Leave Your Thoughts

As I sit here watching my friend play the game Dirt on the XBOX360, I admire just how realistic looking it is and how easily my grandparents could be fooled into thinking they were watching an actual race.

I'm reminded of the first console I ever had, which was a Super Nintendo. I played the regular Nintendo at my friend's house, but when I got to the age that my parents deemed appropriate to play video games, Super Nintendo had just come out. My friends and I would spend hours playing Super Mario, Double Dragon and Street Fighter. I also became a huge fan of RPGs thanks to the Super Nintendo's classic library of Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy III, Super Mario RPG, Lufia I & II and more that I can't think of right now.

My generation (people who are around the age of 21) was, as I see it, born in just the right time to experience the humble roots of video games and can see how far they've come today. My parents and their peers aren't included because they don't appreciate video games as much as us and didn't grow up playing them like we did.

This can apply to anything technological; I didn't get a cell phone until high school and there are kids in elementary school with theirs glued to their ears; maybe that's an exaggeration, but the point is I can remember life before cell phones and it involved a lot of collect calls made from the food court of the mall. Or when my family got its first computer; Windows hadn't even come out yet and the only interesting game was solitaire, which was more fun than trying to get connected to the internet back then.

People in middle and high school grew up after Nintendo and 32-bit consoles and played N64 and Playstation. Although those graphics can't compare to today's consoles, the jump isn't as big as it is going from Contra to Halo 3. Maybe spoiled is too harsh of a word, unappreciative might describe younger gamers a little better. But it will probably be even worse in the later generations that follow when graphics on the next consoles for Sony and Microsoft are the norm and games like NBA Jam and Frogger are going to be as ancient as the Dead Sea Scrolls.

I can't wait to see what new advancements take place in the gaming world in future years; though it may sound strange, I approach this predicament of non appreciative gamers as a society would hope to preserve its culture, because like it or not, video games are a big part of many people's lives, and not in a bad way. So keep your old Nintendo games (except ET, that goes to the landfill) and every now and then pop in a copy of Battle Toads and enjoy it with your friends because it's up to our generation to make sure classic games on the old systems are never forgotten.

My name is Brendan and I am a senior at the University at North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I enjoy writing articles to improve my writing, pad my resume, and give my advice and feedback on different topics. Check out my website to find more of my stuff at http://brendanigan.com

LiveScience.com - Once again, bookworms in the Midwest and Pacific Northwest have beaten out Yankee types to reach the very top of a researcher's list of the most literate American cities.

Downloading games online is the easiest and cheapest way to get new games. But is it ethical? And is it easy? Downloading torrents is one way to go about it. But most of the time its illegal and sometimes quite complicated. So whats the best way to go about it?

There are sites that have you pay a subscription to either download games directly or download from a P2P (person to person) network. But there are sites where you can pay a one time fee and have access to there network for life. Are these sites up to date though? Some of them arent. But if you do your research you can find some great sites.

Is it ethical? Yes, most of the time the sites will pay the royalties to the gaming companies and still have cheap downloads as you are downloading them and putting on CD or DVD yourself. PS2 (playstation 2) games are the easiest to find and download as the PS2 game code is easy to burn off.

So which sites are the best to use? There are many out there, but as most things online you have to be careful of the scams. Doing your research into it is obviously the first thing to do but always be careful when parting with your money. Some sites will be out of date and only offer a small selection of games.

The best sites are the ones that dont just have the PS2 game code but also have movies, tunes and games on other platforms all easily downloadable and just as easy to put onto CD/DVD

Lewis Waller is a software reviewer from the uk. For more information go to http://www.squidoo.com/download-ps2-game

AP - Israel widened its deadliest-ever air offensive against Gaza's Hamas rulers Sunday, pounding smuggling tunnels and government strongholds, sending more tanks and artillery toward the Gaza border and activating thousands of reservists for a possible ground invasion.