Kids Are Given Game Boys, Feel Instant Sadness (video)

gyroscope

Quote:

"Ah, Game Boys. Forget your 3DS and your iPad mini: there was a day when these handheld hunks of 8-bit glory owned the playground.

But as seen below in YouTube producers The Fine Brothers' latest "React" episode, kids today just don't get it.

The reactions are mixed at best.

"Did you really enjoy playing this?"

"I kind of feel sad for the people in the past."

To their credit, the kids are tech-savvy enough to recognize that the Game Boy enabled much of the innovation that followed.

At the end of the video, a boy named Dylan held up the device he and the other kids see as old and clunky. "The Game Boy started it all ... This is the grandfather of everything," he said. Thank you, Dylan."

jigglybean

Just watched this and its pretty funny. Some of the comments were painful! lol

gyroscope

It's a reminder to me how the younger generation have never known a time without a computer or other electronic devices. :-)

(And missed video recorders, laserdisc, cassette tapes, vinyl records, 8-track, reel-to-reel recorders, B&W TV, CRT monitors, CRT TVs, cars you needed to start with a starter handle (I can just about remember that as a lad), etc, etc...

Gosh, I'm getting old.... ;-)

gyroscope

So you've agreed I'm getting old then, @jigglybean? (Only joking with you!)

StormyStudio

wow!... entertaining either way... but yeah it hurts seeing people so unenthusiastic about a Gameboy...

Have they strapped an Occulus Rift to their heads yet? ...

I guess that would come close to how cool a gameboy was way back when.

tatiang

"Tet-ter-is?"

"I think my mom would be better at this" -- that's a first. lol

jigglybean

motorcycle boy

You know what it only takes a change of environment to fix those attitudes! I bet if they were stuck somewhere where there was nothing at all to do for a long period of time they would kill to play an old school Gameboy! I know when I was serving as a medic in Iraq that we were constantly playing video games, cards, or whatever else would help pass the time. It didn't matter what it was either we welcomed it all with open arms.

Also, by the way, when I was going around to villages the kids were amazed at my simple digital camera. They hadn't ever seen one before. I think they'd enjoy some GameBoys.

gamestudent

RP

The issue I have with these videos is that the kids are casted for them and they are encouraged to "react". I prefer a genuine reaction anyday.

gyroscope

@RP said:
The issue I have with these videos is that the kids are casted for them and they are encouraged to "react". I prefer a genuine reaction anyday.

Personally, I'm certain none of them were acting - cast or not, their reactions all seemed genuine enough to me...

RP

@gyroscope No, I hear what you're saying, but for me it's painfully obvious. The whole production is your typical shoebox day of casting. The kids that attend these are....actors. Or at least aspiring actors (either way they got casted via an agency or via a casting databse). These faces have been in other stuff. Genuine is not force fed and it does not happen over and over again. That's what makes it special.

gyroscope

Understand your point, @RP - the vid. still entertaining (and telling) in it's own way though? Maybe not then! Next video please!!

RP

Someone is being creative and that's cool.

BBEnk

Forget those brats, here build your own..

motorcycle boy

Also whatever happened to playing with your GI Joe's in the dirt? That even beats GameBoy.

imGua

I didn't feel sad. That's how world works, it's normal.

gyroscope

@imGua said:
I didn't feel sad. That's how world works, it's normal.

You didn't feel sad, but some of those shown in the video did. That's how **their* world works, "as normal".

They reacted the way they did because they see the original GameBoy as being basic and clunky and unsophisticated, etc, etc., because they're only old enough to have experience of modern technological gadgets - and they are showing some empathy with those who were their age back then, with just that original GameBoy device to play games with.

The fact that the GameBoy shown was one of the beginnings of handheld gaming was lost to most of them, except the youngster at the end, with his comment of something like "this was the grandfather of gaming".

Btw, what's "normal" to you isn't necessarily normal to someone else (except maybe for some other members who agree your comment, of course).