I eventually upgraded the buttons to some gamerfingers.
From reddit:
The 80s was above all a time of optimism. The 'American dream' - the sunset beach, the fast car - felt that it was somehow within reach, not just in America but across the Western world. Even if not everyone made it at least you had a fair chance to. You could get an education and a good job. Buy a house. Technology was exciting and liberating. You could have a real computer in your home and use it to blat rows of descending aliens. And we - the Free West, with our democratic market economies and our open societies, our colour TVs and our microwave ovens, our skateboards and our pop music - were beating the Russians hands down. What a time to be alive! Yes, it was to some extent a shallow, brash, materialistic, even decadent decade, but it was one in which you were a winner on the winning side. With your walkman and your BMX, the future looked 'outrun' - cool, exciting, sexy, rich.
Fast forward to 2019. Now we are in time of pessimism. For most people, the economy hasn't really recovered from the 2008 crisis - a lot of people say their careers derailed and are still suffering from a decade of under-employment or lower incomes. Technology has ceased to be liberating and become terrifying: spying on people, interfering in elections. We are chained to our mobile devices. And we, the West, aren't so sure about our freedom anymore. Since 9/11 2001 that's been a bit shaky, a bit conditional. We've lost confidence in the core values and institutions that once defined us. The Russians and the Chinese are in the ascendant. The planet is dying, we can't even pretend it's not our fault.
The sunset beach and the fast car, the neon lights and the 8-bit graphics, were aspirational in the 1980s. Now they are nostalgic. They remind us of a simpler, more hopeful world. They remind us of a dream that was lost.
