I have a ton of wonderful core memories of gaming as a kid,
taking turns with the one controller our family could afford,
saving up and buying a game with my very own money and actually owning it,
pulling my very first all-nighter to get that one elusive PokÃ©mon.
And whenever I compare those memories against modern gaming,
it's pretty clear to me that video games have changed.
But can I trust those memories? Were games really better when I was coming up,
or do kids today have it better, even with all the loot boxes, gigantic downloads, and horse armor?
To find out, I'm bringing in some fresh eyes to either offer me affirmation
or to shatter my rose-colored glasses.
These eight young people are going to be playing and providing their honest feedback on many of the games
that shaped me into the gamer you see sitting before you.
And I can hardly wait, just like I can hardly wait, to shape this segue to our sponsor.
This one I'm excited about. Everybody looks back nostalgically at Roller Coaster Tycoon,
but the Tycoon games have existed since long before then, and my first exposure was Dino Park Tycoon.
It was the very first game that I bought with my own money
from the Scholastic Book Order pamphlet, and it was the very first game that I ever had to upgrade my computer for.
Not a new GPU or anything like that. GPUs didn't exist yet.
Instead, I needed a three and a half inch floppy drive
instead of a five and a quarter inch floppy drive so that I could read the two game disquets
that it came pre-installed on. Do you have nostalgia for this?
I do. I know what I signed up for, but I think I'm a little older than you guys think.
Whoa, what is it, one FPS?
It's about the gameplay depth, not how many FPS, sir.
I like this little guy. It looks like he's not wearing any pants. That's gross.
Does he have a tail? Oh, is he a dinosaur? Oh, okay.
The bank has approved a business loan of $5,000.
Of course, back then, you can use $5,000 to open a park.
That was a lot of money back then. I'm just going to spend all my money.
I'm broke. Sign me up. Oh, wait, what did I buy?
These young kids are going to discover that gaming used to be pretty unforgiving.
They are all going to go bankrupt. In Minecraft, I usually build my houses in the plane's buy-homes,
so I'm going based on that. So, though you're buying, you spent all your money,
you'll probably, no, no, I still have $5,000. We can make this work.
Yeah, you're going to buy dinosaurs, food, and hire people for $1,000.
Good luck, buddy. Okay, what is this menu? There is a Fences tab on that book.
Oh my God. UI has improved a lot in the last 20 years.
But you know what hasn't is the included documentation in games.
Dino Park Tycoon came with a manual, and honestly, I think games could use a little more of that these days.
Where's the instructions? He's telling you what to do right there, literally.
Not that it would help people who can't read. Let's go with wood right now.
If the dinosaurs break out, that's another attraction. Nope.
I don't have a lot of money, so I've got to go with one of these cheaper ones.
So I can get a colophysis or a dino nichis.
Let's go with a dino nichis. That's cool.
Okay, we're off. Is that my dinosaur? He's so cute.
Is that him? Is that Diano? Yeah. How do I navigate to you?
Oh, there we go. It's about as far as you can see. That's it?
No, Diano, come back. Well, maybe you shouldn't have built your pen
in the corner of the park, smart guy. The graphic of the dinosaur is kind of funky.
He just was like a lizard. How old was Linus when he played this game, do you know?
Dino Park Tycoon is what? 1990, hold on.
Don't tell me. I'm going to say 1994.
Three. 1993, okay. Yeah, so I was seven.
You know what? Nine-year-old me? Yeah, this would be lit.
This is definitely stressing me out. I don't like when I'm in charge of keeping things alive
because then I feel bad. You don't have to feel bad if the things stay alive.
I always kill them. Oh, oh, okay.
Wow. I bring him into my family and this is how he treats me.
No, they escaped.
This game sucks, Linus. Hey, look, Elijah, think on the positive side.
At least the game is preparing you for your life. This game is so detailed.
What was I doing as a six-year-old to play this? Oh my God.
Were you ever able to get a successful park when you were young? Yes. Yes, I did.
I ended up making so much money that the counter reset to zero dollars because I just, the counter wouldn't go up higher.
