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Reminiscing the 80s would never be complete without mentioning about 80s arcade games. An arcade game is a coin-operated gaming machine that you would usually find in entertainment centers, video arcades, and even in restaurants. Popular arcade games are redemption games that give players rewards based on their score in the game; computer-controlled video games; and pinball games wherein the player manipulates one or more metal balls on a playfield.

Flashback

Arcade games began to be so popular in the early 70s. Nolan Bushnell and Ted Dabney made Atari that released the Pong video game (based on ping-pong or table tennis) that became almost everyone’s favorite. The success of the Pong video game spawned lots of imitations and created more and more avid video players. Eventually video game arcades abounded through the 80s. They can be found in the malls, department stores, bars and even in restaurants and movie houses. They’re everywhere in the United States

Popular 80s Arcade Games

In the 80s, arcade games became even more popular. Some of the most influential 80s arcade games were the following:

Space Invaders – This game, one of the predecessors of modern video games, was created by the Japanese Toshihiro Nishikado. It was first released in 1978 in Japan. This arcade game mimics a shooting gallery with a movable laser (resembling a cannon) placed below the video screen. There were video aliens that were designed to disrupt the game by passing across the screen and by raining bombs and rays that are deadly. The goal of the player is to avoid those deadly rays and bombs and shoot the aliens so that they won’t reach the bottom of the screen or else, he or she will lose in the game.

Pac-Man – This was created by Namco and was first distributed in 1980. It game remains to be popular today though it has already taken new forms. Compared to many 80s arcade games, Pac-Man was not violent, was easy to play and was enjoyable, which explains why it clicked both to young and old, girls and boys alike.

The yellow circle with a mouth called Pac-Man makes people remember this game so well through the years. The game is played by maneuvering Pac-Man through the maze, letting him eat small dots and different item prizes along the way. Ghosts named Blinky, Inky, Pinky and Clyde on the other hand chase Pac-Man.

Donkey Kong – Another video game that emerged so popular among other 80s arcade games was the Donkey Kong. It was made by Nintendo and was introduced in 1981. Basically the game is played by maneuvering the chief character, Mario (formerly Jumpman),across a series of platforms. As Mario goes through the platforms, he has to get rid of obstacles that prevent him from rescuing a damsel in distress from the hands of Donkey Kong.

The abovementioned are only some of the most popular 80s arcade games. There were also the Battlezone, Pengo, Tron, Tetris, Rubik’s cube and many others. The craze for 80s arcade games only began to subside in the late 80s when newer forms of entertainment were being introduced such as advanced home video game consoles but 80s arcade games didn’t totally die out until the coming of fighting games like the Street Fighter ll that required two players.

Golf holidays in Spain are popular year round in many areas. The Costa del Sol and Costa Blanca have favourable weather even in winter for golfing. For this reason, most of the resorts are located along the Mediterranean coast. New courses are being built all the time in these areas to keep up with the demand.
Golf Holidays in Spain, Courses and Instruction
You can find information on courses through a travel agent or online. There is information on course conditions, locations, maps and pictures of the courses. You will also find information on upcoming events and other news from the resort.
Many websites have reviews written by both amateur and professional golfers. Read some that were written by people who have stayed at the resort and played the courses. This will give you valuable information about the resort from the point of view of past guests.
Many golf resorts have an onsite golf school. Professional golfers offer instruction to guests of the resort. Lessons can be done in small groups or privately with the instructor. Small group lessons are less expensive. Some also have golf school for kids. Between lessons, practice your new skills on the practice range.
Most resorts have a golf shop located at the resort. These shops sell equipment and apparel. You can buy anything you forgot to pack at the shop. Some also rent clubs, bags and balls. This is a good option if you don’t want to carry everything with you from home. You can rent what you need at the resort and have less to pack.
A club house at the resort is a nice convenience for guests. This will give you a place to change and shower after your game. Some have a sauna and food service as well as facilities for changing and showering.
Consider the size of the course. Most have either a nine or eighteen hole golf course. Whether you are playing nine or eighteen holes, keep good etiquette in mind. Politeness is part of Spanish culture, so don’t be rude to other groups on the course. Consideration is especially important during the busier seasons.
A common complaint among golfers is slow play by other groups. There is a lot you can do to avoid this. Be ready when it’s your turn to play a shot. Stay just behind the game in front of you to avoid longer waits for the group behind. Play your shot and move on. Mark your card at the next tee. Courtesy to other groups goes a long way toward everyone having a great time.
Other Activities on Golf Holidays in Spain
Consider other activities offered at golf resorts. Entertainment can be found at both hotel resorts and golf property rentals. One thing you will probably want is a pool, especially if you are traveling in the summer. A hotel will have a community pool. A private rental can have either a private or community pool. A private rental will have other conveniences such as an oven and washing machine.
Other Entertainment at Resorts:
o Tennis
o Swimming
o Mini golf
o Spa
o Gym
o Activities for kids
o Day nursery for kids
Another consideration is how close the resort is to other amenities. You may want a resort that is close to shopping and restaurants. If you aren’t planning to rent a car, you will want some of these things in walking distance, or be near to public transportation. If you plan to take part in the night life, you’ll want something near to bars or clubs.

