Gaming - So How about Your Parents?

[fcgamer | 4,754]

So of course in more recent generations we have a lot of gamer parents, even many on VGS such as the notorious @OptOut and the heroic @Reed Rothchild . A lot of my students similarly tell tales of how their parents, who are mostly in their thirties, are also gamers. This led me to wonder about everyone here, how did your parents react with gaming?

For my brother and I, our parents were not gamers at all. I think I might remember my mother playing a video game once or twice just for the sake of appeasing me, but even then, I'm not 100% sure on this. She does have a periphery knowledge of games though, thanks to my brother and I - for example, one year my brother had a scene from Mega Man 3's Snake Man on his birthday cake, something that my mother did for my brother. Similarly, my brother and I used to create lyrics for some of the old video game music, and (once again with Snake Man), my mother once starting singing what we had concocted, yet since her singing is notoriously bad, she ended up altering the tune to make it unrecognizable. This alternative version of Snake Man's tune is quite famous amongst our family, despite my parents not being gamers.

As for my father, I have a few memories of him playing games with us. When we first got our Nintendo back in 1990, one of the games we got that Christmas was Rescue: The Embassy Mission. My father played it and completed it on the easier levels, as that was his game. Similarly, we really looked up to him for being "good" at the Nintendo, since he could advance further than us in Super Mario Bros. He still didn't get very far though, and in Chip n Dale: Rescue Rangers, he is notorious for not being able to get past the cactus plants in the first stage! To sum it up succinctly, when my father was visiting me a few months back, I asked him if he wanted to play a video game with me. His response: "No, playing a video game would stress me out." I thought the whole thing sounded absurd, but then again, I guess it could.

When we traveled, either on holiday or to go Christmas shopping at the larger malls in the bigger cities, usually my brother and I were allowed to stop in at the arcade (at the mall) or at the game room (in the hotel). During these times, my father would usually take a turn playing games with us, it was basically scene as something he'd do during this vacation time. The games he would do though would either be Pac-Man / Ms Pac-Man or a racing game, generally Datona USA or one of the Cruisin' games as we got older and games progressed.

Years later I would find out that two of my aunts / uncles had Atari 2600 machines back in the day, which blew my mind as I couldn't see them as gamers at all. Sadly that stuff was long gone by the time I became interested in it, though my brother remembers seeing one of the machines in the basement of my uncle's old house years back. With this reveal also came the reveal that my parents used to own some sort of Pong clone, as they couldn't afford an Atari back in those days. Although my parents couldn't remember in particular getting rid of it, searches of the storage areas in the house revealed that it was also long gone. When I asked my mother why they even had that machine, she responded saying something like "Well we were young once too." It just seemed so weird for me to think about though, as my parents' relationship with video games was very, very limited when my brother and I were growing up.

[Gloves | 11,844]

Prior to our generation, people mostly stopped playing with toys when they grew up. 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,596]

16 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Prior to our generation, people mostly stopped playing with toys when they grew up. 

 

[Link | 2,738]

21 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Prior to our generation, people mostly stopped playing with toys when they grew up. 

Arcade cabinets were very popular in the days of Space Invaders and Pac Man. The target market was far from exclusively children.

 

[Gloves | 11,844]

5 minutes ago, Link said:

Arcade cabinets were very popular in the days of Space Invaders and Pac Man. The target market was far from exclusively children.

 

Yeah but that's plain ol' recreation and family bonding. And I said mostly. As opposed to our generation, large swathes of whom (I'm literally surrounded by you losers!) base essentially their entire persona around the collecting and/or playing of games.

[Kguillemette | 1,547]

44 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Prior to our generation, people mostly stopped playing with toys when they grew up. 

[RH | 4,983]

Here's a break down of my family members that were older and a formative part of my development/gaming life.

