Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Myst-ified


I had a hard time trying to figure out where to start with this blog. I could go back to my Atari 2600 days playing Demon Attack until I finished the last level and it took me back to level one with different colored "demons". Or I could tell some tales of fighting the first racing level in Battletoads on the NES (I think I only got passed it once). But the first two games that come to mind were played when my childhood friend Chris got his first PC. It was a powerhouse 486/66 with a mindboggling 16MB of RAM. Yes, I'm not joking, 16MB. Fear that suckers. This was sometime in 1993. We had both graduated high school the year before.

So anyway, he invited me over to see this amazing game he had just bought to play on his new fangled CD-ROM drive thing. A little game called Myst. For the next week I sat at his desk, staring at the most amazing slideshow I had ever seen. For my 2 hour play sessions he simply sat on the couch behind me silently, reading some gaming magazine I think, occasionally asking me, "Need a hint?" I took him up on that offer about half the time. I had never seen anything like it and it changed me forever. A game with an actual story and puzzles that really tested your wits. It was amazing. Eventually I reached the end, which ironically was right where you started. It was amazing to me that with the information I now had I could start up a new game and beat it in about 5 minutes. But without that information you had to go through multiple "ages", picking up clues to this mystery along the way.

Shortly after that experience my family bought our first computer. An AT&T Globalyst Pentium 100 with 8MB of RAM (I begged for 16MB but it was far too expensive). That was the first time I experienced multiplayer over dial-up. The game: Doom.

But I'll save that story for another day.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Games are for grown-ups

As a pretty avid gamer I was inspired by the Vomiting Unicorn Gazette to blog about my experiences as an adult gamer (and quite a few old timey stories). I just turned 37 and its hard to believe I've been playing video games for nearly 30 years. So this blog will contain stories of my current (and past) gaming exploits. I'll try and keep spoilers to a minimum. But I can't promise I won't spoil an old game (although I will mark spoilers appropriately).

For some of you, which may be absolutely no one, this will be a trip down memory lane. For others I hope it spurs you on to play a classic you might have missed. Either way, I hope you findbit entertaining.