Oldschool Computer Games
Jun. 3rd, 2008 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tabular_rasaTory and I were talking about oldschool computer games we used to love. So here's a little spazz about all those old Windows 95-compatible (and worse) CD-roms we used to frequent.
Once upon a time, we had an old-ass computer from about 1985-- a little Apple with really large pixels and only two colors: lit-up (a sort of yellow-y green) and not. There was some fun little games on that thing, though. Most were educational games, from the memory tests of a Mother Goose character to Donald Duck running a business.
When we finally got a modern computer, with Windows 95, we had a few much fancier games to play. The first was a Crayola painting game. It was sort of like the later KidPiks some of my elementary school classes had. You could color the coloring book or just a blank screen, with "markers" or "crayons" or "paint" of various colors, differentiated by visible texture.
A big favorite early on was (how lame are we?-- but this does explain a lot) Compton's Encyclopedia 1996. Seriously. Our gig was looking up all the musical instruments and national anthems of the world and playing their sound clips. (This is why I randomly know the Israeli national anthem-- which allowed me to then realize "I'm a little teacup" is basically Hatikvah in a major key O.o). There was also a small "kids' section," which involved poking various objects around an animated room, revealing really random "famous" soundbites, some of which to this day I cannot identify.
We also had some Aladdin's Magic Carpet game (no connection to Disney) we could never get to work.
At school, it took much longer to get to Windows 95. In elementary school, we had some oldschool computers which were better than my family's old Apple (they had color), but were still pretty . . . reflective of our school's funding at the time, lol. (Though teachers had more up-to-date ones-- and in third grade we could come in earlier and use the Internet on the teacher's, which was pretty cool considering it was like 1995 and we were eight and nine years old). They had things like Number Munchers and Mario Teaches Typing, which I was never all that much into. However, there was one game I think I was the only person in the class to finally crack. It involved building machines. Using your big square orange cursor, you'd put pieces together to do various tasks in synchrony, and it always involved a switch; some switches were "on" when the cursor touched them-- and then some stayed on and some didn't-- while some were on whenever the cursor did not touch them. (That last kind is important). The "game" was then going through a series of rooms, after learning about the switches, and assembling a machine that would perform the task that would unlock the door to the next room. The final two rooms were a set: one contained nothing but an animated blue alligator (and I use that term loosely; it looked like a Lacoste label with a flapping jaw) which would immediately attack the cursor and begin to "eat" it (yes, your cursor would slowly get pieces taken out of it until it was gone and the game would end), while the other contained various objects clearly meant to defeat this alligator, all of which had to be dragged in and assembled before the cursor disappeared. One of the objects was a giant fist which would punch up in the air when "on." So what I did was drag it in, along with an always-on-except-when-touched switch, assembled them, and positioned the cursor over the fist. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen on such an oldschool pixelated computer; the alligator started biting, the fist flew up, and the alligator was decapitated-- its little flapping blue head flew so far up it appeared again at the bottom of the screen. *Sniff* One of the proudest moments of my life . . . Lol.
By fourth grade, we had at least one Windows 95 computer available, which is where I first played Oregon Trail and SimCity 2000. In SimCity, I had a little town called "Amyville" or something like that, and, not fully understanding the game, was reduced to silent weeping one recess period as I watched the entire thing go down in literal flames. However, after getting the game for home, and after a few years of not-particularly-obsessive play, I am now the MASTER of SimCity 2000. (After our discussion, Tory and I had to pull this one-- one of the few remaining disks of our childhood-- out and play. I've still got it; within 13 Sim-years I had a population of 25000, land coverage of about 1/4 the space, A+ facilities everywhere, a 75% approval rating, and one spontaneous parade thrown in my honor ^_^).