You have reached that level. You are officially a “gym rat”, plodding along every day at a comfortable level, and you are comfortable with your body, too. It is not looking too bad, you are trim, and you fit in your jeans quite well. One day, however, you noticed you actually started to have shape to your muscles – and lines where you didn’t have them before! How cool! You are motivated to get to the “next level” … but how to do that?

Train for an Event

Training for a specific event will surely get your body in a kind of shape the likes of which you have never known. If you are accustomed to running on the treadmill and lifting weights, training for a first-time triathlon will develop muscles in your core, shoulders, and legs that you have probably never felt before. The results would be incredible!

If you have lifted weights for years, you have likely not pushed yourself as hard as you could with cardio. Why not aim to complete your first road race – be it a 5K or 10K – three or four months from now? You could pick a program developed by a running coach and mimic it closely, tailoring it to suit your schedule and needs. If you have the money, you could hire a trainer for this same purpose. On the flip side, if you have focused heavily on cardiovascular activity, maybe you would like to try competing in a fitness competition or figure competition just for fun! Having a specific goal will force you to be dedicated and stick to your new training schedule.

Mix it up!

You have likely hit a plateau if you have been doing the same routine for as long as you can remember. Even if you train hard each time you hit the gym, your body can get used to doing the same repetitive motions or lifting the same weights in the same sequence. There are a number of different ways you can change your routine even if you would like to continue to do the same exercises. If you really enjoy lifting weights and don’t want to deviate from a weightlifting routine, try interspersing 30 second bouts of cardio in between your sets. For instance, perform the usual number of repetitions within each set, but add a 30-second interval of jumping jacks between the first and second set, the second and third, etc. This will keep your heart rate elevated during weight training and help to burn fat even faster. Another thing to try is changing the way your lift your weight. If you normally lift 50% of your maximum weight for a total of about 10 repetitions, try increasing this to 65% of your maximum weight and do eight reps. You would be surprised at the difference you feel in your muscles, and this may be just what your muscles need to break through that training plateau. Some people enjoy plyometric exercises, which are quite difficult but can create quite a burn in the muscles. These general consist of powerful jumping moves and explosive bursts of speed or power. For example, instead of your traditional leg training routine that consists of squats and lunges, you could do jump squats, step ups on a bench, and sprints. Mixing it up in any of these ways will surely get you out of your rut.

Learn a skill-specific sport

Remember when you were a kid and exercise meant chasing a ball around a field or running after your teammates? Why not act like a kid and pick this up again? Just because the times have changed doesn’t mean your exercise has to! If you have been a slave to that same yoga series, kickboxing class, or cardio machine and weight lifting combo, it may be time to explore not only other activities, but actual sports.

Many cities and towns have intramural leagues with continuous activity year-round. Activities like racquetball or squash develop great hand-eye coordination, require intense mental focus, and exercise the heart along with almost every major muscle group. These games can be played in groups of two or four and all year-round – sometimes in your very own gym. Equipment is not expensive, and court reservation is either free or cheap.

If being outside is more your style, you could join a running club. Many people like to play basketball or hockey or tennis. Not only will you develop different muscles, you will develop new skills and perhaps make some new friends.

Reaching a plateau in your routine is frustrating, but it doesn’t need to stop you from bettering yourself. Trying a new sport, a new way of doing things, or training for a goal or event can help you bust right through that “been there, done that” feeling.

