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I used to look forward to our monthly trip to San Bernardino. There was an arcade I would go to when everyone else was shopping. I would drop ten bucks on Battlezone like it was nothing. Mom was never happy about that.
And crowded? And not full of crane-machines/ticket-dispenser-games? Where you could (if you got good enough) play a video game for hours on a single quarter? And they had high-score competitions for T-shirts and other prizes?
I can still identify most 70s-80s arcade games from just a short snippet of their sound in attract mode or while playing.
God, I miss those days......Arcades were the meet-and-socialize areas for the nerd/geek crowds. Now it's all online.
Yep...
yes. I was the cheapest date because I was that good lol.
Hey now, I met Darc playing WoW, don't knock it. =)
The first time I tried college life back in the early 80s, the student lounge had Pac Man and Galaxian. I dropped a lot of quarters in those machines when I should have been studying! I had high score on Galaxian quite a few times, but somehow there was always someone to knock me off the lead spot! I never did find out who my rival was, but they sure were tough to beat each time. I have very fond memories of seeing 'CAT' spelled out in that top spot on a regular basis.
Ooh, I had a DigiComp-1 also! I think LeatherGryphon must actually be me in a parallel world.
My grandfather told stories of hunting sabretooths from the back of a mammoth and keeping tally with a bag of rocks.
Rocks, high tech. We used to just do "1, 2, many..."
When facing down a sabretooth without the mammoth, one is too many.
At least you had words! In my day, we just had grunts.....and we were happy with it!
I'm not. But it happens a lot less often now, thanks to it all being online (and all the anonymity problems that has with it.)
I met my wife in SL. So I know it DOES happen. But it's a lot more rare than meeting someone at the arcades was.
When I was little, we just sat around in the cave and hit each other with woolly mammoth bones... And it was fun... None of this fancy shooting zombies with death rays and whatnot... Oh yeah, and we played Pitfall on our Atari 2600s too.
Geez... Resident Evil is 20?... I remember when that zombie jumped out of the closet at me (at 2 AM)... I don't think a video game ever startled me like that before. Poor Fred, he paid dearly for that prank, but that was clever. For all the games that went before, I think Resident Evil and the original Tomb Raider were the first for me that really had "moments"... The kind you could talk about... (Save for Myst and Alone In The Dark, I missed most of the late 80s/early 90s games)... "Moments" were a scene,segment,mission or portion of the game that just stuck with you, almost like a movie... Like in Tomb Raider, when you come across the catacombs and follow the stairs to the top and there is this massive open room with a ten story fall, that you somehow have to cross it... Or when you get out into the open and a pack of velociraptors start chasing you and the only place to go is that temple on the right, but suddenly slightly to the left, a Tyrannosaurus rex comes charging towards you... Fun times... I don't really play games on the computer... Zork... ? I think was the last one I had on a computer... It's probably because I don't really like to relax in front of a computer, so most of the games I've played were on consoles... Currently I'm playing Fallout 4, and it's had a few "moments" of its own... Mostly Deathclaw related... There should be a law against small antisocial Godzillas hiding behind stuff.
Yeah, my girls are only ten and they can't wrap their heads around the fact that much of the tech they are used to is not much older then them... Most of the games they play are on tablets or are apps... Aside from some of the LEGO adventures they don't really play "big" games on the computer or consoles. But then again they are only ten and most of the games that I think they would enjoy, are really too full of colorful language or exploding heads, so maybe later... Sometimes they watch me playing whatever I might be into at the moment (mostly I play late at night after they are asleep), but they generally don't show much interest in anything aside from driving games (I did let them drive in the deserted areas in GTA V... That was "amusing")... In general I think they enjoy my commentary more than the games I play. But it's funny to me that they don't get how quickly this stuff has evolved and that it isn't really that old (okay, to me)... I dug out my old "portable" typewriter one day and got a laugh when one of them tried to type... They didn't realize you actually had to use some force to depress the keys and get the arm to strike.
Now I feel old.
I occasionally play Elite Dangerous, and still occasionally play elite on my Amiga 1500. The 500 and 4000 died. My first comp was a zx81; it worked just about for hours...