• My Pawpaw (Mother's, Father): I'm not sure why, but he bought a NES "for the grand kids", and since we were a family where 3 of his 4 children lived near him, my grand parents home was a hub we all frequented 2-3 times a week.  I played a LOT of NES at their house, and from time to time Papaw would play too, but not much.  Regardless, the following  year after he bought his own NES, he bought one for each household of his grand kids.  *Sniff*, he was a great grandpa.
• My Mother: I've recounted her story before because I think it's infamous but, in short, my was originally indifferent to video games.  She didn't like them but she didn't mind them. She regulated me and my brothers time a bit, but so long as our school work and chores were done, and no one wanted the shared TV, we could game as much as we wanted.  Then... Dr. Mario entered the house.  She became super-addicted, with my Step Dad, and one day she "woke up", saw her problem, and vowed to never buy another game console, and she never did.  She was still cool about buying games for the systems we already had, though.  Also she let my buy my own game units, like the Game Gear and later the N64 and she encouraged my biological Dad to get me a PS1 for Christmas.
• My Biological Dad: My Dad was (and still is) a bit of a techno-hippy.  He always loved the state of technological progress and as a younger guy, he enjoyed arcades, the Atari 2600 and computers.  My brother and I would go over to his house on the weekends in the 80s, and though he never owned a console beyond an Atari 2600, he did rent a Genesis for my brother and I rather frequently.  When the PS1 era came around, I was saving like mad to buy one of my own and, surprise!, Christmas 1997, my Dad bought me one! I also really, really wanted Final Fantasy VII.  I already owned it, but the experience of my Dad buying my PS1 kind of adds to the nostalgia of that game.
• My Step Dad:  Other than playing for a few times with my Mom, I really feel like he never got into gaming at all.  He was a pretty rigid, "military" minded kind of guy, but he was cool.  it's hard to explain, but though he was tough, I knew he loved my brother and I as his own sons.  Regardless, his attitude towards video games, surprisingly, was simply ambivalent.  Looking back, it's kind of weird cause he completely seems like one of those guys who should've hated them and felt they rot kids brains.  But... he didn't ever seem to be that way.  I guess because even though I played a lot of games, I never made it a problem.

And that's pretty much it.  I've also before mentioned how my Aunt, who was younger than my Mom, was dating a guy who she eventually married, but back then in the early days, she took my brother and I to his house to see if he was cool with kids.  I don't know why but I always remember it, and he won me and my brother over because he took us for a drive in his brand new, gold Corvette (man, that thing was soo 80s, and amazing) and we then spent our time playing on the Intellivision (before the NES era.)  It was a really rad day.  My aunt and uncle went on to raise two gamer cousins of mine, one of which was a physicist USC, until he got tired of working at a University and entered the public sector a couple of years ago.  I guess games did NOT rot his brain.

 

Edited May 6 by RH

[fcgamer | 4,754]

35 minutes ago, Gloves said:

Yeah but that's plain ol' recreation and family bonding. And I said mostly. As opposed to our generation, large swathes of whom (I'm literally surrounded by you losers!) base essentially their entire persona around the collecting and/or playing of games.

Wait wait wait...I thought we were discouraged from having personas? I want to see everyone for them true selves, lol.

[Hammerfestus | 3,891]

Hey! I don’t play with toys! I pay more money than I should for toys and then hoarde them away in my basement where children and sunlight can’t get to them like a proper creepo.

 

[Splain | 2,592]

My wife's mom used to send the kids off to school early so she could play NES, referring to her binder of three-hole-punched issues of Nintendo Power for Metroid tips. She doesn't seem to play anymore, but she definitely plays Candy Crush and I'm pretty sure she had a 3DS ten years ago.

Wife hates them for a range of reasons, so I more I keep them physically hidden out of everyone's sight at all times, the happier we are. My kids know I have a collection but they never see me playing them.

Half of the "welcome new employee" bios I see at work say something like "in his spare time, josh likes to spend time with family and play video games." So it seems it's becoming more of a mainstream hobby that people aren't as embarrassed about anymore. People playing them with their kids, etc.

