place was filled with SNES / GENESIS / NES beauty consoles and also, many many games for you to choose. It was heaven, you could hear loud tv's playing the top games. Some Top Gear tune, Street Fighter II, Super Mario World. Society was able to provide a solution for the hungry "no console owner" gamer.
In fact, this hunger for gaming did increase skills on those gamers, you could see some incredible Mortal Kombat fights. Back then that was all I care about, gaming, 20 years laters it is still all I care. I went to college and graduated as a Visual Artist so i decide to pay tribute to a personal situation I had back then at those "console-arcade" stores:
I was playing Street Fighter II with a friend, completly Inside the game. No distractions. Suddenly I heard a real metal hitting metal sound, it wasnt 16 bitty like, it was real. I turned around and saw this revolver gun hiting the metal bars of the place, it was a thief asking to the "arcade" owner to open that shit up. That scared the shit out of me, however, once he was in the place he said loudly "I aint doin' nuthin' to the little kids, keep playing" , and everyone when happy and kept playing.
In Venezuela we have high rates of crimes and murdering, in the year 2000 we had 8.022 deaths by crime, right now, every 24 hours there are 528 violent robbery and still growing up. The causes are still some kind of complex to explain, but goverment usually blame videogames (alt+w)
for been part of the violence wave. I believe the reasons are somewhere elses... in genetics, human nature, social background... etc.
I took the real story and made a little script for a revenge gamer character, turning it into a shortfilm.
Oh man I'm also from Latin america (chile) and I totally understand you I also didn't knew where games and consoles came from but they were cool. And yes its rough to buy consoles here they are fucking expensive compared to the US. Good blog man.PS: I also read Club Nintendo magazines they were amazing back in the day I don't read them anymore because I have internet now. Saludos hermano latinoamericano.
An interesting perspective on the intersection of video game violence and real world violence! It's odd for those of us that live in safe countries to realize that the violence we see in games is the only place we generally see it, the rest of our lives are generally lived out safely and without worry. It's a good reminder that in other countries, this isn't the case.
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Nice post as well.