And no, I don't feel old; sometimes I'll admit to getting older. Which is a good thing considering the alternative. :)
I never really got into games except for Myst and all of its sequels. Myst and all the sequels (except URU multi-player) is mostly a private game. You, pretty much alone in a world quietly wandering around in a vacant universe devoid of people with just their photographs, videos and unfinished lives to get clues from. Then in the first sequel "Riven" I almost had a heart attack when I turned the corner and nearly ran into that cute little girl on the road through the big tree. Scared the pudding out of me.
She couldn't have scared me anymore if she'd grinned a huge Cheshire Cat grin with wicked pointed teeth and jumped at me. Totally unexpected! First other human I'd seen. Then in another sequel those dinosaur like creatures shocked me a few times when they moved behind the bushes. Unnerving. Would much rather be alone.
I'm one of the people that could never get through (or very far into) Mist because my system kept locking up.
On the OF memorabiliia - the first two systems I programmed on as a professional (360/30 and Burrougs B2500) both were down for a day because of air compressor failure. Lost the read-only memory on the 360/30 and the disk drives on the B2500.
For those with newer systems but still want to play those awesome older games, there is a huge selection at GOG.com (Good Old Games). Mostly they have ported them through DOSBox and some still don't work that great, but most that I've purchased (yes, you get the real game) work fine.
Yeah, the original "Myst" game had problems and would hang or the audio would crap out. There were two major remakes over the years: "Myst Masterpiece" and "Real Myst" in addition to the minor upgrade for Win95. The best one technologically was "Real Myst" because you weren't limited to premade paths and could wander on the grass and through the trees in continuous motion instead of jumping from spot to spot. The other sequels Myst II "Riven", Myst III "Exile", the "URU" series, Myst IV "Revelation" and Myst V "End of Ages". were all sort of tied to the graphic and audio technology of the day. I still keep and play "Exile" on my Win7 system because it works, but nowdays I can walk through it with my eyes closed. I just go for the scenery. I also keep a couple of WinXP systems around that will play "Riven" and "Real Myst". The later games ""Revelation" and "End of Ages" might work but though I've finished them I don't get excited by them. I guess I'm jaded.
When I was in college the school was considering accepting a used Burroughs donation but finally decided to lease a Xerox Sigma5. The Xerox was a marvelous machine the size of a Volkswagon bus!!!! We were doing digital encoding and playing of music in the early '70s using the tiny console speaker and 9-track data tape drive running in unblocked continuous mode. Took a whole 2400 foot reel and only gave us a minute or so of music.
The computer had a built in A/D converter but didn't have a D/A converter. So we had to digitize the music then play it back and read the data digitally and use a program to "pulse" the speaker appropriately according to frequency. We had little control over volume. The music was pretty ragged but recognizable.
Myst is one of those games I would have loved to have finished, but, yeah, it kept crapping out on me so I gave up. I do still have it somewhere packed up.
I cheated... I played it on a Sega Saturn... Early on all my computers sucked, there would never be any point of trying to run a game on them. Even today I still use consoles for games... I can't relax in front of a computer... Drink too much beer and fall asleep on the keyboard, maybe... But gaming and having fun... Can't do it. I gotta look this up, I wonder if the Myst games are available for tablets... They are pretty old now, they probably could have been ported... I should look that up before I ponder...
I remember Myst. :-) I played that game with my daughter.
Ready the lynching party ... Myst was pretty but I think it was a crap game ;)
Man, I remember that game! In fact I still got it up in the attic. I used to love flying around and then getting that unexpected mission. Warping into a new system, and fighting off raiders. That was as close to being an X-wing fighter pilot as you could get in those days.
My favorite site ever. Most of them do work fine and wow, talk about taking you back to the good old days...
Myst was a game for thinking people. Not everybody qualified.
LOL!!!
OOOhhh, Ouch! Taking off the gloves!
I don't care. I never could win.
Maybe that's why. :-)
This sums up what it's like hanging out with your friends after you turn 50.
Elite Dangerous is in many ways what 'we wish' Elite had been. It's worth watching a youtube vid or two just to see what they've done with the upgrade. :)
Loved playing Nitemare 3D (Gray Design Associates, 1994, for DOS and Windows 3.1x )
In those days it was truely frightening. My young son watched from through his fingers with terror.