I still have a twinge of "I should be ashamed of this" whenever I'm talking to other adults, and I don't mention that I play old video games. I have to push through a lot of other interests first before I even begin to mention that I repair/modify old game consoles, and I basically never say that I play them. I'm a respectable dad! I just HAPPEN to completely destroy everyone at Dr. Mario when someone pulls out a NES mini.

[TDIRunner | 2,780]

I wouldn't call my Dad a gamer, but he did enjoy the occasional video game.  My Dad purchased an Atari 2600 right about the time I was born, and purchased about a dozen games for it over the years, all of which I still have today hooked up and ready to play.  It's my understanding that he was pretty good at Atari 2600 Pac-Man and could play it for hours at a time on a single life.  

When my family finally purchased an NES, he would play the Mario games with my brother and I on occasion, and he really enjoyed Rad Racer.  He also beat the original Super Mario Bros. before I ever did, but I believe that's probably the only game he ever completed on his own.

I also learned many years after the fact that when we got an SNES on Christmas morning, my Dad had opened it the night before and played Super Mario World for a few hours while my brother and I were asleep before they wrapped it.  That is easily my favorite video game relate story about my Dad.

I also remember him playing a very small amount of Donkey Kong Country.  I don't remember him playing anything else video game related after the SNES generation until the Wii came out.  Both of my parents played Wii Sports after they got a Wii.  That's the only video game I can think of that my Mom has ever played.  My Dad also has a Switch, but that's mainly for his grandchildren when they come over.  I don't think he plays it very often on his own.  

Edited May 7 by TDIRunner

[Renmauzo | 1,205]

My Mom and Dad bought an NES under the guise of it being a birthday present for my sister and I. my folks got addicted to the Dragon Warrior series and rented/beat them all (they'd play late at night when I was supposed to be sleeping).

Nowadays, my Dad doesn't play but understands why I still do, while my Mom has a 3DS and Switch and plays Switch online with my aunt a few nights a week; she enjoys her Professor Layton games and is always proud to point out that she beat Diabolical Box before I did. My Mom also still refers to having a sore thumb from gaming as 'Nintendo thumb', lol.

I don't talk games all that much unless it comes up in conversation, but they're always interested to hear about new games that my wife and I pick up, and are just really cool about the whole thing.  

[Webhead123 | 687]

My parents were not really into video games, with a few minor exceptions.

My father has long said that one of the only video games he ever really played, and certainly the only one that he fully enjoyed, was River Raid on the Atari. He was a Navy man that served in Vietnam and there may have been something visceral about that game that spoke to him. No other video game before or since seemed to capture his imagination and even including River Raid, I doubt he's played more than an hour or two of video games in his life.

My mother, who eventually pursued computer science as a career, was a little more receptive to playing video games, although she still didn't play a ton of them. Other than a few rounds of random Atari games like Pac-Man or Centipede, she mostly played Tetris on a Macintosh computer she bought in the late 80's and would occasionally play some Dr. Mario on the family NES. Occasionally, she would humor me by playing a two-player game for a few minutes but that was the extent of it.

Other than that, I was sort of the resident video game nerd of the family. My uncle passed his NES and small handful of games on to me as a birthday present. It was he and his wife that took me on a road trip in 1990 where we went to Disney Land before also attending Nintendo PowerFest. That was such an amazing treat. But other than a passing interest, my uncle wasn't much of a gamer, either.

[Webhead123 | 687]

5 hours ago, Gloves said:

Prior to our generation, people mostly stopped playing with toys when they grew up. 

One of C.S. Lewis' more famous quotes and one that always spoke to me was:

"When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

[Gloves | 11,844]

22 minutes ago, Webhead123 said:

One of C.S. Lewis' more famous quotes and one that always spoke to me was:

"When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

It's a good quote! 

