Gamer Nerd Reminiscing
My first computer as a boy was a Tandy 1000. I remember the bittersweet moments when we returned home from Radio Shack and my step father hastily put the Space Quest disk in the disk drive and immediately accidentally formatted it into a boot disk... shattering my my space questing dreams. I recall falling to my knees and screaming NOOOOOOOOOOO! as he struck the key. I was a dramatic kid.
That left me with 3 games left to play, Mixed Up Mother Goose, Kings Quest II, and Thexder.
I cursed my step father every time I saw that Mixed Up Mother Goose disk... why couldn't he have randomly put that bastard game in the drive instead of Space Quest? Why? It didn't help that there was a stupid hole in a rock in Kings Quest that showed me how awesome Space Quest was.
I spent many hours randomly inspecting rocks and trying to sift through sand in Kings Quest. I also seem to recall being eaten by.... something... the big bad wolf(maybe that was the bastard mother goose game)? The only other thing I can cull from my memory is that it was hard and unforgiving. It was still far less brutal to my young spirit than Thexder.
Thexder is forever etched into my brain. I would sneak away to the computer and fly that super awesome Robot/jet thing around for thirty seconds before dying a pitiful death. Fire it up and start again.
Okay I lie, I got better at it eventually - but there were no extra lives. There were no continues. There was no mercy. The whole thing was clunky, but I was hooked. I played that game until my eyes felt like they were sunken in, and until the music had become indelibly etched into my brain. I find myself humming the Thexder theme in my head at least three or four times a year.
I found a demo for Thexder Neo on the playstation network today. It fired up, and I could barely discern the old song in the new song... if that makes any sense. Happily, like the Thexder of old, I died within the space of a couple minutes. The Game Over screen greeted me, along with the old Thexder theme, only I remember it playing a touch faster on the old tandy.
I won't buy it or anything, because I don't think I have the patience for that kind of punishment any more, but it did remind me... I'm still pissed off about Space Quest.
Comments
OH WOW ANOTHER THEXDER FAN!!!
My first computer was an Amiga A500. It was a difficult decision for me whether to buy that or the Amstrad. I cant be certain but I think I was swayed by the fact that the Amiga had a disc drive built in whereas the Amstrad still used a tape drive. I remember riding my motorbike from Maidenhead over to Dixons in Windsor to buy it - maybe the one in Maidenhead didnt have it in stock.
My first taste of computing came not from school; in fact the paper strips with funny holes in them had been like Klingon to me, but when my brother in law bought a BBC Micro PC for his kids - my nieces. Even then, the text only games were only of passing interest. it wasnt until they bought Elite that I got hooked. Those wireframe graphics were the dogs whatnots and I jumped at the chance to babysit whenever I could.
After that it was only waiting until I started working part time to be able to afford something myself, and in the intervening time graphics improved in leaps and bounds. So many games so little I remember, except maybe the great ones, like Thexder - oh how I wish I could play that now. I remember I used to subscribe to Amiga Format magazine and in those days you could sometimes get whole games on the discs if they had been out for a long time and a deal was made with the magazine. I got a fair few that way.
Sensible World of Soccer, Monkey Island, Lemmings, Cannon Fodder, Another World, Flashback, Worms, Syndicate, Elite, Chaos Engine, North and South, F1 GP, Milennium 2.2 (twice that disc was corrupted!), and many more.
Cant remember when I got my first PC, but it had the new 386DX chip inside it because previously I had been going to have the SX chip. And all hail Voodoo 3DFx graphics, may they R.I.P.
P.S I think I used to be okay at Thexder. I know I never finished it, but I used to love that game like you wouldnt believe.
My first computer was a Commodore 64. It wasn't mine... it was my older brothers. I remember three games for it. The first was The Fellowship of the Rings. My brother is a good 10 years older than me so he was off doing high school things most of the time but he compiled a massive (freaking MASSIVE) list of commands and maps and data that he gave to me to use for that game. The game was a text based RPG with graphics. The game starts inside Frodo's Hobbit Hole right after Gandalf leaves. He tells you to make your way to Bree-Town. But before you can "Open Door", you must gather your things, including food, a cloak, a dagger, and of course the ring. I would spend forever trying to find ways to get those things gathered up. "Open Drawer". "Put hand of Drawer". "Open Drawer". "Walk to Drawer" "Put hand on Drawer" "Open Drawer" *yay it worked*. "Inspect drawer" "View Drawer" "Interact with Drawer" *yay it worked* "Take cloak" "Grab Cloak" "Acquire Cloak" *yay it worked*
And then, once you got outside the hobbit hole it was a (N)orth (S)outh (E)ast (W)est game. N N E W N S W *Oh shit oh shit black rider on road!*
"You have died to the black riders"
Very very frustrating game. I recall actually getting to the gates of Bree one time only to get captured at the door trying to find a way in.
The other game was California Games which was a montage of skateboarding, surfing, hackey sack, and frisbee. That was a fun and easy game.
The last one... and I don't have the slightest idea what it was called, was a very zelda-esque RPG. It was a top-down world where monsters roamed and towns and whatnot were everywhere. My brother compiled an -entire- notebook of data for this game. He got this one right before he went off to college and I recall him leaving the notebook behind with strict instructions for me to use it but NOT write or change anything. The notebook was an entire wowhead data structure of every single freaking thing in the book. Hand drawn maps. Monster health and loot tables. Tactics against each and every creature. Locations of "rare" creatures. NPC's names for each town and what the sold. It was freaking insane. I really really wish I recalled the name of that game. My bro doesn't have any recollection of it.
Fellowship of the Rings was what Kings Quest was like. Lots of searching and trying to find the right command to get what you already know you want to get to. If I remember correctly, I took my licks long enough to nearly beat it, but never did. For the life of me though, I can't remember the story beyond a princess in a tower. I was really young when I played that game. I probably wasn't even ten years old at the time. I can't imagine my 12 year old trying to tackle something like that now. I was as hyper as they come, I'm surprised it kept me sitting still for as long as it did.
Thexder was madness. I like to think that I made it pretty far in, but I didn't have the resources we have now to be able to know how far in I was. For all I know, I only scratched the surface of how merciless Thexder was. I've asked people about it over the years, and I don't think I've ever come across anyone who has ever played it until now, or if they have, it didn't make the same impression on them that it made on me. Wikipedia said it was a pretty big deal as far as computer games went back then. I guess when you think about it though, the gaming industry was a different monster at that point in time.
I didn't get another computer until I moved out and was on my own. My family fell on hard times as I hit my teen years, and so I did my computer gaming at my friends house. He was an only child, so he had all the good toys. That's where I was introduced to games of more recent memory, and probably where my computer gaming habit really solidified.
Along the same thread. My computer died in late November, a week after I dropped out of my raiding guild and quit WoW. It was an old bastard I had built probably 7 years ago now, and have been keeping it hobbling along as pieces die. I finally decided to lay it to rest, it seemed foolish to invest more money into trying to keep a machine running that kept falling further and further behind. Since the wife has been trying to get her store up and running, money has been tight. I haven't put together a new machine as a result. It occurred to me that I've had access to, or had a gaming computer for about twenty years. The only exception being about a year while I was bouncing around training in the Marine Corps.
The withdrawals suck.
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