I still remember how tough straight text games were, and they all started the same way.
"You wake up in a dark room. There are two doors in front of you, one to the left and one to the right. Which door to you take?"
>Left
"You open the door and slowly walk in, the door slams shut behind you, and you hear the howl of about 100 no 200 no 300 wolves, all with large members staring at you.
You die horribly"
"You wake up in a dark room with two doors in front of you. One on the left one on the right. Which door do you take"
> Left
"You clearly aren't here for the quest are you . . . "
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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"You have been eaten by a grue" and "You are in a maze of twisty little passages" are phrases that haunted me.
I still remember where my love for the genre started. My friend was at the university while his dad (a math teacher) was at a conference there. They set him up on a mainframe terminal and he started playing the classic Adventure. He printed out his game, and brought it back - we must have been no older than 10. As I read through his game, something awakened inside me. A whole world you can explore by typing at a keyboard! Needless to say, the first game my friend and I tried to write was an adventure game. We didn't know how to build a parser, but we knew we could write code like:
Quote:
10 Input response$
20 if response$ = "N" then goto 100
30 if response$ = "S" then goto 150
40 if response$ = "E" then goto 200
50 if response$ = "W" then goto 250
100 Print "You are in a crystal cave with light shining from an unknown source..."
It was pretty exhilarating. And, yes, the first game was exactly as you described: Two doors, left and right. If you typed "left", you went through the left door and a boulder fell on you and you died. If you typed "right", you went through the right door where you were devoured by a monster. The secret was to type "left " (with a space) which would send you to a different path and you won the game. We made our parents play the game to watch them die. It was pretty funny.
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"You have been eaten by a grue" and "You are in a maze of twisty little passages" are phrases that haunted me.
I still remember where my love for the genre started. My friend was at the university while his dad (a math teacher) was at a conference there. They set him up on a mainframe terminal and he started playing the classic Adventure. He printed out his game, and brought it back - we must have been no older than 10. As I read through his game, something awakened inside me. A whole world you can explore by typing at a keyboard! Needless to say, the first game my friend and I tried to write was an adventure game. We didn't know how to build a parser, but we knew we could write code like:
It was pretty exhilarating. And, yes, the first game was exactly as you described: Two doors, left and right. If you typed "left", you went through the left door and a boulder fell on you and you died. If you typed "right", you went through the right door where you were devoured by a monster. The secret was to type "left " (with a space) which would send you to a different path and you won the game. We made our parents play the game to watch them die. It was pretty funny.
I had a couple of books filled with some BASIC games you could transcribe onto the computer like that.
There was a cool Star Trek one where you explored different sectors and occasionally you would run into Klingons and have to battle them.
My dad programmed it into one of the computers he had and it was so much fun to play.
the Trek game actually evolved from one of the first games written on a main frame.
It bounced around for a long time. The last time I saw it, there was a version called EGATrek that was really good.
The one thing that killed me in this game was that you had a set amount of energy to fight with and maneuver with. And I would always go over the top in terms of phaser energy. I'd target a Klingon with 2000 units of energy. Of course he'd explode, and then I'd go to warp to the next system, and find out that I was out of gas.
What a great thread!! Ghosts 'n Goblins was an amazing game - spent hours trying to finish it both in the arcade and then on console. Dragon's Lair was also a classic - but I remember it costing way too many quarters. I remember bringing back shopping carts just so i could go play more. Spent needless hours instead of learning a new language.
What a great thread!! Ghosts 'n Goblins was an amazing game - spent hours trying to finish it both in the arcade and then on console. Dragon's Lair was also a classic - but I remember it costing way too many quarters. I remember bringing back shopping carts just so i could go play more. Spent needless hours instead of learning a new language.
But the all-time best, and what I spent the most money on, got really good, so good that I would beat adults that came into the arcade to play and some would get mad. The arcade guy used to call me champ, LOL.
I remember when I first played this, I was like, "what? He doesn't even jump?". Once I started swinging around and hooking onto things from far away, I fell in love with it. The escape at the end was a pretty frantic finish. I enjoyed the Xbox versions that came out a few years ago too.
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But the all-time best, and what I spent the most money on, got really good, so good that I would beat adults that came into the arcade to play and some would get mad. The arcade guy used to call me champ, LOL.
I plan to buy one of these for the man cave soon.
Classic...I bought a beat up dusty super chexx and have fixed it up to mint. You can still buy all the parts.
New ice, bubble, and gears and you have a unit that looks and plays like new
Arcade games in 80s. Track and Field, Spy Hunter, Centipede and Exciting Hour Wrestling, Star wars with the vector graphics where you sat down. Superchexx, sure. That was at Bullwinkles.