[Link | 2,738]

5 hours ago, Gloves said:

Yeah but that's plain ol' recreation and family bonding.

I was variously distracted from by stupid gainful employment when I wrote that  I specifically meant to say popular in bars. Adult entertainment. True it was a general entertainment thing; in fact it was a lot less gendered in those days. Speaking of ↓ 

5 hours ago, Gloves said:

And I said mostly. As opposed to our generation, large swathes of whom (I'm literally surrounded by you losers!) base essentially their entire persona around the collecting and/or playing of games.

but also, Haha, fair enough. 

Edited May 7 by Link

[sp1nz | 617]

Safe to say neither was/is a big gamer. My dad was addicted to Game Boy Tetris back in the day (he passed away in 2000 and his major hobbies were: bowling [grandmaster], race horses [owning/managing a stable with a team, competing, breeding, selling/buying], fishing/hunting). My mother is 76 and she liked Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine when I was young, we called it "bean game", she also liked Bowling in Wii Sports and Brain Age on DS, nowadays she plays Solitaire and some random puzzle-y mobile games on a tablet I guess (she likes stuff like singing, knitting and glassworks, also she is a great grandmother).

[GPX | 1,374]

My parents are definitely not gamers, and I can recall the only times my dad spent time playing games with me was with River Raid Atari 2600 and another shooting game on C64 in the late 80s. Both were busy with their job and various community services. So the games were like a friend as well as acting as my babysitter.  

I think their minds have already been made up that “games are for kids”, so I rarely talk about games with them, other than the fact they know I like collecting them and still play them. 

[CT | 100]

We weren't allowed to own a NES. But one Christmas we got a SNES, out of the blue, and it was awesome

[RH | 4,983]

14 hours ago, Webhead123 said:

One of C.S. Lewis' more famous quotes and one that always spoke to me was:

"When I became a man, I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

 

13 hours ago, Gloves said:

It's a good quote! 

 

You know, it's an interesting thing.  About 10 years ago, I was watching a variety of music videos on YouTube and Twisted Sister's We're Not Gonna Take It came up.

I actually watched that one, partly for nostalgia because I'd not seen it in 20-25 years but also because I was struck by a realization of something--this childhood "rebelliousness" of the teenage crowd of the 80s and 90s was often portrayed against really strict fathers.  However, after getting older and hearing the life-stories of so many people that had Dads like the guy in the video, I learned that overwhelmingly, many of them had been drafted at one point or another.

This may not seem like much, but from further observation of the fathers of that generation, many of these men came back hardened and PTSD left them afraid of not having hard, well behaved kids.  Why?  Because when you go to war, your best chance of survival is actually following orders.

I know the music video was a caricature, but it was a caricature of truth and I ended up feeling bad for the Dad.  Yeah, he was a portrayal of harsh, strict rules but the fact is, he acted that way probably because of war trauma.  It stung.

Again, I get that it was a music video, intended to be rebellious and fun, but looking back with older, historical eyes, it just felt sad.  We tend to stack our trauma onto future generations, but it's often hidden.

Anyway, I quoted you guys because C. S. Lewis went to war in WWI.  It was a different time, but he was one of the few who fought the trauma and tendency to run towards cynicism that produces a rigidity of adulthood.  He wasn't a "man-child" and was a very productive and prosperous man.  Nevertheless, he enjoyed "childish things" because he didn't want to let go of joy.

Edited May 7 by RH

[T-Pac | 7,590]

My parents never really played video games, aside from the Atari 2600 my mom had as a little kid (she liked Breakout and was slightly traumatized by the "dragon game" (Adventure)).

But they must've had some experience with 80s arcades, though - since they randomly introduced my sister and I to video games with a set of Namco plug-n-plays. Since then we've always liked playing Pac-Man as a family, taking turns to see who can score the highest. We also played a fair bit of Wii bowling together when that trend was going full-force.

