And they call the 80s the deadliest decade. 90s is where it hit the fan.

[Dragon Princess Yushira]

I never got to experience life like the majority of people here where as children, ya'll can watch live action and cartoon gun violence every Saturday and Sunday morning and for some people smoking and racial caricatures freely and not be influenced to imitate it to the exact extent (yes you had your toy guns n' bubblegum cigarettes and that is how far it went I assume). Even with video games, it seems kids had more sense than kids of the decades that came after the 80s. Now my generation gets a bunch of powderpuff bullshit. Why am I ranting about this, you ask?

 

I recently played a game called Safari Hunt on the Sega Master System and beat the game (it ends after level 69). Either kids had more brains in the 80s or SEGA wasn't anticipating most children to make it that far. You beat level 69 and you get a message that says something along the lines of:

 

YOU ARE A GOOD HUNTER, NEXT TIME LET'S GO ON A REAL HUNT WITH A REAL GUN.

 

Let that sink in your mind. How in the Samhain hell was there ever no records of any reports of kids shooting their TVs playing this game with a real gun after beating it the first time? People talk about GTA this, Mortal Kombat that. But this game should have been chaotic.

[fiddlepaddle]

Nothing wrong with aspiring to be a real hunter. MK is maybe on par with an R-rated movie, so age restriction makes sense.

 

Training to steal, however, is quite different (regardless of effectiveness); maybe more similar to shooting unarmed civilians in an urban setting. I wouldn't immerse myself in either of these, personally.

[xenomorpher]

How in the Samhain hell was there ever no records of any reports of kids shooting their TVs playing this game with a real gun after beating it the first time?

Perhaps parents were more responsible back then and didn't rely on machines to watch their kids. It's possible kids weren't as stupid back then either. Compared to some from today, they're geniuses. All you need to do is watch some YouTube videos to see what I mean.

Edited December 10, 2017 by xenomorpher

[Gamemoose]

Well, shooting your TV wasn't a real hunt so.....there you go.

[homerhomer]

I wouldn't blame the kids, it's just today's world with triggered media and the internet.

[+x=usr(1536)]

Well, shooting your TV wasn't a real hunt so.....there you go.

Unless you're Elvis Presley.

[+frankodragon]

Then there's the Magnovox Odyssey gun accessory back in the 70s. Also some Famiclones had the light gun and they sure didn't look like the NES Zapper either.

[Dragon Princess Yushira]

I got a Famiclone and the light gun looks like an Phoenix HP22A semi automatic pistol. Nothing got serious with that till Lethal Enforcers came out on console. Mom showed me a game magazine that said "Pro Tip: Do not paint the gun black."

[CatPix]

An interesting fact page from PEGI, the Pan-European Game Information (yes, the European ESRB/CERO)

 

http://www.pegi.info/en/index/id/25

 

Did you know?

Games foster creativity and interaction and can play an important role in social and intellectual development.

Because games require children to obey rules and follow directions, they can increase their capacity for self-discipline and autonomy.
« There has been research looking at what skills children learn through playing games. [...] Video gaming could be used to enhance [...] behavioural inhibition (ability to prevent oneself from doing something inappropriate) in children.”

 

The idea that video game enforce violent behavior is the same old worn-out idea if media influencing the children. Not that they don't do that, but media isn't reality and most kids can tell the difference.

In the 70's, TV was making children violent.

In the 1930's, comics were guilty of this.

I'm pretty sure you can find the same for 1900's horror stories, etc.

 

The only link you can do between childs and violence is the opposite : children and people with a tendency for violence will most likely play violent video games. But playing GTA won't make you a criminal.

[MrMaddog]

It's because a thing called Political Correctness began in the 90's and allowed parents to leave all child rasing responsibilites to so-called "experts", entirely forcing their children to live sheltered lives.

 

As for the video game (and toy) gun issue, that was due to cops shooting people who were out playing Laser Tag thinking they're real weapons. That's why we got orange, pink & blue guns to play with...

[leods]

Stories about people kiling people, or people doing bad things are just that. Stories. Including the role play kids do. It's all pretend. It's not as much that people nowadays are politically correct. It's more the fact that little drama makes tons of views online, and that is what many people live off these days. So making something common and normal seem outrageous or at the least interesting is many people's jobs now. Take a look at Yahoo's front page. It's nothing to do with kids or videogames. It's whatever bullshit they can do. "look at x celebrity's panties" "you won't believe what he did to survive" "child says "I would kill for that toy"" etc.. There is no actual politics. There is only hits. It'S all about calling our attentions.

 

Now as fiddlepaddle said, it's quite a lot different going hunting, or just shooting random people in the face. Ratings should actually be there for people who don't inspect content themselves to know what is at least on the ballpark of what their kids should be playing.

 

Now the other phenomena is, today everybody has a cellphone with a camera and multiple social media outlets. So anything that happens gets captured and shared. People can easily blow it up. I could say that after playing videogames my daughter gets angry. I can then make a video of me taking the game from her cause it's time to stop, and she'll be mad at me cause she wants to keep playing. Very appealing. Of course the same thing would happen if I took a plush animal from her. Those evil teddys ruining my daughter's life.

 

A lot of what goes on today has much more to do with perceptions than what actually is happening. If you ignore social media I promise wou'll live in a different world. You'll see much less drama. It will still affect your life, but hey, at least youu're not feeding it. Cause as I said: all these people want is attention. It doesn't matter what your response is. As long as you have clicked on their post, video, whatever it is, they're making a profit out of you.