That's insane. What was I doing? You're doing good. Okay. Most people have lost by now.
Lost? Yeah. How do you lose? I'm broke. Wait, I'm broke.
Wait. How do I make money? Can I sell my land? Well, if you needed to buy dinosaurs to make money,
so you might have lost already. I don't know if I'm going to be able to pass the business
down to my children seeing the way they manage a business.
Well, I can't hire an employee because I have no money. Well, I can't buy a dinosaur because I have no money
because I spent it all on food for the one that escaped.
I lost already. Yep. What the f- What is this game, man?
I don't even know how to read. Wait, what do you mean?
Wait, I can't get a better- I can't- Oh yeah, actually lost, lost.
Okay, what would you rank this at a 10? In today's day and age?
Like a two or three. The fact that you are not good at a game
does not make it a two out of 10 game. This- you know what?
I'll let the rest go. I could totally see how for the time and for Linus,
because you know, if he's Linus, this would be like a banger.
I think that if I put a bit more time into this, I could probably do pretty well.
Yeah, I think these games are really fun, actually. I think they're really good. I just need a little bit of time to figure this out again.
Okay, I like him. Seven out of 10. I don't know. I really liked it.
I like games like that. I feel like if I started again,
now that I've actually clicked all the buttons, I would have a better understanding
of what I need to do to do a bit better. But so far, it was very discouraging, I will say.
Well, I'm sorry your generation can't handle a little discouragement.
I liked it though. That was cute. Actually, we're great. I love your generation.
You're great. I honestly, I wouldn't mind playing this game a little bit more.
Like, it's kind of- it's cute, it's fun. No, no, I actually kind of want to download it and play it.
Yeah, like if they had a Switch port, I would play this in bed, you know? Like, it's cute.
You suck. Lies played this for fun. You suck.
Do you see why your dad would like this game back today? No.
Just because you lost immediately.
Whatever. Adjusted for inflation and factoring in total ownership cost,
tie fighter is probably the most expensive game that I ever played.
I needed a full system overhaul in order to run it and a new expensive peripheral
in order to have a good experience. But boy, was it ever worth it.
This, this one holds a very special place in my heart and I probably have more hours in tie fighter
than all the other ones here combined. I have a treat for you.
Oh, okay. Linus's childhood joystick.
What? Top gun. And that is the joystick I used to play it on.
That's not actually my one from when I was a kid.
I lost it when I moved, but I treated myself to a new one as an adult
and it was worth it. I also have a cheat sheet for you because you're going to need it.
Oh, these are profiles. Yeah. Oh.
Oh, I probably just type.
I was like halfway into your keyboard to pop up or something and then like re-control it.
Oh, that hurt me a little bit. Okay. I feel really embarrassed now.
Not as much as I'm going to hurt you if you say anything bad about this game, Elijah.
Why are you so fast? Oh, I was supposed to move it slowly.
We'll hover over stuff.
I thought it was booting so you were telling me to move the mouse.
Enjoy this menu. I did it. Oh, you figured out too fast.
Yeah, I'm much called an intelligent being.
Oh, dude, this is actually pretty smooth once you're in game. Interesting.
Okay. I've never used one of these controllers anywhere but in arcade.
I've never used one of these controllers.
Oh. What do you think of these graphics?
Um, I'm quite surprised. I'm loving it.
What graphics? Okay, like now that we're in space, the graphics are like, they're not great, you know,
but like for being from, you know,
whenever this game is from, they're like fine. You know what I mean?
I personally don't care about graphics so much if the game is fun and actually understandable,
which this game is not understandable, but I'm much called an intelligent being.
Oh, no, I got a read.
Oh, that was a six shot. Elijah's Elijah's in the zone.
I knew I could count on you, Elijah. Dude, I'm starting to like Star Wars now.
This is the most I've liked Star Wars in the last decade. This takes an insane level of concentration.
I need some lessons from Han Solo. There we go. All right.
Full throttle. Space bar to match speeds with your target.
Don't hit this. Don't hit it.
I don't know how to slow down. Oh, I freaking crash.
