I was lucky enough to have grown up with computers, writing my first program in 1977, and then entertaining myself with the Arcades of the 80's as they released title after title .. while also having access to the internals of the cabinets, through friends of my Dad who owned an Arcade rental business .. without those halcyon days of burned fingers and EEPROM copiers I don't think I'd have gained the insight I then later used to get into systems software development... For me, it was a joy indeed to walk into the local Arcade ("Time Zone", in Australia) and see the new - almost monthly - releases from around the world, spend a few bucks on a game or two, then walk back into the employee-only area and inspect the games, chip for chip, on the workbench.

I think a lot of serious value came from that experience, and I really wish it were possible for youngsters to have a similar kind of environment, in this day and age .. alas, with the appstore/walled-gardens, its not so easy to get inside the boxes and have a look, although I do think that my kids are going to gain a great deal of experience from the independent gaming community, the Open Pandora/Pyra and emu-scene .. once they get enough of an interest in how things are working in order to stop playing the games of the zeitgeist.

I remember when Scramble came out, how revolutionary it was to have a side-scroller .. and then when R-type/Gradius hit the scene, WOW! It was an evolutionary progression that I don't think many see, these days, in the modern arena. Does the Nintendo Switch provide such inspirations? I guess I'll have to dig deeper to see if there is an indie scene on that platform .. for the sake of my kids.