Gaming in general has been a part of my life since I was about 5 years old. My family use to go to Atlantic City, NJ every weekend during most of the 80s. They have recently resumed this activity and I like it because it gives me the house to myself every now and then. While in AC, my family would drop me off at the Child Depository. They called them "nurseries", however, they were pretty much just a receptical for children to be watched by completely uncertified strangers. Hey, it was the 80s, and I am no worse for wear. The first Arcade game I ever considered to be "my" game was Rampage. I was young, very young. I needed a milk crate in order to play at 5 years old, and I sweat like none other. This game consumed me. I got to play whenever I was let out of the cell, before dinner, and then some more before going back into captivity. As the years went on, I no longer had to remain locked up and could just chill in the arcades without serious supervision. I moved onto other games when Rampage was no longer there, but the game was there for quite a while as I played it on countless visits. I have extremely vivid memories of my entire childhood because of the toys I played with, and the video games I played. I can remember things completely unrelated based upon these things as well. But more on topic, I was in AC so much, around the same games all the time, everywhere that the sounds they made are forever embedded in my head. Sounds "Quit talking and start chalking." If anyone else remembers that, please contact me so I don't feel alone in this world. I remember all the Nintendo exclusive game releases, in the uniform arcade cabinet designs, like Hogan's Alley and Super Mario Bros. I also remember trying Punch-Out and never being able to get very far. The beat to Millipede, people playing Q-Bert, skeeball, lots of skeeball. The beginning to Quartet's theme. When the "3D" Pacman game out. When my aunt got through every stage of Pacman without dying. The judge in Karate Champion who looked like Ron Jeremy. Kung Fu and how much I hated it. Heavy Barrel. Endless root beer and candy bars. To make it a little clearer, I lived through almost the entire Arcade Era, and experienced it heavily, first hand. It probably got seriously popular in the early 80s, but from 86 til 96 I was regularly going to arcades, malls, rest stops, etc, in NJ. It was fun. So much fun. I'd be a different person without stand up arcade games. I moved onto beat 'em ups in the early 90s, which were very popular. Starting with Golden Axe, and Final Fight the list grew rapidly. TMNT and TMNT in Time, The Simpsons, Combat Tribes, Sunset Riders, X-men (yes I got to play the 6 player double screen many times in AC arcades) and other variants and clones. They were a staple. I almost loved wrestling games. I played Wrestler War, Mat Mania, Main Event, and other misc obscure wrestling games. WWF Superstars was a neat game, but nothing compares to WrestleFest. WrestleFest could burn calories like you were running on a treadmill, uphill mode, for an hour. My mother thought Rampage was bad, this game was 10 times worse. The constant mashing, because you HAD to. A not so fond memory of this particular game was in AC. I selected the Big Bossman as a Buy-In for the Royal Rumble. A few other older kids were playing. One was Hulk Hogan, who immediately locked up with me, threw me into the ropes, where his friend, using Earthquake, was standing, and he back dropped me out of the ring. Waste of 25 cents. I felt like Bushwacker Luke in RR 91. Fighting games became my next focus. I played every arcade incarnation of SF2, including Rainbow Edition. When the Alpha Series came out, I was far too focused on MK3 and UMK3 to care. I occassionally saw the Neo-Geo games and tried them, but there was something about the whole thing that was a huge turn off. I even played the SF2 rip off with the fat firebreather who yelled "Balloon!". The name of the game escapes me at the moment. I remember getting beaten in it and being very angry because there was nothing I could do. I also miss the days when computers were "simple" sometimes. I remember when I got my first computer, it was around summer 1995. A Pentium 75 mHz. A true powerhouse, with a 512 MB hard drive and 16 megs of RAM. The computer could barely run Doom II but it was still fun. I remember in 8th grade desperately trying to get a dial up connection going between myself and another student so we could play Doom online. Then moving up and on to a P233 and Quake, playing again via Dial Up. There were a few great local servers always with loaded rooms, and wonderfully choppy gameplay. Running around the level select stage fighting people was extremely fun for some reason. Then MAME came out and everything went back to fighting games, while going back and playing all the games I use to play. My, how times have not changed.

What is this DOSBox I talk of? It is one of those really rare things that completely lives up to its name. Download DOSBox, its free, and it will give you a window with DOS in it, inside Windows. DOS games don't usually like NT based operating systems (Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP) and dual booting Windows and DOS is, well, kind of a stupid idea unless you have very strong reasons for it, but only like 5 people do. So the answer is DOSBox, a DOS emulator. Pull out your floppies and, if you are lucky a CD, with your DOS games on it, install them to your harddrive (many times this will just be copying them). Make sure to keep the directory names simple. If you've never used DOS before, you'll know why you want to do this when you get into the DOSBox window. It won't be able to display directory or filenames longer than 8 letters. It will cut them off and end them with ~1 or some other number. So, I suggest, pick a harddrive, make a DOS directory in it, and install all your DOS games inside there. Then, follow these steps. Run DOSBox. Type "mount c c:\" without the quotes. This will create a C: drive inside DOSBox that is simply pointing to your real C: drive. You can change it to any other drive letters you want. "mount q e:\" will mount your real E drive to a drive called q: inside DOSBox. There is a file called DOSBox.conf that you can edit to make mounting harddrives automatically. Just add: mount c c:\ to the bottom of the file and it'll run that when DOSBox starts up. If you have a directory called DOS on the C: drive, you can then type "cd DOS" to access it. Type "dir" to list the files, and type the name of the .exe, .bat, or .com you need to to make the game go. To exit a directory, just type "cd .." to back out of it. There is a lot of to DOSBox. A lot of options you can tweak, a lot of neat stuff you can do. Be sure to read through their website and the documentation. http://dosbox.sourceforge.net/ The other really redeeming feature of DOSBox? Netplay. One person is the server, the other person connects. Both players run DOSBox. Player 1 types IPXNET STARTSERVER Player 2 types "IPXNET CONNECT IP# Port#" Fill in the IP and Port numbers of your opponents computer. Next, someone start whatever game you'll be playing in IPX mode as the host. The other person can start the game to connect to it, and you are good to go. That's it. This thing rocks. So far I have played the following games in DOSBox: Rise of the Triad, Blood, Doom, MK2, MK3 DOS, Dune 2, Race Drivin, and a handful of others. I've successfully played many of these online with the IPXNET command. Nothing beats it. Thank you DOSBox makers, thank you.

I have been debating with this for the last week or so since the game is just about ready to come out. After everything the MKD players have gone through, finding the problems with the game, now they will add more to the system. It makes me wonder if they will actually correct the existing problems. A petition was sent to Midway from all the top players online in MKD with a list of what needs to be changed or added to the funamental aspects of the game, however, I am not good at MKD, about 1 week's worth of experience, and I could have listed everything in it. That's not good. With the addition of the air combo system, I feel this game will be horrifically broken. The combo system and collision detection are the biggest issues in the game. It's such a basic problem. They attempted to correct issues in alternate console versions but instead created new problems, infinites, free throws, etc. The only way to truly get a game to a good level is release an arcade version, and it is a shame that this is impossible now. The main reason I will get MKA is for the Kreate a Karacter mode. I will have a lot of fun making specialized characters for people that are way too close to the original character concepts. My goal with this is to make characters that are so good, they will become a standard of online play. Here's to hope.