Is this what you thought applying space ship in Star Wars was like? Uh, no, I never knew you could crash.
I can't hear you because I'm locked in.
What? The song's bopping. The game is busting, you know.
Right? Like this gets five big booms, if I'm being honest.
Boom. No, no, no. Do not include that, dude.
Honestly, after playing it for a little bit, like I could definitely, I could see how you could get lost in this game for like a bit.
And yeah, this game plays nothing like I've ever played before.
This controller is very unique.
I'm not into this. I'm not into this. What would you rate it out of 10?
Ah, freaking two. Relationship ended.
I thought she was cool. I think it's a good game,
and I know people that would really like it. It's not my style.
I think the controller's fun, and it's fun to play for like a few minutes.
But as soon as I realize how bad I am at it, I just want to quit.
At least she got the diagnosis for why she didn't like it right. This is like a seven.
Nice. I'd unironically like boot this up and do something with it.
Hit space bar to activate the tractor beam. Whoa.
I like to complete the mission. Let's go.
I had a 41% accuracy. I feel like that's pretty good actually
for being out in open space. Road Rash was the kind of game
where if my parents had any idea what I was doing on the computer, there's no way they would have let me play it.
I mean, on the one hand, yeah, sure. It's not like super sexual, like a leisure suit, Larry, or something like that.
But on the other hand, my aunt in particular, who was the one who financed the computer upgrade
that allowed me to play it. This was one of the other games
I was playing on that same tie fighter machine. And by the way, I did play this game with a joystick.
Was not into violence. Road Rash is nothing but violence.
Yeah, what do you think of this aesthetic? It banged. How old would Linus have been when this came out?
Yeah, that's cool. If I were a 10-year-old boy, I'd be so into this.
Dude, if I was four years old, this is the coolest thing in the world right now. Oh, yeah.
Are these people all determined for me to not like them? Whoa.
Elijah just said Road Rash would be cool if he was four.
This ain't no Paw Patrol. Okay, yeah, I know you were right. Vibes for days with this cut scene in the soundtrack.
Oh, yeah. Women, yes. We all love babes.
You know what I'm saying? And chains and explosions?
They really threw everything in here. Dude, this is a boys game.
Motorcycles, women and explosions. For the boys. For the boys.
Why are we street racing? Isn't that illegal?
I can't tell if I raised them real right or real wrong.
Space bars. Oh, I got to punch them? Yeah, you do. Oh, heck.
Yeah, oh, I'm behind. This reminds me of Cruisin' USA.
I used to play that a lot in my N64. Cruisin' USA wishes it was Road Rash.
Yeah, I've only played games like this at the arcade never on my own time.
I'm surprised again. I love it. It's quite beautiful and the soundtrack helps a lot.
It kind of captures, I guess, the whole 90s in my view.
Dude, this game has a banger soundtrack.
What do you think of these graphics? Also equally not good.
You don't think there's a charm to how janky they are? No.
If the frame rate was higher, maybe. You know, one thing that's really surprising me
is how smooth some of the graphics and animations feel,
but how clunky your movement feels. Like, I feel like it's like one FPS to do the switching lanes
and leaning, but the background is very smooth right now.
It's kind of strange. The graphics of this game is poppin'.
What do you think of that poppin' in the background? Background being kind of formed as you drive.
Honestly, I don't mind it. Like, it's noticeable, but only when I'm looking for it.
You know when I'm immersed in trying not to bump into anybody?
Not a problem. Hey, buddy, I got something for you. Hey, come back.
Yo! Oh!
Damn. Oh, car, car.
Oh, no! I was doing so good.
My leg.
I was so not ready to have to do that.
Dude, this walker's shame, dude. Man, kids today have no idea.
Like, when Lakitu or whatever he's called like comes and rescues you and Mario Kart 8,
he's like two seconds. Dude, no, man.
I have to run all the way back to my bike. Well, maybe you shouldn't crash so bad.
That's actually cool. I like that. Yeah. See, she always throws me in one direction
and she's like, never mind, I'm cool. Except about TIE Fighter.
