Pong. You’ve either heard of it, or haven’t. One of the earliest video games known to man, holding the crown for being designed in the late 70s. It’s simple: You knock a ball back and forth with a line in a dark green background. That’s it. But think from where we’ve come from! Back then, video games weren’t more than a few lines of code. Now try to imagine what it must’ve been like to see Battlefield V in 1995. Pretty insane, right? However, Pong wasn’t the first. In 1958, the first game was a simple tennis game, basically like pong but with a bouncing ball instead. Nowadays, you’ve got 3D visuals with gun blazing, cars driving, capture points and all sorts of things! Even puzzles! In the 90s and late 80s, video games had just started becoming popular thanks to Nintendo. 

But not all of the games from that time era were as good as you think- let’s take Crash Bandicoot 2, for example. Released in 1997, Naughty Dog games decided to release the sequel to the first. Of course, like people say, the originals are nearly ALWAYS better than the first. And they were right in this case. Heck, you couldn’t even kill the final boss without having to mash the buttons at least 125 times! But ever since the mid-2000s, (2003-2008) games have gotten much better. 

Let’s take a look at HALF-LIFE 2. Released in 2004, the graphics are amazing, the lines are fairly good, and the plot and mechanics are even better. Now the models, that’s a whole different story. INVISIBLE. WALLS. EVERYWHERE. Of course, those still exist today to prevent players from going out-of-bounds, but by far the most evolved game from the early 2000s to now is ROBLOX, an online platform where you can build, create or make anything. It’s been updated countless times over the past 14 years and still holds strong today. So the next time you tell yourself, “Dang, the 90s must have been so much better!” Just realize how crappy the games were.