Computers, Games and Consoles

Part One

This is my nostalgia trip from a time when games and computers brought me the most joy.

When we were young my father saw that computers were the future and wanted my sister and myself to have a head start. Dad bought our first computer home one afternoon with Windows 95 installed, I dont know what hardware it had but the turbo button did nothing, disappointing, dad also brought home a box full of CDs, a variety of games, MS Encarta and a joystick .

Some of the games were TFX: Tactical Fighter Experiment, Raptor Call of the Shadows, Worms, Scorched Earth, Cannon Fodder, Rodents Revenge, Skifree, Panzer Generals, Desert Strike, Frogger, Starwars: Rebel Assault, Dr Riptide, Boppin and Billy the kid returns. Mum said we picked up on how to use it and understood it very quickly, my sister was happy playing with ms paint and Mum would read the encyclopedia, when she had time.

Our first computer broke eventually, I'm not sure when or what went on in the meantime.

One day Mum took me over to my aunty and cousins place where my cousin showed me his new Nintendo 64. Before he even turned it on I was in aw and excited at what it looked like, the shape of the controller and console, it looked cool. Before that I had never seen a console.

He put the Super Mario 64 cartridge in and turned it on, the Super Mario splash screen with sound, squishing Marios face got me excited.

The starting point with Mario jumping out of the pipe and being able to run around, climbing trees, swimming in the water, exploring an open world, for my young self seeing 3d graphics for the first time like this on a console I never knew existed, it was amazing, I was euphoric, much adrenaline, more than anything else in life up untill that point. We played some Diddy Kong racing and Yoshis story, and then I had to go home.

It was fun and I wanted one, I begged Mum for one.

Mum eventually put one on laybuy but shortly after, the school I went to was having a raffle. I can't remember what first or third prize was but second prize was a Nintendo 64 with the Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time gold cartridge and gold controller bundle. Me with my wisdom of the universe thought that if we bought two tickets we would win second prize.

And we did.

The one on laybuy was the same Ocarina of Time bundle, I think we gave one cartridge to someone but I cant really remember. Ocarina of Time, Super Mario 64, Banjo Kazooie, Mario kart 64 and Goldeneye were my favorites. I couldn't finish Banjo Kazooie for some time, I found Gruntildas last fight extremely difficult and doing everything leading up the that part was tiring. We also had Turok 2 Seeds of Evil, Snowboard Kids, Perfect Dark, Pokemon Stadium, Starwars: Rogue Squadron, Bomberman 64 and The World is Not Enough.

Ocarina of Time was really special, I've replayed it numerous times and I will never forget how I felt travelling around Hyrule as the young hero, Link (not Zelda), exploring the temple's, obtaining new equipment, collecting heart pieces and the spiritual stones, and defeating the bosses along with all the other interactions and small details. It really is the greatest game of all time.

Both my grand fathers said exactly "this is a terrible game" when I was playing Goldeneye 007, while dad enjoying it with me coaching me to drop'em with one shot to the chest from the silenced Walther PPK in facility, my dad is very encouraging.

I loved playing the 64, it was an escape from other things happening in life, Mum and Dad bought a second TV so they could watch what they wanted while we played the Nintendo. On the weekends we would goto video ezy, Mum, Dad and Sister would hire a movie while I hired a 64 game.

At some point I got a pocket gameboy which I then sold and bought a fluro green Gameboy colour. Besides the Pokemon series we had Kirbys Star Stacker. Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins, Wario Land:Super Mario Land 3, James Bond 007, Darkwing Duck and Baseball.

I got bitten by the Pokemon bug big time.

In the morning before school I would watch cartoons on cheeze tv and one day they were hyping up the upcoming Pokemon series. The day of the first episode I slept in and when I got to school that morning all everyone was talking about was Pokemon, I felt left out because I missed out on something special.

