When looking at technology and media, the focus is regularly on the technology, the advances in technology, what these new gadgets can do and how powerful they are. Over the weekend I took a step back, a gigantic step back, to the year 1986

Alex Kidd in Miracle World (Alex Kidd, not Alex the Kid as many seem to think), built into my SEGA Master System that I found as I was cleaning out my wardrobe. I rushed to the TV and plugged it in, jumping through the time warp. As the memories came flushing, the first thing I realized was that, as somebody who owns a PS3, 360 and Wii, these ancient 8 bit graphics more than sufficed, why? because the game is fun, the game is challenging. This brings me to my main point. This game becomes very challenging, and it showed me just how easy games have become today. Load up your newest PS3 title, you get to choose between very easy, easy, medium, hard, SUPER NIGHTMARISH HARD, Alex Kidd offers no such options, it's sink or swim the whole way through. When you run out of lives in Alex Kidd (aside from using the cheat), it's Game Over. On todays games, if you run out of lives, it's simply a case of loading up a save point or using one of your unlimited continues. Speaking of save points, back in the days of Alex, you didn't know what the hell a save point was. If you wanted to clock this game, you had to sit down and grind it out the whole way.

Clocking a game today seems to have lost its glory. It's all about being the king pin online. Clocking a game used to have meaning, I clocked Sonic was something to brag about, but todays games seem so much easier that it is for the most part meaningless. Despite the fact that AI is far superior to what was used back on the SEGA, this super intelligent AI just regularly employs cheap tactics to beat you also. Back in the day, it was about problem solving, about thinking, today it's about tailoring the game to a difficulty level that suits you and then trying to trick or glitch out the AI. The Videogame industry has exploded into one of the biggest media markets and "gamers" can be found everywhere, but being a game isn't what it used to be.