Barnstorming – A Video Game Of Yesterday With Lessons For Today [Video]

There was a time in the early 1980's when video games were just starting to take over our in home culture. They had already corrupted our  minds at the arcades and now thanks to companies like Atari the flickering, beeping, menace was now in our living rooms.

I was an impressionable teenager during those turbulent video game times. Just like the teens of today we'd sit in front of the TV screen and play for hours. Unless our parents wanted to watch something stupid like the news.  You had to be a rich kid to have your own TV in your own room to play video games so most of us had to share TV time with the "older generation."

The game you see in the video above is called Barnstorming. The guy who designed the game got the idea for it by watching a biplane flying next to a roadway he was driving on. The concept of the game is simple. You fly your plane over the windmills, around the geese, and through the barns. The fewer things you hit, the faster your time.

It was quite a thrill to make it all the way through the course without hitting anything. Then came the quest to do it faster and faster. I must have played this stupid game a million times before I realized the course never changed. It was like Pac-Man. If you could memorize the pattern you could play the game in your sleep.

Back then I thought being able to play this game and win at this game was an accomplishment. Today I realize it was just training for life. You go through the same basic obstacles everyday at about the same time. You try not to hit anyone or anything and get done with your day in the fastest time possible. It just doesn't seem as fun as it did when we were flying a pretend airplane.