Hours are about to disapper from my life

As technology has improved and computer processors have gotten faster and smaller one of two things happens to video games. You can either make them really complex with amazing life-like graphics. Or you can make them really small.

That's what Namco has done with some classic Atari games. Games used to require huge physical space. Now, those large arcade games of the past fit in the palm of your hand.

I just picked up this 5-in-1 classic game controller at Target today. The Namco Original Arcade TV Games Video Game System plugs right into the TV and has 5 arcade games built in. These games are the original arcade games with their original code, squeezed into a small space. In short, it is awesome for anyone who grew up playing these games.

This controller has the classic Ms Pac Man (much harder than Pac Man), Pole Position (it was great to play in the arcade in the sit down console), Galaxian (Space Invader on steroids), Mappy (what the hell is this?), and Xevious.

I bought it for Xevious alone.

Xevious is one of the original scroll and shoot video games. It was also the first arcade game that had it's own TV commercial. According to Wikipedia, it was a cult favorite in Japan. It was never quite as big in the US, but the game still popped up from time to time.

It has simple, yet compelling, game play and sucks the player right in. The graphics are amazing for the early 80s, and are not bad for today.

One summer in the mid-eighties, we went to Florida for a week. On the last day, we had some time to kill. We stayed at the Days Inn in Orlando, and they had a small arcade on the first floor. And, of course, they had the full size arcade Xevious. I have no idea how long I actually played the game, or how many quarters I dropped in, but it seems like a lot. While I played all the major games, only four grapped my attention quite like this. Xevious, Dragon's Lair, Jump Bug, and the original line drawn Star Wars arcade game. That afternoon, though, it was all abut Xevious.

And, while I never knew the name of the game until today, I always remembered the game play and the zone I could slip into.

Tonight, playing it on the TV, I went right back into the zone, and 20 years just disappeared.