There is no doubt that video games are in their golden age at the moment. Since 2007 sales of consoles and games have grown by 57 percent in spite of the economic downturn. During March 2008 1.7 billion dollars worth of games products were sold. The games industry is now bigger than films and is gaining more and more mainstream appeal and recognition.
Nintendo have helped to bring games to a much wider audience than was ever thought possible. Many families and older people are joining in what was traditionally a hobby for young males. The current generation of technology has pushed games further than they’ve ever been before. Games on the PC, Xbox 360 and PS3 are pushing graphical realism to new heights while the Wii is looking to break the boundary between virtual and real space with motion sensitive controls.
An interesting question to pose is where the next generation will go, and where video game entertainment will end up. A common theory is that they will move away from being purely games and end up as virtual reality experiences. The starting points of the necessary technologies to achieve this are already in place.
Motion sensitive controls are a significant stepping stone toward virtual reality in the home. Imagine if when playing a bowling game instead of watching the screen with cartoon characters mimicking your actions you were wearing a headset and being fed photo-realistic graphics from a first person perspective. The experience would be far more realistic than anything available at the moment.
It is my opinion that there will be two distinct directions that electronic entertainment will take. One path is that of the Wii, appealing to a mass market with easy to pick-up games that are designed for a quick dose of fun with family and friends. The other side I think will go down the ultra realistic route and end up trying to give the user a virtual reality experience. With technology as it is, the scope for providing this in the home is limited. The Wii remote requires users to physically move their bodies. Obviously this will not work in the living room once games require you to do more than swing a tennis racket or bowl a ball.
A workaround for requiring physical movement from the participants is to read brain activity. While currently the stuff of science fiction there are significant strides being made into reading human brain waves and converting them into mechanical movement. On the 28th of May 2008 the BBC posted a news article stating that scientists from the University of Pittsburgh had managed to get a monkey to control a robot arm to feed itself by just using its brain. The monkey had tiny probes the width of a human hair inserted into the primary motor cortex in order to read the electronic impulses that control movement. With a little training the monkey was able to manipulate the robotic arm as if it was its own.
Such invasive procedures are obviously out of the question for simple home use but it is certainly feasible to see the technology being adapted to read the brain from outside the head. It would be in this way that thoughts could be read to control movements in a virtual reality. This technology would also have other significant advantages, such as restoring movement to those crippled by spinal injuries and motor neurone diseases. I would see a difficulty when using these systems in separating virtual and real movements. Once trained to control movements in a virtual world with the brain would one be able to move their real body properly afterwards?
With technology such as this in place combined with ultra realistic graphics, we may see some virtual reality games created that are almost indistinguishable from real life. Would this lead to a mass migration to a virtual world where people can be as they please? Perhaps the topic for another article but certainly it is a scenario explored in many science fiction books and films.
In 1999 action film The Matrix famously told of a future in which mankind lived unknowingly in a virtual reality, their physical bodies were used to power the machines which had enslaved them. While unlikely to happen, when you read stories of Korean men starving themselves to death while playing MMO games it certainly makes you worry about how many people would abandon their bodies should such technology become available.
In reality though it is highly unlikely that virtual realities this complex will be able to exist, at least not in the foreseeable future. The computing power required to process them is trillions of times greater than what can be achieved today, with some theories suggesting that it would take a computer the size of a planet to process a virtual reality complex enough to fool the human mind.
I do think that games will reach an extremely high level of realism though, just not in entirely virtual worlds. The biggest barrier isn’t just processing power, but how to give enough feedback to trick the senses. I think that vision and sound will be relatively simple to reproduce but taste, smell and touch will be much harder. The issue of balance and orientation is a sticking point as well. Without direct input into the brain these senses may prove impossible to mimic inside a computer simulation.
Of course in the end it also comes down to what is financially viable for a company to put out and sell. The consumer will dictate the direction that games end up taking by what they’re willing to spend money on. With the dominating success of the Wii over the other platforms it would suggest that users are more comfortable using controls that mimic real life actions than they are using a traditional control pad or keyboard and mouse.
Graphics and simulations will continue to improve over time and I’m sure that one day it will be quite standard to wear a headset to play games. Whether that headset reads the thoughts of the user or not depends on whether it becomes cost effective to sell to consumers and whether people are ready to embrace the technology. I’m sure the possibility will exist at some point in the future but whether it represents the future of video games and is actually used remains debatable.
Everything considered the future of electronic entertainment is certainly a bright one. Eventually the technologies will merge and we’ll see virtual reality games integrated into TV, radio and the Internet. The only question is when all this will happen.