The coolest part of going around town and then out of town as a 8-12 year old, and most of our family travel was by car, was finding video games in hotels or anywhere without being a destination arcade. Banff Springs Hotel, long before its current incarnation, had a great one. Places like the old Family Lesuire Center. The airport. Many hotels in Spokane had a few games. Though you may expect to see an Arcade, you were never sure until you got somewhere, and then the quality.
From the age of 8 we had an Intellivision, and so did a couple buddies, so some great games there. Burger time, many games playing Baseball, football, boxing. Lock N Chase. Snafu. Dungeons and Dragons, Tron Deadly discs. Casino. List goes on. A few years late got a Commodore 64, but not a floppy disk drive right away, so started by playing cartridge games. When got the disk drive, Hardball was a favourite.Summer and Winter games by Epyx.
Around 1990,got an Amiga, and that was mind blowing for graphics but that's for the next thread.
Arcade games in 80s. Track and Field, Spy Hunter, Centipede and Exciting Hour Wrestling, Star wars with the vector graphics where you sat down. Superchexx, sure. That was at Bullwinkles.
The coolest part of going around town and then out of town as a 8-12 year old, and most of our family travel was by car, was finding video games in hotels or anywhere without being a destination arcade. Banff Springs Hotel, long before its current incarnation, had a great one. Places like the old Family Lesuire Center. The airport. Many hotels in Spokane had a few games. Though you may expect to see an Arcade, you were never sure until you got somewhere, and then the quality.
From the age of 8 we had an Intellivision, and so did a couple buddies, so some great games there. Burger time, many games playing Baseball, football, boxing. Lock N Chase. Snafu. Dungeons and Dragons, Tron Deadly discs. Casino. List goes on. A few years late got a Commodore 64, but not a floppy disk drive right away, so started by playing cartridge games. When got the disk drive, Hardball was a favourite.Summer and Winter games by Epyx.
Around 1990,got an Amiga, and that was mind blowing for graphics but that's for the next thread.
You're kind of tracking my computer history.
I remember going to the arcade at South Centre (Wizards castle) and skipping school afternoons to spend several dollars worth of quarters. I remember playing a vector graphic star trek game that was awesome. Wizard of Wor, I rarely played pinball.
I got a Commodore 64 when I was about 12, I was in a lot of trouble at the time, and my mom and dad decided that I needed something to focus on when I was grounded forever. I got the 64, the tape drive and the 9 pin dot matrix printer.
I also remember that I didn't buy a lot of games, me and my cousin swapped copied games using cracker programs.
I remember starting up the C-64 the first time with its basic parser, and just falling in love. the first game I got was forbidden forest, which was such a colorful and awesome game. Impossible Mission, Chop lifter, baseball. But at the same time, I started learning basic. What I didn't realize at the time was how limited the basic was on the C-64. You could only use 16k at a time so if you wanted to take advantage of the C-64 you needed to use bank switching. I learned about sprites, super bit maps and that there were no native commands in C-64 basic to make sounds or graphics. You had to use Peek and Poke.
I remember spending hours waiting for things to load from the tape drive so I demanded a 1541 disc drive. We were shocked when we found it costs more then the C-64, but to keep me on the straight and narrow I got it and promptly learned two things.
1) You could cut a notch in the disc and use both sides of the media
2) The drive head would quickly go out of alignment and fail, but a hobby magazine told me how to go in and permanently align the drive.
I felt powerful.
I moved on to the C-128. That was a lot of memory, but unless you worked in the 128 or CPM mode you couldn't use it and you still had to bank switch.
I went to a hobby shop and found a C-128 compiler program, and suddenly there wasn't anything I couldn't do with that machine.
Games got more awesome, but I hadn't seen anything until I bought a Amiga 1000.
Holy crap, way ahead of its time with independent sound and video processes. The graphics and sound make the 64 and 128 look like poop.
Superstar ice hockey was a generational leap forward and I was addicted to that game for the longest time.
Its a shame that Commodore went bankrupt, but there is hope.
__________________
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Probably got the 1541 drive 6 months later. We were still using a tv from my parents from the 70s, and the magnetization screwed up the drive, so I had to turn the tv off for games to load.
C64 games also like Bop N Wrestle, Epyx Wrestling. Commando. Thankfully games available at Kmart and Zellers.
Moved up to Amiga 500. Earl Weaver Baseball, Wayne Gretzky hockey and league simulation pack which wowed my friends when I printed out the stats. TV Sports football and basketball had exceptional graphics but average game play. The other hockey game just above and also a soccer game which dove more onto leagues and relegation, so played that. Kmart and Zellers had Amiga games, as did the place we bought only, 3rd level Scotia center. Some random store in Chinook sold them too. My did would get Amiga magazines too but they were all UK based.
It was kind of sad looking up some of the screenshots from old Coleco games. I seem to remember the graphics being much better. I guess from perspective as an 8 year old they were pretty awesome compared to something like Pong.
