Browsing Category: Gaming

Enter my first PC. A generic clone PC running a 386DX-40. It was a monster (to me at the time), that could do anything from running Windows 3.1 to connecting to the Internet to Wolfenstein 3D. Wolfenstein was a game-changer, it revolutionized PC gaming in so many ways. Graphics, gameplay design, even the ability to modify the game and share your own levels with others. It ushered in the age of the First Person Shooter, a genre which has dominated the gaming landscape ever since. Battlefield, Call of Duty, the list goes on, they all owe their existence to Wolfenstein. And I played it, I played it a lot… but I never finished it, ’cause as I mentioned in the beginning, I suck at video games. But that doesn’t stop me from trying. Wolfenstein lead me into other games in the FPS genre, Doom, Heretic, Hexen, Duke Nukem 3d, Quake, Blood, Unreal, etc. These games while having differing themes were all fairly similar, you follow the paths through the levels shooting the bad guys until you reach the boss at the end of the level and defeat him to progress to the next level. They all tend to include your basic compliment of weapons, a pistol, shotgun, rifle/machine gun, rocket launcher and sometimes an alpha-class weapon (generally slow firing, extremely powerful and with very limited ammunition, think along the lines of a tactical nuke). While they do try to spice it up sometimes to fit the theme of the game (Heretic/Hexen’s magic spells) the effects are basically the same. Around 1993-94 (when I got my first PC) I began dialing in to local BBS’s (Bulletin Board Systems) which allowed you to access news groups, share files and even play games. The best of these (to me) was something called Legend Of the Red Dragon (LORD). It was a text based door-game similar to the old text adventures on the Ti and C64. The thing that set LORD apart from those old games like Zork was that it was a multi-player game. Each player gets X# of turns a day and how you chose to use those turns could earn you varying amounts of experience. The first person to level up high enough and kill the red dragon wins. After somebody killed the dragon the game would be reset and restarted. Once I graduated from BBS’s to the Internet I was introduced to something called a MUD (Multi-User-Dungeon). MUDs were basically like LORD taken to the next level, a persistent, multi-player, text-based game. The direct interaction with other players enhanced the gaming experience and made it into something entirely new. Continued in Gaming Episode III: Han Shot First…

Okay, so I guess I could be called a recreational gamer. I like playing video games, I’m not good at it, but I like it none the less. I guess it all started back in the late 70′s. Like many other GenX’ers, I started out with Pong. It wasn’t really a great game, but it was the game. Pong opened the door to other video games to follow, it was my gateway-drug. Next came the ubiquitous Atari 2600 (which actually had Pong as well) and the plethora of games for it, all full of beeps and boops and bright colors. In hindsight, they really were not that good. Sure, Pole Position was alright, but for the most part the games tended to be pale imitations of their arcade counter-parts. One look at PacMan in the arcade versus the 2600 version is enough to point out the limitations of the format. Ah yes, the arcades! Outside of the occasional driving game beside the crane-game in the foyer of the local grocery store, I don’t think my daughter has ever seen a real video arcade game. Growing up they were all over, inside the foyers of grocery and department stores. Every mall had at least one arcade (some had two!) with anywhere from 100 to 300 machines in them. The noise coming out of them was incredible, beeps, whistles, bells, laughter and cheering. It could be heard from several stores away most of the time. I miss the arcades. But back to the home games. After the joys of the 2600 began to wear off, I progressed to the Ti-99/4a. It was a 16bit home computer that included a slot for game and application cartridges. I was never really into using it as a computer, it ran Ti’s version of BASIC and at that age (10-12 or so) I never wanted it to do anything more than play games. But it was another gateway of sorts, one that lead to the all-mighty Commodore 64. While at 8bits it could be seen as a step backwards from the Ti, it was leaps and bounds ahead of it in usability. It ran Commodore’s version of BASIC and included the ability to run other OS’s such as GEOS Desktop via the expansion cartridge port and the optional floppy drive. The Magic Desk program was actually my first office suite. It was actually a desk with a typewriter on it (word processor), a rolodex (phonebook) and even a filing cabinet beside the desk (for file storage). The C64 showed me how computers could be something more than just a slot to stick the game cartridge into. Continued in Part II, the PC years…