These days my parents are both super supportive of my hobby, and they're happy to play games with me whenever I visit. They can't really handle games where you need to press more than one input at a time, so we stick to stuff like Frogger, Tetris, Donkey Kong, and shoot-em-ups where they can just hold the fire button and steer.

And my mom likes a lot of those word-games on her phone, if that counts haha.

[T-Pac]

[guitarzombie | 927]

My father really like Silent Service, which was strange.  I remember my mother being good at Dr. Mario.  IIRC she got past level 20.  The only other thing I can remember was my uncle Frank getting to the 2nd level boss of Blaster Master, which blew my mind because I had no idea how to play that game, aside from the first boss and having no idea what to do next.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,596]

My mom likes one video game ever: Centipede.  And she likes the idea of Zelda, so she always gifts those to me.

By dad was into two games in the late 80s to early 90s: Sid Meier's F-15 Strike Eagle II, and early Madden games.  Never anything else, he despises games.

[Webhead123 | 687]

1 hour ago, RH said:

This may not seem like much, but from further observation of the fathers of that generation, many of these men came back hardened and PTSD left them afraid of not having hard, well behaved kids.  Why?  Because when you go to war, your best chance of survival is actually following orders...

...Anyway, I quoted you guys because C. S. Lewis went to war in WWI.  It was a different time, but he was one of the few who fought the trauma to run towards cynicism that produces a rigidity of adulthood.  He wasn't a kid and was a very productive and prosperous man.  Nevertheless, he enjoyed "childish things" because he didn't want to let go of joy.

Not to get too "psychoanalytical" or anything, but whenever I think about the overall character of my father, I think what an interesting combination of features must be at work to shape him into what he was. He was the youngest of six siblings and thus had to be both thick-skinned and strong-willed to make his mark. As a result, he became a pretty rowdy, rebellious youth (which got him into plenty of trouble) but ended up in military service at only 17, which seemed to hone that rough-and-tumble disposition into something more disciplined. But what's interesting is that he never lost his sense of humor or general attitude that life should be joyful. He was a hard worker and very much believed that there was a time for seriousness and a time for silliness but each were important to him. He was one of the biggest practical jokers in the family and never missed a chance to tell a groan-worthy joke. He was a man that could be deadly serious when it was time to get something done but his parenting style, though always emphasizing respect, focus and determination, never really came across as overly "strict" or "stifling". In short, he wanted his children to understand the value of hard work and discipline but didn't want them to lose their sense of individuality.

[wongojack | 226]

18 hours ago, Splain said:

Half of the "welcome new employee" bios I see at work say something like "in his spare time, josh likes to spend time with family and play video games." So it seems it's becoming more of a mainstream hobby that people aren't as embarrassed about anymore. People playing them with their kids, etc.

I still have a twinge of "I should be ashamed of this" whenever I'm talking to other adults, and I don't mention that I play old video games. I have to push through a lot of other interests first before I even begin to mention that I repair/modify old game consoles, and I basically never say that I play them. I'm a respectable dad! I just HAPPEN to completely destroy everyone at Dr. Mario when someone pulls out a NES mini.

I can relate to this.  I work in technology- a company that even has a gaming division, and I still feel this way.  I will mention that I have repaired my old systems or even written some code (barely not a lie) before I explain that I collect or play old games.  Most people are happy to talk about it briefly when I say I like really old stuff.  "Oh, do you have a pong machine?" or "I remember playing Bubble Bobble with my brother."  After their initial reaction, I usually wait to see if they go any deeper.  They usually do NOT, and I let the conversation drift away before they classify me as a weirdo.

Regarding the thread title, my parents have been pulled into video games with the big fads.  My family got a 2600, went to Chuck E Cheese, played Tetris, Wii Sports, phone games etc.  My dad is more open than most 84 year-old men, but he gets distracted easily and has never tried to do anything that would be considered "mastering" a video game.