Our beloved Notorious Eddie Mac has an outstanding feature on the Brief History of WWE Video Games (read it) starting with 1989's WWF WrestleMania. Aside from a quick reference to the glory days of personal computers, E-Mac was forced to skip over MicroLeague Wrestling.

Partly because it wasn't for home consoles, but mostly because so few of us played it.

Since I have the dubious honor of being Cageside's resident dinosaur, I can lay claim to having owned a Commodore 64, but only because my grandfather -- a professor of Economics at the local university -- bequeathed it to me when he upgraded to the Commodore 128.

As an old guy, he didn't have any games. As a young guy, I didn't have any money, so I had to rely on my mark-in-arms from the other side of the tracks (the good side) to come over and bring that little plastic cabinet stuffed with giant floppy disks.

Among them was MicroLeague Wrestling, and it was laughably simplistic. Digitized images flashed before our eyes as we tried to rack up damage points, then anticipate what commentators Vince McMahon and Jesse Ventura would say after each successful move.

All at the breakneck speed of "taking turns."

Nothing says raucous good time like pushing a button and waiting 30 seconds for the game to respond. But that didn't mean we still couldn't have a great time. Luckily my pal, who was certifiably insane, could endure the kinds of tedious tasks that would drive most of us to the nut house.

MicroLeague Wrestling had no sound effects, save for a few bleeps and bloops, so he took his Casio keyboard and sat in front of his television for hours on end. At the risk of burning out the heads in his VCR, he painstakingly recorded WWF sound bites to match the announcers' text-based dialog in the game, then assigned and memorized each clip to a corresponding key.

Hulk Holland, meanwhile, was outside playing in the dirt.

My pal also recorded static crowd noise on a cassette tape, then kept looping it until both sides were filled with the sound of a noisy audience. The following weekend we were back in front of the computer, and every move that landed was accompanied by real voices.

"Hogan is overrated!"

And when shit got real -- as real as it can get in a turn-based wrestling game -- we simply raised the volume of the crowd cassette so that it sounded like the fans were going bananas. It usually ended up with us fighting over the keyboard and trying to press the keys out of turn, etc., but man it was so much fun.

All we had was the basic framework and we needed to use our imaginations to fill in the gaps.

It wasn't long before video game consoles became a "thing" and King Slender was eating a Back-Brain Kick from Fighter Hayabusa on Nintendo. Then came the electronic revolution and in a way, the better, faster, flashier rise of WWE video games mirrored the upward trajectory of the product.

Though I'm not ready to call it evolution.

Along with the upcoming WWE 2K15, I would argue there is very little thinking required when it comes to this generation of video games. Sure, you need strategy to win these damn matches, but those digital marionettes do (mostly) everything they're told -- even for button mashers like me!

It's all there ... the ring, the crowd, the noise ... every move plays out exactly as you want it to, no imagination required.

It all feels a bit sterile.

As these programs get more sophisticated and (much) better looking, I start to find them less appealing. The games are getting smarter while I'm getting dumber, robotically inputting different combinations to unlock various in-game achievements.

Assuming I can remember them.

Shit, was that X,O,X ... or SELECT, R2, START?

Then I have to trade the game in by year's end to get the new version because MAWR FEATURES! You know, assuming I buy into that ridiculous pre-order Matrix scheme.

Leave a deposit to reserve your copy! [shows up on release date] Sorry, they only shipped half the order!

What's more depressing is that I know if I stumbled upon an old Commodore and fired up MicroLeague Wrestling, I would probably laugh and get bored with it in about two minutes, kind of like when I watch old matches from the "golden era" and fall asleep on the couch because they're so damn long.

I suppose I'm one of many aging fans stuck in this weird generational technological gap.

I guess that's the nature of the beast, or perhaps I'm just over the hill. To that end, I love having a kid who is a wrestling fan, as I get to watch her dash around the house with a little plastic belt, bark out her favorite catchphrases, and drop elbows from the top bed post.

Now, if I can just get her to stop mashing those buttons...