And I always have been. I LOVE to game. As kids in grade school, my brother and I had the Atari 5200 system to play on.(Star Raiders, Super Breakout, Defender, Joust) Many hours were spent on that console. I also remember Dad bringing home the Commodore 64 system, and playing tons of artillery over and over.
Then as the family progressed into the PC world, I remember how excited I was when Dad, my brother and I took the family XT Clone down the local computer shop and paid $80 for a USED 10MB HD. Now we could store our games IN the system. Ahhh...and there was nothing quite like CGA graphics. We finally had color, even if it was just a 4 color palette.
We managed to jump right over the 286 progression and stepped up to a 386! Wahoo! More countless hours of Falcon F16, Jordan vs. Bird basketball, Kings Quest III, the FIRST Test Drive (you had only 2 choices of cars to drive). During this time frame came the Nintendo (original NES). Now we're talking lots of Double Dribble, RBI Baseball, and Super Mario. LOTS of Super Mario! I remember coming straight in from school, throwing on my 45 record of Mars “Pump up the Volume”, and getting into my “Super Mario Zone”. I was like a machine.
What came next? Well.................the SUPER NES of course! Now we were going from Double Dribble to Double Dragon, and Street Fighter. For sports I had Madden Football, and NCAA Basketball. The Basketball was great! Since the memory was so limited, there were no fans, no sidelines, and no mascot. Just a blue background surrounded the court on all sides.
It was during this time frame that I found a new love: The RPG genre of games. I started playing Final Fantasy III on the SNES, and fell in love. It had a great story, a great soundtrack, game play, etc. etc. I couldn't put it down. I also took a step backwards technology wise, and found a new addiction on IBM terminals: The MUD! (Multi User Dungeon) I was introduced by a friend at college to a new form of gaming. It was a text-based mud called JediMud. It was one huge RPG with hundreds of real live players. (Imagine Everquest, except with no graphics. Imagine staring at a Command Prompt and typing “attack creature”) YUP, that was us. The game had it's own economy, society, and virtual sub cultures.
So what then for us? PC multiplayer games! Thanks to our little friend, the null modem, we found many countless hours of Descent, Rise of the Triad (ROTT), Heretic, and DOOM! I made my very own sound MODS for Doom, including a Doug and Bob McKenzie (Strange Brew) MOD and Ren and Stimpy MOD.
Then I started working in the wonderful field of networking……..so then it became time for some REAL multiplayer action. We couldn’t afford Ethernet, or a hub back then, so I used to make 10base2 (coax) cables, and we would daisy chain 5 or 6 computers around the room. <Side Rant> Today, all the kids have to do is turn on their wireless ready WinXP boxes, and play. Back in the “good ole days” I used to hand crimp all of my coax cables, and configure IPX on everyone’s computer. I’m sure some people remember IPX. Isn’t it wild how you can now buy a fast Ethernet switch with NAT for next to nothing?</Side Rant> We would have big sessions of Duke Nukem 3D, Quake, DOOM2, and whatever else we could get our hands on.
Next stop….my Pentium 133. Oh yeah baby! I was blazing with speed now! On the agenda? Plenty of Diablo, and X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter. I got my first ATI video card back then. It had composite and S-Video out ports, so we would have lots of people over to play X vs Tie, and if you weren't playing, you were waiting your turn on the couch watching the action on the TV. My roommate at the time, worked for a school system, and talked them into purchasing a CD-Burner. It was a SCSI unit that came with an ISA card. They paid $1,700 for that thing back then, and it was the latest and greatest that burned at 2X! Wahoo!
From there, I've progressed through the Pentium II, III, and IV. I have an X-Box and have become addicted to NFL Fever 2004, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. My favorite PC games as of late are still Battlefield 1942 and WarCraftIII. I know these aren't exactly brand new titles, but my 2 year old commands most of Daddy's play time now. You won't hear any complaints from me. I like it that way.