Today (September 12) is National Video Games Day!

Whether you're an avid gamer or despise the idea of sitting in front of a screen and playing a game, there's no denying how far the "gaming" industry has come. At one point, video gamers were trying to bounce a ball back and forth, playing pong, on a 1972 Atari. Now, there are gaming competitions around the world that can instantly make gamers millionaires.

If you're a fan of Madden, NCAA College Football, Fortnite, Call of Duty, League of Legends, Minecraft, Grand Theft Auto, or whatever other game/s you enjoy playing, I wish you a happy National Video Game Day.

I didn't start playing video games until I was in my late 20s. When the COVID pandemic hit and we were all stuck inside, I started playing Call of Duty as a way to talk to my friends and BS about what we had going on in our lives. The game is more background entertainment and it's a nice way for us to keep in touch.

Get our free mobile app

Did you know that one of the greatest-selling video games of all time has a part of the map that is based in Iowa?

SimCity 2000

The Sims is one of the most popular video games of all time. According to Game Rant, There have been more than 200 million copies of this game sold around the world. The game is meant to be a "life simulation" video game and the goal of the game is to build a life. You can achieve whatever you want or don't want with your Sims character/s.

There's no real right or wrong way to play The Sims game, which is one of the reasons this game is so popular.

There is a city in eastern Iowa that is included in one of the challenges in SimCity 2000! The challenge says "Davenport - In 1993, heavy rains, that lasted weeks, sent much run-off into the Mississippi River. As the water ran down to the Gulf of Mexico, it built up so much that in some places it was 50 ft. above normal. Fill sandbags, mop up the mess, and build your city to a population level of 118,000 in five years to win."

Your goal is to build your city and reach a certain population size to beat this level.

Whether you are an avid gamer and enjoy jumping into a new world for a few hours or you've never picked up a video game controller, I think everyone can appreciate that one of the most popular video games of all time included Iowa as part of one of their challenges.

We may feel like our state gets forgotten about on a national level but I think it's pretty cool that millions of people have played a video game based in Iowa, whether they knew it or not.