Yves Makhoulx86 Gaming
May 31st 2008 02:37
Ah, the late 1980s. Was there a finer era for computer games than 1987-1989? This was a time that required very frequent computer upgrades just to play the new games. I don't play PC games now-- time being as finite as it is--but as I understand it, the need to continually/endlessly upgrade video cards and processors annoys even the most fervent defenders of PC supremacy. I openly mock their irritation.
The late Eighties was a time when it was not unusual to purchase 3 different monitors in the same amount of years, not because they burned out, but because they became irrelevant and useless. My first monitor was monochrome. One color. Green. Let me tell you how many games you can play rendered in a single color... In fact, some twenty years later I can't remember one. I suppose I could invoke Zork, but I have far too much respect for you, dear reader, to pretend that I have ever played it (I grew tired of text-adventures during the Commodore Vic-20 days). When I wanted King's Quest...it was time to get a new monitor and a CGA graphics adapter (16 colors!!!).
This was adequate for quite some time...until it was time to get a sound card. Apparently it became fashionable to have ambient sounds more in-depth than "beep" and "boop"...probably right around the time the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade adventure game was released. And then The Secret of Monkey Island and Loom (did anyone ever see what was under the hoodie?). Really, did LucasArts ever release a bad game prior to 1994? Okay, Pipe Dreams, but I think was the only idiot that purchased that turd in a punch bowl.
This was a time--for those of you that never had to type in a:> game.exe to start an adventure after booting up your computer with an MS-DOS disk that your Stepdad copied for you--when if you needed a hint, you had to wait for some other sad bastard to get stuck at the same exact part to write into a computer magazine asking the question in their half-page game column. Oh, the horror. How did we survive?.
Eventually, it became necessary to upgrade to VGA monitors/cards. I didn't even know there WERE 256 colors...how could they possibly all be on my screen at once? And all so I could see badly drawn nipples on Leisure Suit Larry games (which I got my hands on, how, exactly?) Man, that 286 lasted FOREVER. My first hard drive was 20MB--I'm pretty sure my electric shaver has a larger memory bank. TWENTY MEGABYTES. And that was only so I could avoid having to swap out one of fifteen 5.25" floppy disks. Soon, you couldn't even find these, you had to buy a 3.5" floppy drive, which confused the hell out of me, because they weren't actually 'floppy' anymore? I was 12...the nuances of techno-speak was lost on me.
In retrospect, it all seems so complicated. Man, you really had to know what you were doing back then just to play Test Drive. I'm sure that computer gaming continues to be fraught with bugs, crashes, patches and whatnot...but there are at least resources for that kind of thing: The internet, your brother-in-law that works in IT, for instance. You know how many people I knew that could even find a root directory in DOS? Zero. Once Windows and CD-ROMs hit the mainstream it was a whole different ballgame, and in my opinion, a lot less fun. These days, however, I'm happy just being able to get my TiVo connected to my wireless network...I have no desire to learn anything beyond that.
That's why I love consoles. And why I will talk little about any post-millennial PC games. I am sure that there are endlessly enjoyable titles out there, and I'm missing a whole world of potential fun...but I did my time in PC-gatory. Sometimes I miss my little 13" monitor, though. And I'll never, ever, have as much fun playing a game as I did the first time I played Maniac Mansion.
That's all I got.
The late Eighties was a time when it was not unusual to purchase 3 different monitors in the same amount of years, not because they burned out, but because they became irrelevant and useless. My first monitor was monochrome. One color. Green. Let me tell you how many games you can play rendered in a single color... In fact, some twenty years later I can't remember one. I suppose I could invoke Zork, but I have far too much respect for you, dear reader, to pretend that I have ever played it (I grew tired of text-adventures during the Commodore Vic-20 days). When I wanted King's Quest...it was time to get a new monitor and a CGA graphics adapter (16 colors!!!).
This was adequate for quite some time...until it was time to get a sound card. Apparently it became fashionable to have ambient sounds more in-depth than "beep" and "boop"...probably right around the time the Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade adventure game was released. And then The Secret of Monkey Island and Loom (did anyone ever see what was under the hoodie?). Really, did LucasArts ever release a bad game prior to 1994? Okay, Pipe Dreams, but I think was the only idiot that purchased that turd in a punch bowl.
This was a time--for those of you that never had to type in a:> game.exe to start an adventure after booting up your computer with an MS-DOS disk that your Stepdad copied for you--when if you needed a hint, you had to wait for some other sad bastard to get stuck at the same exact part to write into a computer magazine asking the question in their half-page game column. Oh, the horror. How did we survive?.
Eventually, it became necessary to upgrade to VGA monitors/cards. I didn't even know there WERE 256 colors...how could they possibly all be on my screen at once? And all so I could see badly drawn nipples on Leisure Suit Larry games (which I got my hands on, how, exactly?) Man, that 286 lasted FOREVER. My first hard drive was 20MB--I'm pretty sure my electric shaver has a larger memory bank. TWENTY MEGABYTES. And that was only so I could avoid having to swap out one of fifteen 5.25" floppy disks. Soon, you couldn't even find these, you had to buy a 3.5" floppy drive, which confused the hell out of me, because they weren't actually 'floppy' anymore? I was 12...the nuances of techno-speak was lost on me.
In retrospect, it all seems so complicated. Man, you really had to know what you were doing back then just to play Test Drive. I'm sure that computer gaming continues to be fraught with bugs, crashes, patches and whatnot...but there are at least resources for that kind of thing: The internet, your brother-in-law that works in IT, for instance. You know how many people I knew that could even find a root directory in DOS? Zero. Once Windows and CD-ROMs hit the mainstream it was a whole different ballgame, and in my opinion, a lot less fun. These days, however, I'm happy just being able to get my TiVo connected to my wireless network...I have no desire to learn anything beyond that.
That's why I love consoles. And why I will talk little about any post-millennial PC games. I am sure that there are endlessly enjoyable titles out there, and I'm missing a whole world of potential fun...but I did my time in PC-gatory. Sometimes I miss my little 13" monitor, though. And I'll never, ever, have as much fun playing a game as I did the first time I played Maniac Mansion.
That's all I got.
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