Our family never actually had Oregon Trail ourselves. (You would think me, with my pioneer obsession back in the day, would have, but it just never happened). We had Yukon Trail, a rush up into Alaska to get rich. It was substantially simpler and therefore easier. We figured out within a couple tries which of the four guides was best, which of the two port cities was safest, and which plot of land successfully yielded gold. After that, we would just follow the same pattern and write weird things in the diary function the game offered. It was a good time for a person who doesn't like surprises. (Which is me).
Dad had a couple games he tried out occasionally; one was PGA Tour something or other-- you played golf by lining up your swing and things, sort of like Wii golf. The other was a Civil War game, where you moved troops around. None of us really figured it out, but it was fun to make them march and listen to the era-appropriate music.
At one point we procured Flight Simulator, which required a monstrosity of a purple joystick. Tory had a thing for this game for a while. Though it apparently was based on real flight-training software and you could play games and pass "courses" involving successfully flying certain routes and landing, Tory mostly just enjoyed sampling the planes and crashing them spectacularly into things, like the rather blocky skyscrapers that actually stood up in the way. You could pick various airports from which to originate, so it's kind of awkward to admit, but I think we might have foreshadowed 9/11. (But that's not saying much, considering how many times we also exploded sailplanes against Sears Tower).
For Christmas one year, Tory received a game called American Girls Premiere (edition II, apparently). OMG BEST GAME EVER ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET. I've met a few other people who've played it, and I'm glad, because Tory and I loved it. It was based on the American Girls series, and it involved making little theatrical productions based on them. You would pick one character and use her world; the game would supply several relevant sets, characters (including costume-changes for the main girl), and props. There were sound and light effects, too, including a whole repetoire of era-appropriate music arranged for various moods ("Danger," "Frantic," or "Thoughtful," for example). Using a timer/recorder function, you could then test and record the characters doing specific actions and speaking dialogue you wrote in (in voices with pitches and speeds you could set), which would be saved so that the entire play could be "performed." It was a bit glitchy, but that was half the appeal; the dialogue was robotic (think Stephen Hawking) and mispronounced (we had to create a special way to spell to make them enunciate correctly-- and my favorite was the time I wrote the line "POW!" and the character said, "prisoner of war!"). Considering the available settings and such, I think the idea was to adapt the stories to dramatic form, and I think I did create a "Meet Molly" rendition once, but it was infinitely more fun to make my own shit up. (Though I did adapt portions of Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream to Felicity's universe). I made a few theatrical versions of the stories I was writing at the time, and Tory and I working together created several lovable classics, including (using the Samantha universe) the history of James Potter before the Marauders were all that fangirled (which was very accurate until about five scenes in, when it disintegrated into James doing "the worm" back and forth across the stage-- which was possible by recording the "fall" action repeatedly, without making him stand back up). Also, with the Felicity universe, "The Quartering Acts Live," which involved a lot of Ben screaming "Drop the Chalupa!" (anyone else remember that ad campaign?) and getting sent to an asylum where people danced and sang "I want to hold your Fran" and Felicity's grandfather walking offstage slowly to the entire "Danger" musical canon and punching people in the nuts. (If you saw his "angry" action, you'd understand). *Sigh* Man, I wish they would release asecond third (wait, there was a first one?) edition.
In middle school, I got The Sims. We had heard about the game a little in advance, and, being so fond of SimCity, loving to design houses and characters, and also being just generally a control-freak, Mom knew I would enjoy it. I got it and the Livin' Large expansion pack for Christmas and never looked back. I made story characters, I made my own family, and I made lots of really random families, including experimental clones just to see which method of killing them off worked fastest. (Okay, seriously, if you've ever played Sims for more than a day, you cannot tell me you didn't kill off at least somebody!). (By the way-- covering the entire floor with area rugs and setting off a firework in the room will instantly kill everyone standing in it :-P). I've since played The Sims 2, but it is even more addictive than the first, and so I keep both off my computer and out of my immediate possession because it will eat my life and turn me into a Sim-playing zombie. (I may consider getting myself The Sims 2 after I graduate and move away to begin my job which will allegedly make me poor and miserable for several years of my life, according to my mother, however).
