My first video game system was the classic, 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System, which I was lucky enough to receive as a Christmas gift. It was a year when I had all but completely given up on the magic of Santa Claus, and yet retained my faith in the mystical being for the sake of my younger siblings and the hopes that I would get the cutting-edge video game system. I wasn't disappointed. Santa was even kind enough to hook the system up to my television so I could begin playing quickly.

The system came with Super Mario Brothers, but I was fortunate enough to receive a second game as part of my holiday haul. The game, Metroid, was an unknown title at the time and it took some leafing through the manual before my family and I could figure out exactly what we were doing. Before long, the adventure game overtook the repetition of Super Mario Brothers in capturing my family's interest and hours upon hours were spent finding power-ups and making my way to the bosses with my family watching. It truly became a family experience making my way through this game. That experience of video games as "family time" didn't stop with that title. In fact, many of the longer games released for the system (The Legend of Zelda, Metal Gear, etc.) became an excuse to gather around the television and watch as one player made their way through the game.

The years have passed and video game consoles have grown more and more powerful. Visually, games are getting closer and closer to photo-reality, creating accurate depictions of human beings and environments that follow the laws of our real world. We are continually impressed by realistic physics within a game world or virtual recreations like that of New York City in Grand Theft Auto IV, which is about as far removed from those 8-bit graphics as a system can get. Yet, there is something that draws us back to those older games; games we played in a simpler time, with simpler mechanics than most of the ones people are anxiously awaiting today.

What's interesting about these games is that, upon revisiting them, we realize how much easier they are than they were when we first played them. Metroid probably took me months to beat as a child. Now, it's a short afternoon jaunt. Super Mario Brothers infuriated my family (in fact, I'm not sure we ever did beat that one). Now people are doing speed runs through the game. Time and again I revisit games from my childhood and find they may not be as challenging, but they are still incredible fun, and they don't require the time and effort that contemporary games may demand. Just because they are simpler doesn't mean they aren't enjoyable, which is why we revisit them.

For the longest time, revisiting older games meant holding on to the remnants of a past system, hoping nothing would break since there was no longer any service to repair a broken console or game. I dabbled in the arena of emulators for a little while, but found they took too much time and effort, and the best games were impossible to find. Thankfully, these days, the video game entities have figured out this power of nostalgia, as they offer a lot of those classic video games through downloadable services (Xbox Live, the Wii Marketplace, etc). Sure enough, the first game I got for my Nintendo Wii wasn't a cutting edge game that took advantage of the Wii's unique controllers. It was a downloaded version of Metroid.

Of course, in these new downloadable versions, the games have changed slightly. For games like Metroid, now we can save games anywhere and pick up right where we left off, instead of having to scribble down horrendous passwords and hope the characters are right the next time we start playing. Leaving a game of Zelda is like putting it on an extended pause, picking up right where you left off instead of at one of the starting points. Somehow, it's a missing element of those games I'm more than happy to have lost. The core of the games are still there, however, a fun return to the past, enjoyable no matter how many times we play them.

I have no doubt this trend will continue for generations to come. Video game systems will get more and more powerful, finally leading to a full emersion in the game, but we will still return to the games of our youth, backtracking into 8-bit fun, or whatever your childhood technology may be, remembering the games of our youth and how hard they seemed at the time, but how much fun we had - and still have - playing them.