My first experience with computers was not playing games, but learning how to make the turtle draw lines and shapes using Logo when I was five and went to a computer day camp with my best friend. (More on this computer camp will be elaborated at a later date when I write about being blonde. It’s coming.)
The first actual computer game I remember playing was called Alice and it was on my Grandpa’s computer (some kind of Commodore, I think) and I played it with my dad. It involved going through a maze with different floors and an elevator and keys that did different things, like open up particular barriers. In some rooms, bad things happened. I can’t find any mention of this game anywhere on the internet. My dad got out graph paper and we began making an actual physical map of the game. I’m kind of sad we never beat it. Despite the rudimentary graphics, I remember having nightmares about it, which started a trend of dreaming about whatever game I happen to be playing which continues to this day.
Then my family acquired a Tandy computer. I played several games on that, but the one I remember most was this game where dinosaurs were escaping the past and appearing in this small town in the present. You had to figure out what dinosaur escaped and what time it belonged in so you could bring it back. Finding out involved running (note: you played as a blinking star) around the town (three screens in all) and asking people in various buildings questions. You’d also get hungry on the way and need to eat or you’d starve to death, so you had to get money and buy food for yourself. The game was bugged and you couldn’t actually find out if you brought the dinosaur back to the right time, but
Then my parents bought a Macintosh Performa 575, and that beautiful beige beast changed my gaming world forever.
Exhibit A: World Builder Games
World Builder games were basically interactive fiction paired with black and white images for each page or scene of the story. I was unable to play interactive fiction (Zork, for example) without getting hopelessly lost, so the images in World Builder games helped orient me somewhat. It didn’t help that most of the games I played were by this guy called Ray Dunakin and they involved going through magic portals into other areas.
WHY DIDN’T YOU FINISH MORPHWORLD, RAY! NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR OUTDOOR MODEL RAILROAD!
Sorry, nerdrage over.
Anyway, the reason why I loved these particular game was that there wasn’t any dying. I hate having to repeat content in video games, and it always seemed like the longer I played without saving meant the more likely it was I was going to die. Die in an adventure game? Okay, now you know not to climb that rickety fence again. No need to figure out how to mash keys faster so you can survive.
(Image via: raydunakin.com)
Exhibit B: Taskmaker and Tomb of the Taskmaker
Best part of the game: The super in-depth tutorial, which also provided you with a ton of stuff.
No, this was the best part of the game: Stuff lying around all over the place!
No, this was the best part of the game: When you ran through curtains, they made this great ripping sound. See ripped curtains below:
No, this was really the best part of the game: When you died, you went to hell and had to escape equipped with only a butter knife. In the sequel, Tomb of the Taskmaker, the hell you went to depended on how you died and you had to perform some task in order to get out.
No, THIS was the best part of the game: When you ran into an NPC, your character would say politely “excuse me.” over and over again, until finally, fed up, it would holler in a British accent, “GET OUT OF THE WAY!”
Exhibit C: MYST and Connections
MYST was a gift from my parents after I graduated from fifth grade. I think they later realized they shouldn’t have bought me such a difficult game, but I was already obsessed with it. Eventually they also bought me a guide, but before then I’d already managed to get to the other world in the clock (if you played, you know what I’m talking about, or it’s pictured below) and had a general idea of how the elevator/tower worked.
(Image via: mystjourney.com where you can get MYST for your iphone.)
I loved MYST so much I asked for similar games, and really enjoyed one called Connections. I eventually got so stuck in connections trying to spell a word in Morse Code I called their support line, and they told me I just needed to make my dashes way longer than I thought I did. The game featured a talking bald man that I think hosted a TV show of the same name.
I have this, I guess I’ll call it a personality feature, where if I see anything I like I think, “I want to make my own!” So, of course, I wanted to make my own game. (See future blog post about wanting to make my own website.) I tried making one with World Builder and was generally unsuccessful. By the time I got into it, no one was playing around with it anymore and there wasn’t much support for some random girl in middle school trying to make games. I think I got about three frames of the game working, so I suppose I was about as successful as whoever made that dinosaur game for the Tandy.
Then the iMac arrived.
When I was little my favorite color was “purple pink” which was not quite pink and not quite purple. In first grade, my most prized posession was my box of 64 crayola crayons. Yes, it had the built-in sharpener (and yes, the sharpener was a piece of crap). In the box I discovered the real name for my favorite color: fuchsia. Of course I was just learning how to read at the time so I thought it said “floresha.”
Recent Comments