Wednesday, November 21, 2012

FIRST IMPRESSION: PlayStation



          I don´t necessarily remember how I got my first PlayStation. It was one of those items that simply appeared. I don´t remember picking it up. I don´t remember the ride home from the local store where my father bought it. Quite frankly the only moment I remember from such adventure was a big shelf displaying tons of different packages, each one containing a different game, a mysterious universe to unveil.  I feverishly wanted my mother to buy me Tekken 3, since a good couple of my friends already had the previous Tekken installments, and that was the game every boy mostly desired at the time. Yet, the salesman agreed with her, my mother, that such game was too violent for a seven years old, so they picked up Crash Bandicoot 3 and Hercules instead, to what might have possibly been one of the greatest decisions ever made. However, a little boy's memories happens to be of the strongest kind, since at that point our existence is short, and our memory is sharper than ever. My entire relationship with the magic grey box is as vivid as my today's late breakfast. I easily remember I lived in fear of turning it on because, for some reason, the connection with the television was malfunctioning, and I thought I broke the console my parents put so much money on. So I would not even touch it, thinking I was successfully fooling them. I easily remember how my mother, once in a while, would give it a try, and if she could pull everything together, she would tell me, when picking me up at school, that I had a surprise waiting for me at home. I remember how fast my heart would beat while coming home, as if the console could speak out loud that I broke it, something I never actually did.
I feel however, despite my peculiar relationship with it, that the same thirty-two-bit grey box became somewhat of a cult object to a certain generation. It is one of those items almost all of us could easily draw with our eyes close. It changed our views. It opened us up to a enormous number of life lessons that, alongside with morals gave by the ones who raised us, made us distinguish between right and wrong situations in life. Certainly, like any other interaction system, it must be managed, for not everything is good. If my mother would have bought me Tekken 3 instead of Crash Bandicoot 3, perhaps my perception on violence would be corrupted, and I would've become a troubled boy. Yet, my point is, despite somewhat of a popular belief that gaming consoles might be a bad influence on a young child's mind, I would like to pitch in favor of it: sure, they might become somewhat of addictive, and unconsciously lead to bad actions, distorted thoughts of how everything around us function. Yet, the little boy or girl playing that console, a developed model of the same one I once played, cannot be responsible for the lessons presented to him or her. It is up to their parents, to the ones that teach them, to contemplate the difference between good and bad, and to be the judges of what a child may or may not play. After all, I only desired Tekken 3 while at the store. After all, I have never felt happier than when I got home from school, only to find out that my mother had been able to turn on the console.


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