I'm a product of the 80s, born on the last day of 1981, I was an extremely lucky chap who got to see gaming itself evolve into the creature it is today.
From my humble beginnings playing hours of Midnite Piball on my Atari 2600, to in between meals battles of Colecovision's Night Driver and Gorf.
I remember seeing a movie that would forever change my idea of what a game should be and how it should play. The movie was called 'The Last Starfighter', now a cult classic. A phrase entered my mind when you first saw Alex playing the arcade game 'Last Starfighter', "Wow, will I ever see a game that looks and plays that cool in my lifetime?"
How low my expectations were! The nintendo came out shortly after that, and I remember being introduced to my first RPG (Final Fantasy) at the age of 5, and beating it within a few months time. I could not put the game down! That was a game like many others of its time, especially in the RPG genre that required a serious amount of time to beat. Was it the wonderful graphics (for its time, they really were fantastic), or how about the music? No when you got right down to brass tacks, it was the insanely addictive gameplay that drove the Final Fantasy saga to the stages its at today (despite my deep dislike for the latest single player release, FFX and FFX2).
What gamers of the modern day, who did not get to experience this game evolution, fail to realize is that there is much more to a game than simple eye candy. Imagine growing up and being the first person on your block with the original NES. Now, developers of this day, despite the machine being ahead of its time, did not have much to go on as far as graphics. They had to develop plot, and gameplay dynamics that would keep you playing until the end, it had to be good enough for you to rave to all your friends so they would get it, and now you're working on the game collectively, helping each other get past crazy puzzles and "really flipping hard parts!"
I was introduced to the world of computers around the same time, I may have actually been even younger, when I got a Commodore 64, a rather impressive computer for its time, but since commodore marketed it, it was doomed to fail. The games from that machine are what inspired many of the Olympic games that are made on consoles today.
It wasn't until about 1990 however, that my video gaming life was about to be changed forever. I made my first step into the world of IBM PCs with a Gateway 2000 386 sx with 2 megs of ram and 8 megs of hard drive space (heh, gamers today dunno how good they have it ;)). I quickly upgraded my drive to 100 megs when i found an old hard drive where my Dad used to work, and i proceeded to go to the newest store in the neighborhood, Electronics Botique. I remember spending many thrilling hours with the likes of X-Wing. But I missed something, something from my days on nintendo, and that was the RPG.
This was a period where RPGs were kinda like the family member that everyone whispered about at reunions. Many gaming companies were reluctant to publish them, at the time the market did not seem right for them. Enter SSI and the AD&D gold box games. I spent almost 120 hours if not more, playing through the trilogy (champions of Krynn, Death Knights of Krynn, Dark Queen of Krynn).
I went down to one of my best friend's house in Jersey, where i had just moved from a year before. The sight i saw would change my view of PC gaming forever. You see, IBM-PCs, at this point, were still very primitive machines when it came to gaming, the system i told you i had was one of the 'high performance models'. To give you an idea, I'm an absolute master when it comes to using DOS, you HAD to in those days, Windows (even 3.1) was pretty useless for getting stuff done, especially gaming. Anyway, he tells me about this new computer he had bought. I was skeptical when he mentioned the Commodore name, until I saw the machine..... The Commodore Amiga (insert angelic choir here).
This machine was at least 10 years ahead of its time. Mind you this is 1990. This was a computer that had concepts that, to IBM developers, were simply insane. I mean, imagine, a computer that has a card in it JUST to process digital sound?! Why have that when you already have the wonderful IBM internal speaker and all its beeping symphonies? But what really drove this computer into the next decade, and IBM manufacturers running scared, was that it had a Graphics Processing Unit apart from a CPU. Meaning this was the birth of the Graphics Card. The games I saw on the Amiga made my machine at home look like it came in a fisher price box. Amiga graphics were capable well into the territory of "Super VGA" which IBM PC's didn't see in full market till about 95 or so. The sheer power of this machine was incredible. I spent 3 hours taking it apart trying to understand how it could have such incredible sound effects and music, while my machine at home could simply produce internal beeps and bops. This was also my introduction with a game called Hero's Quest (later changed to Quest for Glory) by the then extremely talented and famous Sierra On-Line Inc.
Needless to say, when I got home I was pissed. Yeah my machine loaded games faster (we had hard drives, amiga didn't see those for quite some time), but my graphics were barely reaching 256 colors, and my sound really sucked. It was literally a month or two later when Creative Labs started releasing affordable sound cards. I picked a Sound Blaster Pro up the next week, and from then on, I was a PC gaming addict. Granted, I still played my SNES and Sega Genesis, hell I STILL play and beat Chrono Trigger (my all time favorite) at least once a year.
At this point in time, Sierra was at its peak. It was to a point where, if it said Sierra on the box, you could buy the game and know you would enjoy it, get plenty of lasting value out of it, and barely have to look at the back of the box. I'm sorry, but there isn't a developer today (not even Sierra anymore) that I would do that for. I was hooked on the "Quest" games, Police Quest, Kings Quest, Conquest (of Camelot, and of the Longbow) and my personal favorite from Sierra, the Quest for Glory Series.
It was truly a shining time in video games. Some of the best tales were told, with an easy to use interface and great graphics. Heck, Quest for Glory is easily what the present RPG market owes a big thank you to. Lori and Cori Cole showed the world that not only were RPGs a good market, but that there were close to a million people waiting for a good one to burst on the scene. This series is easily what gave Sierra quite a boost in profits. If you have no idea what i'm talking about, do a websearch for it. Find a place to buy the "Quest for Glory" anthology, and but a really cheap Pentium 1 class box and load up DOS and throw those games on there. I'd say a windows 95 machine to be safe, but don't go any newer than that. Its by far one of the most non-linear, interesting, multi ending driven, best concepts ever thought up for its time. There were five games total in the series, each one posing a new adventure, with new threats, and an entirely different theme in landscape. You could play as a burly Fighter, powerful Magic User, wily Thief, or even mix and match classes! At the end of each adventure, you could save your character to a disk (with all his stats saved and inventory), and bring him on to the next adventure. This would even allow you to unlock a 'hidden class' depending on how you played the Quest for Glory 2, Trial By Fire.
This has already gotten long, and given you a brief look at my gaming past. My next post is going to be about the next developer who changed my perspective on what a game world should be, forever. His name is Richard Garriot, the genius behind what is easily one of the best game series ever created -- Ultima, and how I entered the world of Lord British, the Avatar, and everything that transpires over what became an epic NINE GAME saga.
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