“Go to mickeymouse dot com”. This was the response my husband received from our 3 year old nephew this past weekend after telling him that he was looking for the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on the computer. I think that it’s amazing that a 3 year old has an even remote awareness of the Internet world. It made me think back to when I was a kid and how technology has evolved. I remember getting our first computer in the mid-80′s and being amazed that we could write a short program the would display a phrase in blinking marquee “lights” (OK, the lights were asterisks, but it was cool!). Of course, we originally wanted Atari , but decided that we could live with the computer our parents got us. A full run down of my first computer, the TI-99/4A is located at the following link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Instruments_TI-99/4A
Although this wasn’t a gaming system, we played our fair share of games. Our first game was Alien and I can still remember the theme music (yes, I know this is very sad). Recently, I decided to Google this game and came across the following site that even has an audio file of the theme music!
http://www.videogamehouse.net/prototypes/theattack/
I can still remember using the keyboard to move around that board. My sister and I were completely blown away when we got a joystick for the system. Of course, we broke (ok, I broke) numerous joysticks playing games like Alpiner on our TI-99/4A. I couldn’t help it! The abominable snowman was after me!
And now here we are in the year 2009 and my nephew is telling my husband to go to mickey mouse dot com. Although technology has grown and changed in so many ways since the days of our Alien game playing on the TI-99/4A, the excitement is still the same.