We're not good after that. Yeah, I think they did a really good job with their sense of speed and the depth, you know?
Like, the way that the roads just kind of bend
and you're just kind of like moving with it too. I am not getting a sense of speed.
Definitely not. Just chilling. But I am getting a sense of cool.
Like, look at this. All my buddies dapping me up, patting my back.
I have a chalice. Oh, babe, kissing your helmet. Whoa.
Boy, this was pretty cringe. Look, she's so proud of me.
Winner of all the games that I played today.
This one has made me feel the best about myself. Oh, that's great. Like, by far.
So you're number one. If only I was this cool.
Oh, I won. I thought you were in second. I definitely was not in first place.
Yeah, if you're not first you're last. Yeah, player one finished in second place. That's not a winner game.
Well, it's winner-ish. You're a winner for thinking this game is cool enough
and playing it. How would you rate this game out of 10? 9 out of 10.
Simply. Let's go. I got to download this on my own PC.
Let's go. I got to play it. I give it a 10 out of 10. That was awesome.
I loved it. I like this little cut scene they have.
I like the one at the beginning. The music's cool. I think the look of the game is really, really good.
And I like that you can see the little motorcycle thing at the bottom.
It's very immersive. Oh, it's worse than the Star Wars one. I'd give it a 5.
I'd give that game a 5 out of 10. Do you start to feel sorry for people
that lived through the 90s? Yeah.
They deserved better. Ah, Civilization 2 Test of Time.
More like test of my childhood budget. This was the first game that I ever had to spend
my own money to upgrade my GPU for.
I brought it home. I installed it and it was all like, You do not have DirectX 6 or whatever.
Compatible hardware. So knowing absolutely nothing about computers,
I went to bargain bytes in Mission BC and I said, Hey, I need DirectX, whatever.
And I need at least, I think it was like 16 megabytes of VRAM.
And I got a GeForce something MX. And that was so that I could have 3D rendered emissaries,
which quite frankly, I didn't feel added that much to the game.
Should have just gotten the original SIP too. What the f... What do I do?
Same thing you always do, Sammy. Get good. First task is to find a suitable site
and found your capital city. The best city sites are near rivers, grasslands,
coastal areas and areas near special resources. Oh, this is just Minecraft.
I'm not going to lie. I love these graphics. See, my friends were into these kinds of games.
I never really got into it so, so much, but uh... Whoa, this is crazy.
I used to play a game like back in the day called Rise of Nations.
Oh, yeah. And there used to be like a mode that you could start. It was like Nomad mode where it wasn't the default way to start the game,
but I guess that's just how you start every Civ game.
Like where you walk around first and find a good place to start.
I love that he's like, yeah, I played this game called like Rise of Nations.
Like, Blake, we've never heard of Rise of Nations. Come on.
Everyone knows Rise of Nations, right?
Pre-requisites, none. Already own.
Tree. Dude, Linus, this sucks. I'm sorry.
I usually like to go for the military win because I have like no time to spend,
so I want to win fast as possible and with like more action. Discover a friendly tribe of skilled mercenaries.
Let's go. We are going. You've just built your first military unit.
I don't even have a place established yet. This UI looks more busy.
Wow. Okay, this is a lot of information to take in. I'm not going to lie.
I feel kind of lost right now. It hasn't shown me anything about taxes,
luxury science or production or food. Production of what?
What am I producing? Yeah, are you feeling overwhelmed? Oh, I am.
And I do not have my tutorial to help me. This game might be worse than the dinosaur game, guys.
Like the UI is so bad. It's crazy because you don't think about like how good the UI is going.
I don't even think the UI is that bad. They're all harping on the UI.
I mean, everything you need is right there. You just have to read.
Oh, cheat. Leave a like if you think I should cheat.
Hell yeah, of course. In the top bar, enable the cheats.
What does it do? It'll unlock the ability to use cheats.
I'm good. Okay, sure. I'm using my pure intelligence.
Okay, uh-huh, uh-huh. I know what an adjective is. He's doomed.
