Hun-Speak

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September 6, 2004

Gaming Memories

At The Master's suggestion, I've been reading David Kushner's Masters of Doom. That book details the founding of id Software and how they basically invented the first-person shooter genre. I'm only about half way through the book. While reading it, a number of gaming-related memories have come back to me. I thought it would be interesting to share some of them with you, our loyal readers.

I remember playing Atari 2600 at my aunt and uncle's house with my cousin. (As an aside, my aunt and uncle had all the "cool stuff" long before we ever did. They had cable T.V. and a VCR many years before my family got them.) At the time, my cousin was an only child and was a very bad sport when he played video games. He could beat anyone . . . except me. I felt bad beating him since he is eight years younger than I am. My aunt decided that he needed to be taught patience and sportsmanship, so she instructed me to beat him at any game without mercy. I particularly remember playing Activision's Pitfall and Chopper Command. He was a sore loser for a while, but eventually he learned to play nice.

I remember the night before my first day of high school. I was staying in a dormitory and was scared to death. My roommate and I decided to calm our fears by going down to a local ice cream shop and play Frogger until we ran out of quarters. My other favorites were Ms. Pac-Man and the ray-traced Star Wars game. Good times.

I remember saving up to buy a Commodore VIC-20 and its various peripherals. You haven't had fun until you've waiting patiently for a tape drive to save about 3K worth of information. That takes roughly 18 years. The VIC-20 was really the first computer to make a big deal about gaming. iMagic's Demon Attack was a favorite of mine. I even taught myself BASIC and some 6502 assembly language to write games of my own.

In my later high school years, we wasted many hours playing Archon or M.U.L.E. on my roommate's Atari 800. I'm not sure what was so enticing about either of those games, but I sure played a lot of both of them.

Once I got to college I met a character that you know as J.t.Qbe. We played a lot of Ultima III on the school's IBM PC-XTs with monochrome monitors. I also wish I could have the time that we spent playing Elite back too. Later, we played Pool of Radiance together. That's actually where the nickname "J.t.Qbe" came from.

There are only a few times in my gaming life that I remember being blown away by something I saw on a computer screen. One of those times was when we were first trying out J.t.Qbe's new computer which came complete with a VGA monitor. He fired up Flight Simulator and I couldn't believe my eyes. There ground was actually green. Unbelievable! I know it sounds silly now, but that was a huge deal back then.

Another one of those "blown away" moments was the first time I ever saw id's Wolfenstein 3D. It really seemed like you were there. That whole year I heard many cries of "Mein Leben!" echoing throughout the dorm. It's hard to believe that was only 12 years ago.

Just one year later, I finally found a reason to get a joystick for my computer. This same game made a sound card an absolute necessity. The game? X-Wing. Ever since I first saw Star Wars, I wanted to pilot an X-Wing and blast TIE Fighters into oblivion. The ray-traced arcade game gave some of that feel, but it was nothing like X-Wing. You heard the actual soundtrack (albeit in FM-synthesized MIDI) and sound effects that made you feel like you were there.

When Doom finally hit the scene, it added a unique twist to the first-person genre that id had created. Sure, it was more violent. The big addition was multiplayer, especially co-op. The netcode in the first releases of the game ground networks to a halt. Later patches handled networking much better. It was just too cool to run through the levels with a friend and blast all those imps into oblivion. Of course, it wouldn't be long before we would grow tired of playing co-op and start going after each other, laughing maniacally.

I remember firing up the Quake demo for the first time. All of the enemies, armor, weapons, and other pickups were no longer 2D sprites, but true 3D models. I remember sitting there just watching the yellow armor spin around, not entirely believing what I was seeing. It was about that time that I met The Master. He, along with Crawl and Skip from EZ-Net, taught me how to deathmatch, especially using the mouse-keyboard combo instead of just the keyboard.

I remember bringing home my first 3D video card. It was a Diamond Stealth II S220, powered by Rendition's Verite V2100 2D/3D chip. I fired up the Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith demo to see how it would look. To my chagrin, it didn't look any better than it did with my old card. Then I realized that you had to enable 3D video in the menus. Talk about being blown away. I knew right then and there that this technology had changed everything.

There are tons of other things I could mention like being spooked by head crabs in Half-Life, first getting the lightsaber in Jedi Outcast, getting so frustrated with NHL 96 that I broke things, first firing the bullgut in Shogo, seeing the heat warping effect in DOOM3, and on and on. I hope this has brought back some gaming memories for you. I look forward to the new memories I'll be making with games yet to come.