2018年9月8日土曜日 - 
Tony：Last Man Standing
I
was born in 1970. That's relevant because as I grew up, video games grew up
too. I remember my dad brought home some kind of proto-console that had weird
controls that looked like dials. I'm sure I wasn't even ten years old. He fiddled around the back of our second TV,
the small black and white that my dad had when he was in university, screwing
down some RF connecters and then spun the dial on the TV to channel two. All of a
sudden we were playing Pong. Table
tennis on a TV! Some
version of it anyway. My dad was way better than me, but I tried and tried, and
a few days later I won my first game against him. It felt amazing and I've
never looked back.
Flash forward forty years and I'm a
dad. My son is six and can't really have a story like mine because there's no day in his life that video
games entered. Like TV, books, and music; video games have always surrounded
him. But... there is a new phenomenon in video games: Battle Royal! Lots of
games on the market now have modes where many players drop onto a map that is
limited in size and battle it out over weapons and supplies until one player is
left standing. It reminds me of the wrestling Royal Rumbles I watched with
Andre the Giant, Hulk Hogan, and the great wrestlers from the 80's. It's the
same concept.
Players from around the
world form squads or venture onto the map solo. You can choose to avoid
players and sneak around until the end, or jump immediately into the fray and
hope for the best. The cartoony graphics and lack of blood make it somewhat
family friendly. Still, we limit our son's play time because the game play is addictive. The
adrenaline rush is real when you're in a fire-fight and get the upper hand over a player
that
was trying to kill you. Phew! It's a rush.：relevant：関連がある
proto-console：初期の原始的なゲーム機
weird：奇妙な
fiddled around：いじくる
All of a sudden：不意に
phenomenon：現象
squads：軍隊
sneak around：こっそり後ろに回る
fray：争い
addictive：病みつきになる