Kill civilization? Holy, this is maybe God.
We're going to get rid of all the Vikings. Oh, no, you can't.
No, you can't play Civ to cheats.
Yeah, for the French.
It was so easy. It was just one button.
Oh, reveal map. Should I just go for it? Yeah, go for it. Okay, entire map.
Let's go. Yo! Sheesh!
Look at all these buffalo I can kill. Yeah, how the hell was I going to find these guys?
Dude, their cities suck, comparison. Like, look at that little house.
Stupid robot. Should I use cheat mode? I know. Force government?
What does that mean?
Oh, God. Depending on which one I pick, the comments are going to be really mad.
What would you rate this game out of 10? Two.
Do you think this is the worst game you've played today? Worse than the other ones.
You know what's funny is, I think it's less about how good this game is
and more about just how lost these guys are in the UI
and not having an instruction manual and also having so many other forms of entertainment
that are so much more instantly gratifying.
Like, you couldn't enjoy Civ until you had invested
probably a solid five to six hours in it.
Realistically, right? While I find modern game frustrating,
in that you have to fight with obtuse controls or play through six separate tutorials
before you can enter an online match, in a lot of ways, it's not really any different.
Personally, for me, it's a two. You didn't even explore anything.
But I know the game is good and I could have fun with it if I understood it.
So maybe a five. You know, I'll give it a middle answer.
I'm not too sure how I feel about it. I don't mind older games in the sense that like,
you know, I do like the challenge of like just kind of mucking about and figuring it out.
You know, if I were just sitting at home playing this on my own or if this had just come out,
I don't think that I would have minded like, taking some time and just being bad at the game
for like an hour or two or three until I, you know, I had it working enough, you know?
Zero. Get out. Zero. Yeah, get out. It's just not my type of game, though.
I could see someone sinking a lot of time into this game. But for me, this is like a one or a zero.
I would never play this again. Now, I wasn't sure which Warcraft to go with for this.
Foundationally, for me as a gamer, Warcraft 2 probably would have been the answer.
I spent so many hours in Ties of Darkness and Beyond the Dark Portal
playing through the single player campaigns. I also literally had to learn how to do virtual private networking
so that I could play multiplayer with my friend. But the one that I played the absolute crap out of
and the one that I think is a more important piece of gaming history given that it gave rise to, you know, I don't know,
Dota, not to mention popularized tower defense for an entire generation of gamers,
has got to be Warcraft 3. It's also the one that I played exclusively in French
for the first couple of months that I had it because I happened to be at a homestay where the family was French.
Not bad. Looking pretty good. That's pretty nice.
This was 2002. 2002, baby. Dude, this is crazy.
This right here is why people thought the Warcraft movie was going to be good.
Wow, that's very good for 2002.
This probably takes up like half of the storage that the game takes.
It's almost like a movie trailer from my 2025 eyes.
I'm quite impressed with how it looks right now.
It honestly looks really good. Like his wing is shaking.
You can see the feathers on it. Wow, I'm not going to lie.
I think this is pretty nice. It looks like Blizzard had a pretty nice budget
even before the acquisition. This is pretty good. Wait, they're cooking.
Dude, Blizzard should just stop making games and just make movies at this point.
Yeah, the Warcraft movie was really good. Well, okay. Yeah, we'll ignore the Warcraft movie.
Can you believe they made it live action? What were they thinking?
I remember being online because I didn't get a gaming computer
that could play real games until much later. But I just remember being on forums of people joking about how you had graphics like this
that are so beautiful and so nice. And then you get into like the actual game and it's like a PowerPoint slideshow kind of thing.
And I think this is like a great kind of example of that.
Wait, what? This is sick.
You can see his hair. It looks soft. It looks so good.
There's a lot of games that come out now that you wish looked this good, at least the cut scenes.
I mean, it's obviously like you can tell us from back then, but this is good from back then.
I don't know what to say because I'm actually blown away. No, sorry.
I do remember this. I don't know why, but it like threw me back.
I have played something. It might have been this one. Like unlocked a memory kind of feeling.