Once upon a time, we had an old-ass computer from about 1985-- a little Apple with really large pixels and only two colors: lit-up (a sort of yellow-y green) and not. There was some fun little games on that thing, though. Most were educational games, from the memory tests of a Mother Goose character to Donald Duck running a business.
When we finally got a modern computer, with Windows 95, we had a few much fancier games to play. The first was a Crayola painting game. It was sort of like the later KidPiks some of my elementary school classes had. You could color the coloring book or just a blank screen, with "markers" or "crayons" or "paint" of various colors, differentiated by visible texture.
A big favorite early on was (how lame are we?-- but this does explain a lot) Compton's Encyclopedia 1996. Seriously. Our gig was looking up all the musical instruments and national anthems of the world and playing their sound clips. (This is why I randomly know the Israeli national anthem-- which allowed me to then realize "I'm a little teacup" is basically Hatikvah in a major key O.o). There was also a small "kids' section," which involved poking various objects around an animated room, revealing really random "famous" soundbites, some of which to this day I cannot identify.
We also had some Aladdin's Magic Carpet game (no connection to Disney) we could never get to work.
At school, it took much longer to get to Windows 95. In elementary school, we had some oldschool computers which were better than my family's old Apple (they had color), but were still pretty . . . reflective of our school's funding at the time, lol. (Though teachers had more up-to-date ones-- and in third grade we could come in earlier and use the Internet on the teacher's, which was pretty cool considering it was like 1995 and we were eight and nine years old). They had things like Number Munchers and Mario Teaches Typing, which I was never all that much into. However, there was one game I think I was the only person in the class to finally crack. It involved building machines. Using your big square orange cursor, you'd put pieces together to do various tasks in synchrony, and it always involved a switch; some switches were "on" when the cursor touched them-- and then some stayed on and some didn't-- while some were on whenever the cursor did not touch them. (That last kind is important). The "game" was then going through a series of rooms, after learning about the switches, and assembling a machine that would perform the task that would unlock the door to the next room. The final two rooms were a set: one contained nothing but an animated blue alligator (and I use that term loosely; it looked like a Lacoste label with a flapping jaw) which would immediately attack the cursor and begin to "eat" it (yes, your cursor would slowly get pieces taken out of it until it was gone and the game would end), while the other contained various objects clearly meant to defeat this alligator, all of which had to be dragged in and assembled before the cursor disappeared. One of the objects was a giant fist which would punch up in the air when "on." So what I did was drag it in, along with an always-on-except-when-touched switch, assembled them, and positioned the cursor over the fist. It was the most amazing thing I've ever seen on such an oldschool pixelated computer; the alligator started biting, the fist flew up, and the alligator was decapitated-- its little flapping blue head flew so far up it appeared again at the bottom of the screen. *Sniff* One of the proudest moments of my life . . . Lol.
By fourth grade, we had at least one Windows 95 computer available, which is where I first played Oregon Trail and SimCity 2000. In SimCity, I had a little town called "Amyville" or something like that, and, not fully understanding the game, was reduced to silent weeping one recess period as I watched the entire thing go down in literal flames. However, after getting the game for home, and after a few years of not-particularly-obsessive play, I am now the MASTER of SimCity 2000. (After our discussion, Tory and I had to pull this one-- one of the few remaining disks of our childhood-- out and play. I've still got it; within 13 Sim-years I had a population of 25000, land coverage of about 1/4 the space, A+ facilities everywhere, a 75% approval rating, and one spontaneous parade thrown in my honor ^_^).
Our family never actually had Oregon Trail ourselves. (You would think me, with my pioneer obsession back in the day, would have, but it just never happened). We had Yukon Trail, a rush up into Alaska to get rich. It was substantially simpler and therefore easier. We figured out within a couple tries which of the four guides was best, which of the two port cities was safest, and which plot of land successfully yielded gold. After that, we would just follow the same pattern and write weird things in the diary function the game offered. It was a good time for a person who doesn't like surprises. (Which is me).