The next day I woke up in time for the second episode and I was hooked. I got Pokemon yellow then a bit later I got blue. Life revolved around Pokemon, it was a great escape, awhile later I had silver, gold and crystal with crystal being my favorite, being colour and accessing kanto again. I also had the Pokemon cards and related toys.

I had some tamagotchis and digimons (glitched to Teddymon) while in primary school too. The school banned them not long after

The first time that the teachers took our class to the library to play on the new apple G3's I got stuck with an old apple lc, there wasnt enough G3's for everyone. I found the paint program and drew lines with the rainbow gradient that time, not much else to do on it. There were a few PCs with XP in other rooms aswell. Eventually I got to play on the G3's, some of them had some fun games on them, others didnt. Some of the games were Lemmings, The Incredible Machine, Simcity 2000, Descent, Cro-Mag Rally, some sort of 3d ant game and one kid brought in Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee.

Around that time we were taught about the internet, I cant remember much about that but I found a website giving away a cd single of Bomfunk MCs b boys fly girls as a promotion, I entered my details without understanding any of the potential dangers of the net. I can't remember if it was an Australian promotion or overseas but it came in the mail a few weeks later. I also setup my first email account at that time and forgot about it soon after. I constantly have to tell everyone of my older family members to write their passwords down before they make their accounts.

I can't remember which came first, our first laptop with Windows XP or the second desktop with Windows 98, the 98 being my fathers business computer which I played Need for Speed, Fuji Golf and some old DOS/95 games on. The laptop was a Toshiba Satellite with Windows XP Pro, a DVD-ROM, a PCMCIA slot and a 3.5 inch floppy disk drive. Dad and I played Space Cadet pinball together sometimes, I got Age of Empires 1, and Age of Kings which I couldnt always get to work, I also had MS Flight Simulator with a joy stick.

Later I got my own desktop PC, a Celeron with XP Home edition with a 56k modem.

A teacher at school said you can get the internet on a cd so I asked Mum and Dad to take me to the newsagent in the main street of town to buy an AOL CD. We had to get a phone cord and adapter to plug it in and for some reason there was a perfectly situated phone socket on my bedroom wall.

Waiting the time you needed to download an image or file would be unbearable in comparison to 50Mb fiber I have right now.

In my travels of the internet I found a javascript version of Asteroids that I copied onto a floppy disk and would take to school to play since some computers didn't have the internet

I bought the Command and Conquer 4 pack and Yuri's Revenge, of which Red Alert 2 was my favorite and was the first online multiplayer game I played which worked well enough with dial-up internet, the Libyan demolition truck and crazy Ivan were my favourite unit's to use, and I enjoyed making custom unit mods in Tiberian Sun aswell. I did play the first CnC on Nintendo 64 that I hired but I couldn't get the first one or Red Alert to work on PC until later in DOSbox.

My first taste of Linux was the Knoppix live CD that I downloaded and we would play with on the laptop, my sister had fun playing with Frozen Bubble after school at dads shop. I didn't make the full switch to Linux until much later in life.

I bought Freelancer shortly after it came out in 2003. It is a space trading and combat simulator with the freedom of an open world sandbox where you play Edison Trent with the choice of either storymode hero or as a free pirate traveling around the 48 star systems. The visual background looked good and the gameplay was exciting, space battles, pirating, space stations, buying or stealing weapons and cargo, lots of side missions, wormholes to alien planets, it was lots of fun.

My cousin had a PS2 which he introduced Grand Theft Auto 3 to me, I got it for PC which graphically didnt work well with what ever graphics card my PC had. Then later I got Vice City and San Andreas. I spent lots of time on SA cruising around Los Santos robbing drug dealers. There was a bug where the military plane that you had to drive a motor bike up the back of, the plane was going faster than the motor bike ever would and couldnt pass that mission untill later, I cant remember how I fixed it.

I remember the hot coffee mod was talked about on TV at the time. I eventually found a San Andreas online multiplayer role playing mod which was different. I enjoyed the series a lot but felt like they were lacking something, and larger maps didnt mean much when it was empty country side.

Later on...