In the early 1980s, Pac-Man made its debut in Japan, and then shortly after made its impact felt throughout the United States. Over 25 years later, Pac-Man is still played, well-known, and interpreted as a distinguished icon of the gaming industry's growth in the early going. Some of you experienced this first-hand, and some of you were not even born yet.
Programming a game back then was quite the difficult task. The hardware available was severely limited, and the programmers had to push the systems to the limits. If better hardware was available, we would have seen even better games sooner.
Compared to the current time, it could be reasonable to say that game development was much more simplistic, and could be accomplished with far less resources. Those days are long gone. Today, many game studios have more than a dozen employees working on a single game, and the costs to put a game into production are enormous.
If you are nostalgic about what many consider the glory days of gaming, and have the slightest interest in developing games as a hobby or career, then this product is something to seriously consider. At around $200 USD, it appears to be priced just right for all that you are getting.
The HYDRA Game Development Kit, created by Andre LaMothe, comes with all that you see to the right; it is essentially a gaming computer that runs on your television. You will not be designing Halo 4 on HYDRA; however, you would be learning and experiencing plenty about game design and programming. This is a pleasant way to introduce someone to game development as HYDRA avoids the complexity of developing on a computer.
The mouse, mini keyboard, game-pad are all fully functional, and you can use a combination these input devices for your games. You can perform all of the programming without the use of a PC.
Even though this is not a powerhouse gaming system you are probably familiar with, your imagination can lead to creating some quite amazing applications. The processor functions similar to the PlayStation 3's Cell processor technology. You would actually be developing on a multiprocessor, which is becoming standard these days. The things you could learn with HYDRA are easily skills which can assist you to developing software for computer systems.
Obviously, it is easier to be motivated to learn by developing games, than just picking up a "Programming For Dummies" book and creating programs that do almost nothing useful. So in that sense, it could be a worthy product for anyone who is interested in programming period. The HYDRA Game Development Kit is quite the throwback, but it is one that should easily be appreciated.