Dad had a couple games he tried out occasionally; one was PGA Tour something or other-- you played golf by lining up your swing and things, sort of like Wii golf. The other was a Civil War game, where you moved troops around. None of us really figured it out, but it was fun to make them march and listen to the era-appropriate music.
At one point we procured Flight Simulator, which required a monstrosity of a purple joystick. Tory had a thing for this game for a while. Though it apparently was based on real flight-training software and you could play games and pass "courses" involving successfully flying certain routes and landing, Tory mostly just enjoyed sampling the planes and crashing them spectacularly into things, like the rather blocky skyscrapers that actually stood up in the way. You could pick various airports from which to originate, so it's kind of awkward to admit, but I think we might have foreshadowed 9/11. (But that's not saying much, considering how many times we also exploded sailplanes against Sears Tower).
For Christmas one year, Tory received a game called American Girls Premiere (edition II, apparently). OMG BEST GAME EVER ON THE FACE OF THE PLANET. I've met a few other people who've played it, and I'm glad, because Tory and I loved it. It was based on the American Girls series, and it involved making little theatrical productions based on them. You would pick one character and use her world; the game would supply several relevant sets, characters (including costume-changes for the main girl), and props. There were sound and light effects, too, including a whole repetoire of era-appropriate music arranged for various moods ("Danger," "Frantic," or "Thoughtful," for example). Using a timer/recorder function, you could then test and record the characters doing specific actions and speaking dialogue you wrote in (in voices with pitches and speeds you could set), which would be saved so that the entire play could be "performed." It was a bit glitchy, but that was half the appeal; the dialogue was robotic (think Stephen Hawking) and mispronounced (we had to create a special way to spell to make them enunciate correctly-- and my favorite was the time I wrote the line "POW!" and the character said, "prisoner of war!"). Considering the available settings and such, I think the idea was to adapt the stories to dramatic form, and I think I did create a "Meet Molly" rendition once, but it was infinitely more fun to make my own shit up. (Though I did adapt portions of Romeo and Juliet and A Midsummer Night's Dream to Felicity's universe). I made a few theatrical versions of the stories I was writing at the time, and Tory and I working together created several lovable classics, including (using the Samantha universe) the history of James Potter before the Marauders were all that fangirled (which was very accurate until about five scenes in, when it disintegrated into James doing "the worm" back and forth across the stage-- which was possible by recording the "fall" action repeatedly, without making him stand back up). Also, with the Felicity universe, "The Quartering Acts Live," which involved a lot of Ben screaming "Drop the Chalupa!" (anyone else remember that ad campaign?) and getting sent to an asylum where people danced and sang "I want to hold your Fran" and Felicity's grandfather walking offstage slowly to the entire "Danger" musical canon and punching people in the nuts. (If you saw his "angry" action, you'd understand). *Sigh* Man, I wish they would release a
In middle school, I got The Sims. We had heard about the game a little in advance, and, being so fond of SimCity, loving to design houses and characters, and also being just generally a control-freak, Mom knew I would enjoy it. I got it and the Livin' Large expansion pack for Christmas and never looked back. I made story characters, I made my own family, and I made lots of really random families, including experimental clones just to see which method of killing them off worked fastest. (Okay, seriously, if you've ever played Sims for more than a day, you cannot tell me you didn't kill off at least somebody!). (By the way-- covering the entire floor with area rugs and setting off a firework in the room will instantly kill everyone standing in it :-P). I've since played The Sims 2, but it is even more addictive than the first, and so I keep both off my computer and out of my immediate possession because it will eat my life and turn me into a Sim-playing zombie. (I may consider getting myself The Sims 2 after I graduate and move away to begin my job which will allegedly make me poor and miserable for several years of my life, according to my mother, however).
