Player One Turns 60 - SOTD

 I remember back in 1972 when I first saw the odyssey game console I was 12 years old. This was the first commercial home video game console on the market. My cousin had one and I would beg him all the time to play. For each game you would need to place these plastic sheets over the TV screen this would produce the static background graphics which the console couldn’t create and then you needed to insert a credit card like game cartridge into the console slot. At the time it was just magic to me but now of course things are a lot different and far more realistic than ever before.



Today I consider myself an avid gamer and to give you an idea of just how many game consoles I’ve owned in my life I’ve put together this list excluding handheld which is not in any particular order but it should give you a sense of my gaming prowess. ColecoVision, 3DO, Sega 16, Nintendo64, Atari 2600, Sony Playstation, Sega Genesis, PlayStation 2, Xbox, Xbox360, XboxOne. The logical progression here is for me to purchase the Xbox X but I’m not so sure anymore. I want to buy it but by the time this console is released I would have turned 60 and at this age is it worth it?

When I turned 55 I started to experience what I can only describe as a reduction in my reaction time or you can say my reflexes and for a video game player that’s everything. The problem was it happens so gradually that I didn’t even notice. I like first-person shooters in multiplayer mode and you have to be on your toes your reaction times have to be in nanoseconds. I would come home from work and after eating retire into my office where I would play for hours and I was going up against some pretty amazing players all way younger than me. I could tell because they liked to use the chat option to rank each other out all the time. It was pretty entertaining and sometimes shocking what was said some of them have a definite flair for it.

My friend's son was getting older now he was at the same age as me when I first saw the odyssey game console. He knew I liked to play video games and asked if he could play me in a one on one match I thought to myself this is going to be the only way I can see where I stand so I agreed to play him. Things started out OK but I quickly realized my reflexes were just to slow compared to a 12-year-old although I had some great moments, in the end, he got me all the time. I knew right then that gaming for me would never be the same.

That was 5 years ago and since that match, the reality has sunken in and it’s a tuff pill to swallow. No matter how hard I practice I’ll just never be as sharp as I once was and now that I’m approaching 60 this year I ask myself what’s the point of investing into a new console but most likely I’ll talk myself into getting one if the price is not in the stratosphere with that being said if I do purchase one this will be my last console for sure.

In my life's timeline when finding out that my eyes had changed and I needed glasses for the first time at the age of 55 I could deal with that and later when my body had pain in areas that I never had pain in before and getting out of bed seemed a lot more difficult than it ever was I managed to deal with these things as well but this is something that can’t be managed or remedied I’ll never be as fast as I was no matter how much I practice and the older I get the slower I most likely will become, there is no winning this game of aging and in the end, this will be something I used to do. How I hate growing old.