Yeah, it did. Like the moment I saw the icons, I was like, whoa, I know this.
Like I know how this looks.
Even the dialogues in French. I wasn't ready. I don't know what I expected.
What are you saying? Oh, come on. It wasn't a nightmare young leader.
It was a vision. Follow me. I will reveal what the future holds. I don't know what any of this means,
but I'm ready to go all the way. Ayo.
These graphics are way better than the other ones. This game still looks good.
I do very much love these graphics. I think modern polygonal gaming would be actually fire.
I just, maybe I'm the only one that thinks that, but I just think that if games were able to toggle,
that would be kind of cool. That's totally a thing in remasters,
including in this game actually. Position, attack.
This is your challenge. Oh, okay. Sorry, animals.
I'm not going to lie to you. Part of the reason why I went and attacked that is I'm just so used to like, I don't know, games where it's like,
oh, you attack this thing, you kill it, you get some meat, you know what I mean? Like, but I guess that's not really the move here, right?
Like you're not going to get random items from
just innocent animals sitting around. Dude, the computer definitely got louder.
It is struggling to render this. Are we going to really attack a sleeping person?
Absolutely. Sorry, buddy.
It's either you or us. It's track. He's got two heads.
That's crazy. That's crazy. And he's already dead.
I don't need any more guys. I'm as tough as I can be. I feel like this is probably one of the easier ones
that I've played today. This is very difficult when I don't know what everything says.
The coolest thing about when I picked up this game was that it gave me an experience
that I otherwise never would have been able to have and made it a little bit easier for me to relate
to all the people who, you know, literally will pick up
a language like English or Japanese because a gaming experience or a community
that they want to participate in is inaccessible
or not big enough in their native tongue. And I think that's one of the reasons that I was
so drawn to including it, even though obviously it's going to be a bit of
a struggle for these guys. Oh, I could totally see why kids would be like
mad into World of Warcraft. If I didn't have other things to do and I just wanted to waste time with my friends,
World of Warcraft. This is not World of Warcraft. You included that on purpose.
I give it a 6 out of 10, a 7 out of 10. Yeah, probably a 7.
It's fun. I like it. I like the look of it especially
and the controls are fun. I like the setup at the bottom. I like the map.
It seems very easy to understand, but there's just not a whole lot to do.
So I'm kind of bored. Okay, you've only done a tutorial mission so far.
But I gotta say the pacing of the tutorial compared to modern tutorials is pretty slow.
I could see people getting disengaged with it. I wish it was English.
I haven't done any fights yet, so I don't know, but it's better than the other ones.
That's fair. What would you rate this game out of 10? Uh, probably 6 out of 10.
6 out of 10? So this is the number one game? Yeah. I'll give it like a 3, a 3, or a 4.
It's not, again, it's not my type of game. I don't play these games.
Yeah, it's a little cerebral for you. Having watched all that,
my rose-colored glasses are a little cracked
for some of the games, but for others, honestly, are pretty much
unshattered. And I think there's two major things
that kind of hold younger people back from enjoying these games.
Number one is how good they have it today in terms of the quality and the creature comforts
available in modern games. It's true that a game like Road Rash
really doesn't have a ton of depth and replayability compared to a lot of what you can get today.
As for the ones that did have the depth, whether it's Dino Park Tycoon or Civ or Tie Fighter,
it's clear to me that there's nothing to really draw them in and force them to invest the hours
into it to reach that point of enjoyment. And when I say force them, obviously,
nobody, you know, had their hands on our head making us look at our computer screens
when I was a kid, but we didn't have as many games.
They were so expensive per title and there just weren't as many of them.
So what we did have, dang it, we tried to bring whatever fun was in them out of them.
And so for that reason, because I had the experience playing with them,
I would have no trouble going back and enjoying some of them, if not all.
If you guys enjoyed this video, why not check out the playlist of times that we've had young people try previous versions
of Windows and macOS. We have to do iOS 1.
Oh gosh. We should do it. There'd be no reason not to because it had no app store.
Let's do it. So there's nothing to like.
That's it.