So imagine this you're 4 years old and your Dad who you've known from the time you were born hands you a controller...its video games you think. But this plays something different...retrogames.
That's exactly what Andy Baio's son, Eliot experienced when his father decided that his education in life and in games (which you could argue is one of the same) was going to start at the beginning..or pretty close in the history of videogames. And why not we ask ourselves here at GamesYouLoved? (we are biased!).
This is closer to a reality than you think...like history at school which often starts with prehistory, to then Egyptian and Roman and so on..I think we have something here. And even literature - go back to the Chaucer days rather than the modern stuff to understand where writing and literarature/poetry all came from.
It's all becoming clear to us know why Andy Baio did this...and how Eliot will benefit. Start at the beginning/ the past and you understand the present day. But also have alot of fun doing it. So at 4 years old Eliot started with Galaxian (1979), Rally-X (1980), Bosconian (1981), Dig Dug (1982), and of course, Pac-Man (1980) and three sequels, Super Pac-Man (1982), Pac-Man Plus (1982), and Pac & Pal (1983). Pretty cool. Within weeks Eliot was beating his Dad's high scores..like a Dad at the Baseball game Andy was beginning to enjoy this as much as his son!
And it progressed...
By age 5, Eliot could beat some parts of moderately-difficult platformers like Super Mario 3. By age 6, Eliot was beating entire games on his own. Eliot finished The Legend of Zelda on his own, and then finished the very difficult second quest with some mapping assistance.
This is sounding all pretty amazing..I bet most of you now (like us) are on text, email or the phone calling our Dads to say...why couldn't you be more like this!!? It got even better...Eliot went from generation to generation of console..continually improving..getting better and beating his Dad and completing games in their entirety. To NES, SNES and N64. By the time he turned 7, Eliot had collected every star in Super Mario 64. That's impressive.
So now Eliot has caught up with the current generation. He plays games on modern consoles and tablets yet he knows where they came from as he has experienced it growing up.In a different era maybe - but just like his Dad, Andy Eliot shares one thing that means alot. He loves video games and that's the coolest thing here. Even cooler is that he loves playing them with his Dad. :)
Follow Andy Baio on Twitter for more updates on the story or his own technology info as he's a very cool dude! Click here: Andy Baio on Twitter
Website with Andy's story here: http://goo.gl/3m8AZX