General Gaming Story 2
Old Skool
by Daehawk
I've enjoyed many decades of gaming. From the Atari 2600 / Intellivision wars, through the Genesis / SNES wars, to the computer upgrade wars, till today. As long as its not a puzzle game I've most likely played it or at least gave it 5 minutes. I live for RPGs, RTS's, TBS's, and FMV games. Every abbreviation you can think of. But my fondest memories are of getting my first real IBM compatible back in the early 1990's.
I had bought a game called Star Trek 25th Anniversary over a year before I even had a computer. I kept my nose buried on all the gaming magazines for a year prior to owning my own system. I dreamed of pc games. When I finally got my pc it lacked a sound card, so I played ST25th with just the internal speaker. It didn't fail to blow me away though. I was in bliss sitting there listening to the ST theme song being played in little beeps and tones. The next day I rushed out and got a SB 16 sound card and installed it myself. I felt so proud :). I replayed the game again and knew I had found my lifelong hobby.
Later that year one of my friends introduced me to DOOM II on a modem. We spent many many nights configuring, reconfiguring, tweaking, and actually running the game over our new super fast 28.8 modems.(Thanks to my wife who let me open my Christmas gift in November THNX HONEY!) We were giddy at the speed we were getting through these babies. We'd sit there transferring files just to watch the k numbers speed by.
Over all the years since those days I still think back to those days as the best gaming I've ever had. I complain and grump about how "games today suck compared to back then". Its the old "I used to walk 10 miles in the snow to get to school" speak every person gives someone in their life. We like to wear rose colored glasses and turn our nose up at stuff we have today. I know because I do it every day. Day in and day out, to anyone who will listen. I'll always remember those days fondly, and continue to miss them. But I think its the feelings I'm missing and not the actual things.
Back then I loved redoing my autoexec.bat and config.sys files. I loved tweaking till I got the most memory and speed from my machine. I loved building them and playing them. I wished for DOS95 instead of Windows95! I do miss those days and those games, but I wouldn't go back. I couldn't go back. Though we don't have the variety we had then, we do have the fun.
And I know that everyday there are newbies coming into the pc gaming market. These are their rose colored glasses days. They'll be complaining someday about how lame games have become and speak of days when they played Rome:TW and Warhammer40k and wish they could have those days back. We all have our warm and fuzzy memories.
No matter where gaming takes us and how we get there, they can never take our rose colored glasses away. I think William Wallace said that.....or maybe not.