Day 68 - guns, guns, guns!

When you play through the catalogue of 8-bit games (and it's a massive catalogue), it's evident that there were a lot of games that involve shooting people.  Whether it was arcade conversions like Commando or Operation Wolf, original titles like Airborne Ranger or Los Angeles SWAT, or games based on movie licenses like Platoon or Robocop, we just loved mowing down enemy scum!


And nobody seemed to have a problem with that.


I realise that there wasn't the graphic realism that we have today.  I refuse to let me 11-year old play Call of Duty or Fallout 3 or anything like them, much to his disgust.  All his friends do, he whines.  And it's true, they do.  But he's not.  I'm afraid that's the cost of having a games-savvy dad.

Death, in all its gory glory!

But when I think about it, I must have blown away thousands of people in 8-bit form.  Does it make me hypocritical to refuse him access to these games?


I don't think that it is.  It's a far cry from Who Dares Wins II to Battlefield 1942.  There's a big difference between seeing someone's blown-out eye flying up the road in super-slo-mo and seeing a dead sprite disappear.  So if the lad wants to play 8-bit games or arcade games from the Eighties, I'll let him.  I played them when I was about his age, so I can't really have any objections, even if the aims are technically the same.  The other stuff... that can wait.