Last spring my parents decided they needed to clean up their house in order to sell it. Of course one thing to do was to clean out all the miscellaneous junk that their kids had accumulated and left behind after we moved out … so I took home about 100 issues of Computer Gaming World (more on that later, I’m sure) as well as some of the old boxes to games. Some I left there to be pitched. I only took the games with me that I really had fond memories of. Games that turned me into a “hard-core” gamer. Games that I remembered playing at certain times of life or games that impressed me so much I thought “this gaming thing … this has the possibility to be on par with books or movies or sports or girl in my interests”.
So, a little nostalgia for you ladies and gentlemen. I take you on a tour of me cutting the covers off some old games (to make a collage of and frame - see this post http://www.quartertothree.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=20618) and my thoughts on them as I did this.
Alone in the Dark - I opened this box to find a small book (as in, maybe 1.5x1") with two pictures of various objects on each page. I couldn’t figure out what this was, then remembered something about this acting as a copy protection. Immediately I had flashbacks of code wheels, black paper with lists of codes in dark blue text, the map from Star Control 2 (what star is at 638.1 x 342.5 - Alpha Brachae). As for the game, I remember the utter feeling of dread the first time I walked into that bathroom. The thing in the bathtub made me leap out of my chair, literally. I remember also the dog like thing that crashes through the window in the attic and attacked right as I was looking for clues in a baby’s crib… ahhhhhhh! Wonderful game. The box cover reads something about "A tale of Adventure set in the World of H.P. Lovecraft. Reading about what the owner of this house had done in his spare time becoming obsessed with Chthulu made me go out and read several Lovecraft short stories.
Drakken - I’m not sure how popular this game was. I noticed that way back, games used to come in hard boxes that had bottoms and tops. Stiff cardboard that kept those 5.25" disks in safe. Then they went to hard boxes with sleeves, then big boxes with flaps, and finally to the small boxes with flaps that we have now. I remember Drakken being extremely confusing … I had no idea what I was doing, but it was fun as hell to fight the giant dragons and Jabberwocky looking giant creatures that swooped down and fought your party.
Dune II - What a beautiful box. A troop in front of a wind collector (what were they called?) with gold trim framing the art. I got this game on vacation in Florida and read the manual probably 20 times before I got to go home and actually play the game. It boasts on the back of the box a “military strategy game in real time” where you could send your troops out to do battle, or “control them in real time”. What an innovative game, this is! We’ll call it … Real Time Strategy!". I remember distinctly playing that game my freshman year in college for so long one time that I felt like I was falling backward in my chair but I was actually leaning forward. Also the first time I ever played a game for so long it turned my eyes red and I had to take damp washcloth and put it over my eyes to make them stop hurting. My one friend in college played Dune II so long that he missed all of his classes that day and played it all night long that night … something like 20 hours straight. Whew, that game was addictive … no one I knew had ever seen anything like it. People would actually come over to my room just to watc me play it. I loved driving the Harkonnen tank into the enemy’s camp. Woo!
Warlords - The original. The classic. Heroes running around with stacks of creatures. Funneling the production of your most powerful cities to the front, to the new city you just captured. The dastardly AI running a small stack down the coast to try and capture the city that was the only one in your empire that made giant spiders, or unicorns, or griffins, or any of the neat units in that game. The box had a guy in full mail standing in front of a castle. That guy would get crushed on a battlefield in Warlords.
Kings Quest V and VI - these were the “whiz bang” games on their time. I had played every single Kings Quest game that came out with the exception of the first one. 2 I played on a PC Jr (this is before the 286) . With 5, the series went to a new graphical upgrade and at the time look absolutely stunning. It also had real sound for the first time out of my new Soundblaster, a small company that was trying to push their product over their competitor, Ad-Lib. I guess we know who won that battle. The box art was pretty (more so V than VI), but the manual was only a “How to play Sierra games” leaflet. I think VI had a nicer background story manual meant to look like and old leather book. I also found a flyer for 10 free hours of Prodigy and Sierra’s The Imagination Network. I wonder if they’ll still honor it. :)
Wing Commander - Ahh, the space simulator. Can anyone else sing the “battle alert” theme song with me? Your character running though prep before a mission, the feet in black silouette with the red alert red in the background, the launch out of the Claw’s hold. Paladin at the bar, Angel on your wing. The reason, I have read, that Sound Blaster won the sound card war, and the reason many people upgraded their systems. I remember thinking “EMS memory? What the hell is that?” Because of that game I became an expert at managing Expanded, Extended, and UMB memory in DOS. Oh, those were the days of only computer experts playing the best computer games. Now all you do is install, download updated drivers, apply the patch, make sure no other software is conflicting, make sure your particular hardware config is up to spec, remap your keys, adjust all the video and audio settings in game, and you’re good to go! Where there even patches back then!? No! The box had the perspective of the pilot with a Kilrathi ship flying dangerously close in front of you.
More later… :)
