A few years ago, the video game world overtook the movie industry in profits.

How has a medium that started as white circles (that were actually squares) bouncing on a black screen maintained an aging audience more than a quarter of a century later?

"In the beginning, there was Nolan Bushnell, and then things got crazy," said Kirk Heller, a 2001 Penn State alumnus and gaming enthusiast, referring to the founder of the video game behemoth of yesteryear, Atari.

The Atari 2600 was released in 1977 and things haven't been the same since. And while graphics have made leaps and bounds in the 28 years between Pong and Halo 2, some gamers just can't let go of the past.

Enter Kirk Heller and his brother, Kevin Heller, two "old school gamers," as the lingo usually goes. Kirk Heller now works for the university and lives with Kevin Heller (graduate-nuclear engineering).

"We grew up with these games so they have a childlike charm and nostalgic appeal to us," Kirk Heller said while playing Shining in Darkness, a little known role-playing gem for the Sega Genesis.

Their humble apartment alone houses six different consoles, but due to space limitations the brothers left more than a dozen others at home.

A stuffed Sonic the Hedgehog sits atop the TV, watching with awe. With little hesitation, Kirk Heller cited the original 8-bit Nintendo as the all-around champion of video game systems, despite its absence from their living room.

Kirk Heller added that in modern games, there is often a negative correlation between graphics and gameplay.

"With the advent of modern graphics, one of the problems is that you lose the chance to use your own imagination," he said. "When you play the old Zelda, on the other hand, you're still using your mind to imagine what it'd be like to walk through that forest."

Although both play many modern games on the computer and home console systems, Kevin Heller pinpoints a specific time when gaming jumped the shark.

"I think Mario 64 was the downfall of 3-D gaming," he said. "I just don't like it. I loved the first two worlds, but then every time you slipped off of a log or something you had to start over."

One 21st century game Kevin Heller is particularly fond of is Metroid Prime for Nintendo GameCube -- but only because the game reminds him of its predecessors.

To save on living space, the brothers utilize a technology known as emulation, where one tricks a computer or game console into thinking it's a different one.

For example, Kirk Heller and Kevin Heller possess a CD, which holds 3,300 Nintendo games, which they can simply pop into their Sony Playstation and have virtually every game ever released for the system at their fingertips. The idea of emulation, however, can be a tough one to swallow for purists.

"I love the portability of emulation but nothing beats having the actual thing right there," Kirk Heller said.

Kirk Heller blazes through a couple levels of Mega Man 2, defeating Metal Man flawlessly. "I didn't get hit. Rock on."

A few button presses later he's destroying viruses in level 20 of Dr. Mario with relative ease.

Both brothers have various records they pride themselves on, often topping those seen in the pages of the gaming magazine Nintendo Power.

The guys said they don't play as often as they used to and usually only when other friends are over. But despite all their gaming enthusiasm and owning of current systems, the brothers just can't bring themselves to buy a Microsoft Xbox.

"We've avoided the Xbox because we both work with computers all day, and we really don't like Microsoft that much," Kirk Heller said.