Monday, October 09, 2006

I have found the dividing line

Percentage of my class that has played the arcade version of Dragon's Lair (1983): 0%.

Percentage of my class that is familiar with Gauntlet (1984): ~25%. Mostly from the more recent console versions, and Xbox Live Arcade.

Percentage of my class that played the original Super Mario Bros. (1985): 100%.

I suppose I can expect this to shift up by a year, next Fall.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I weep for the future. That said, I don't think this is as much an issue of dates as specific games. Mario really is a global brand that touches just about everyone. Even in a class full of self-professed game geeks, only a minority are going to pursue gaming footnotes* like Dragon's Lair and Gauntlet.

Put another way, do you think any more of your class would be familiar with the arcade version of Dragon's Lair II: Time Warp (1991)?

* For the record, it was really painful calling these two games "footnotes".

Ian Schreiber said...

That's a good point, although I think most of the students had not played Donkey Kong or Mario Bros. in the arcade either.

Dragon's Lair 2 actually came up in class, and you're right that no one was familiar with it. But that's not a fair comparison either; how many units of the sequel were printed, maybe five of them worldwide? :)