[zzip]

A lot of what goes on today has much more to do with perceptions than what actually is happening. If you ignore social media I promise wou'll live in a different world. You'll see much less drama. It will still affect your life, but hey, at least youu're not feeding it. Cause as I said: all these people want is attention. It doesn't matter what your response is. As long as you have clicked on their post, video, whatever it is, they're making a profit out of you.

Ain't that the truth, I see it in my own life. People see a news or social media story about some "bad thing" that happened so someone, and they assume its an epidemic and "bad thing" will happen to someone in the family so we have to take extra precaution. But if you research it, you will find that rates of "bad thing" happening are actually falling, not rising, and it's nowhere near epidemic. But that doesn't matter, they saw it on the news!

 

These days, I block out most of it. It does help you be happier and more optimistic.

[CatPix]

Then there's the Magnovox Odyssey gun accessory back in the 70s. Also some Famiclones had the light gun and they sure didn't look like the NES Zapper either.

Fun fact:

This gun was part of a trade with no one else but...

Nintendo.

Magnavox got Nintendo to make that gun (that actually existed as a battery-powered target shooting game, the Kôsenjû Guns - which, BTW, were designed by Gunpei Yokoi) and in exchange Nintendo had the exclusive rights to sell the Odyssey in Japan.

 

European gamers got to play with this, as it was the gun inclded with Interton Pong consoles (with a DIN connector, so not directly compatible unless you have a proper connector or are ready to mod your Odyssey)

I have one, and I can confirm : it's pump action, and don't dare to try shooting if you don't pump : it mechanically block the trigger!

Edited December 12, 2017 by CatPix

[Silverfleet]

I'm not into guns now, but I sure played a ton of games with light guns back in the day! It was just part of the experience, and it was fun. It still is, and one of the only reasons I keep a CRT around. When I was a kid, I had the NES and the Zapper, and my cousin had the SMS with the Light Phaser. I played my fair share of Safari Hunt with that thing, but I liked Duck Hunt (and the Skeet Shooting mode) better. Later on, I played with my buddy's Sega Menacer and my other friend's Super Scope 6, and I spent a lot of time with the Virtua Cop games on the Saturn. When I hit the arcades with friends, it was all Operation Wolf, T2, Beast Busters, and Revolution X.

 

I appreciate the mechanical aspects of guns, but I have zero desire to own one now, despite how much light gun gaming I did back in the day.

 

Side note: my high school Spanish teacher was insane. When he got mad at the class, his bald 5' 5" frame would turn bright red and he would go into the classroom closet and fish out "La Pistola" and pretend to shoot it in the air. No, "La Pistola" wasn't something dirty... it was a Sega Light Phaser with the cord cut off!!! How he obtained that, no one knows.

 

Did I mention he was freaking INSANE????

[Andromeda Stardust]

I played duck hunt when I was a kid. Grabbed my pa's rifle and fired and the tube tv exploded. I almost died, but pa tanned my hide when I got back from the hospital to make sure I didn't do it again.....

 

It's because of kids like me why they started painting the zapper orange, so they could tell it apart from a real gun, cuz kids like us had no common sense.

 

 

LOL!

 

[bradhig1]

G1 megatron toy sales got banned in the US cause it looked too much like a real gun.

[Tanooki]

Which makes me glad I own a complete G1 Megatron. That thing really does quite well mimic the old Walther. I've got a few others but they're from older decades of real life looking cap and cork guns too. The cork one is some tin toy one with a silencer meant for secret agents and the other is a very amazing looking cap gun derringer.

[leods]

I am completely against crating a culture of violence. I don't think everything should be about killing stuff. But that said, guns are just guns. Hyper realystic guns are a problem, because they can cause misunderstands or even be used to commit crimes. Besides that, I see no reason why playing with fake guns should be a problem to anyone. My daughter doesn't play with guns, she doesn't watch violent crap, and still, when she's really angry at me, she says something like: "my shark is gonna bite your hands off." or "my shark will eat you, and you will die".

 

So From that I can only conclude we should ban shark toys, cause they make children violent. Damn you plush animals! you turned my daughter into a psychopath!

[Silverfleet]

Another thing I just thought of: When I was a kid, my dad had a wooden gun rack mounted on the living room wall, right near where my NES and Colecovision were hooked up. He had two rifles and a 12 gauge shotgun on the rack. The guns were never loaded, and the bullets/shells were kept elsewhere. If I asked my dad, he would show them to me, but we knew not to touch them. Both my parents explained to us how dangerous they could be, and that we would possibly hurt ourselves if we messed with them.

 

My friends also knew that they were off limits, and never once asked to see them, even if we were alone. It was just the way things were; we understood the difference between the video game guns and the real ones. It wasn't hard.

 

Also, back then, you could go to a toy store and buy water guns that looked fairly real. I had a M-16 and an UZI, and they looked fairly legit. They sucked as water guns though, especially after the Super Soakers came out. But for playing "Contra" in the back yard with the neighborhood kids, they kicked ass!

 

These days, my dad's guns are under lock and key somewhere in their house and have been since my two younger nephews were born. The world is different now. But when I was a kid, trust kept things honest.

 

Again, as an adult, I'm not a gun owner or have any desire to own one.