Good Day All! My good friend and former hallmate BackdoorAngel has graciously invited me to join the ranks of contributors to the mighty The Tartar Sauce. My shtick here is videogames. Reviews, reminiscences, rants, commentary, and anything else I can think of about the medium. Just so y'all can know where I'm coming from, I started 'gaming' on my Packard Bell PC with a copy of Duke Nukum (that's not a misspelling, Apogee called him Duke Nukum '\because they thought 'Nukem' was copyrighted) that my godfather gave me. I remember quite clearly receiving that first floppy, with the homemade label on which was neatly written "DN1: Property of CK." That and the sound of the floppy drive as it accessed the disk. For those of you who haven't played it, the original Duke game was a sidescrolling shooter in which our tiny orange-skinned pink shirted hero battled the nefarious Dr. Proton in Shrapnel City.
Man, this game was awesome. Memorable enemies, great settings, tight gameplay, and best of all no sniggering about a certain overdue sequel (this was before Apogee even became 3D realms.) Good times.
Later, my dad bought a game called Red Baron (packaged with A-10 Tank Killer.) I still regard this as one of the most immersive games of all time, even though it looks like this:
First of all, if you turned on all realistic settings, it had a fairly accurate flight model (I, of course, usually turned off damage to my plane, resulting in many a frustrated pilot blasting away in futility at my invincible ace. In my defense, I was about four years old.) Turning on "Realistic Navigation" was especially interesting - you were expected to navigate by observing landmarks (mountains, rivers, railroads, etc) and consulting a number of maps that came in the box. This was probably the coolest thing I had ever seen. A videogames with paper maps? That actually mattered? Awesome!
Red Baron also had the single best manual in the existence of computer games. Yes, there was the obligatory set-up, controls, troubleshooting, and whatnot, but after that was done there were approximately 50 pages of historical background on WWI, focusing on aerial combat, There were biographies of aces, description of tactics, a detailed timeline of the air war, and best of all, full color diagrams and specifications of all the aircraft featured in the game. I have yet to see anything like it since. It's not just that the manual was thourough and detailed, plenty of sims have such things. What still amazes me is the amount of effort that went into immersing the player in WWI by placing him in the correct mindset and giving him (or her) all the information necessary to think like a combat aviator in the Great War.
A-10 Tank Killer I didn't play as much, mainly because it was complicated and hard. I never quite figured out how to operate missles, so I usually just turned off all realism and went around blowing stuff up with the avenger cannon that never overheated or ran out of ammo while all range of anti-aircraft weaponry bounced harmlessly off me. At times I wouldn't even take off, simply rolling around on the ground like a glorified tank blowing up anything that showed its face.
Anyway, the next major phase in my gaming life was none other than Command & Conquer. I recieved C&C95 Gold Edition from a friend for my birthday , and immediately found that my computer couldn't handle it. I read and re-read that manual over and over again until my family got a new computer (I remember reading the Dell magazines and being wowed at the $3,000 machine that was a whopping
one gigahert pentium 4.) My one requirement was that it be a Pentium processor and have at least 100 mb of hard drive space - enough to run Command & Conquer. When I finally could run it, I learned most of what I know about modems setting up dialup games with my friends (for the record, dialing up somebody to play a computer game and then hearing somebody pick up the phone and start asking who's calling through the speaker on your modem is pretty freakin' funny.) When Red Alert came out I bought it and played it. When Tiberian Sun came out, I bought it and played it. I pre-ordered Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge and loved both of them. This series will always have a fond place in my heart, despite the sharp decrease in charm following Westwood's dissolution.
Command & Conquer was my first time in conflict with the ESRB, as it was rated T for teen and I was not, in fact, a Teen, something with made my mother hesitant to allow such a purchase. The second and much more difficult battle was Half-Life. I played it at a friend's house, loved it, but couldn't buy it at home because it was rated M. My mother, God bless her, is one of a very small number of women in the world with enough sense to review the content of the media she buys for her children. At the time I hated it, but now I'm quite glad of having that sense of responsibility drummed into me. Anyway, this introduced me to pirating - I couldn't buy the game, so I downloaded it over my 56k modem over several nights, when everyone was asleep.
Through Highschool I started broadening my interests, exploring lots of classics thanks to Home of the Underdogs and sites like it. I installed X-Com on the computers at my job, bought Mount & Blade when it was in version .650, and played all sorts games. FPS, strategy, God-Games (I was absolutely enthralled by Black and White. Never finished it, but damn it drew me in) Flight sims, RPGs, pretty much everything except Puzzles. Most of my finest purchases were off the discount rack at major retailers - its where I found Freespace, Fallout, Deus Ex, and countless others. Today I mostly play PC games, and I've fallen off the "waiting for next big release" bandwagon and started exploring older games that I've missed.
I think videogames can be art if they are treated as such. Instead of traditional reviews, I'll be offering up 'critiques' of games here, as well as essays on the industry and medium. Occaisionally I'll be firing off a "Check this out!" post, as well. I hope people can derive at least some sort of entertainment from my ramblings, and if not, well, there'll always be pretty pictures.
Until next time -
Bobbicus
Man, this game was awesome. Memorable enemies, great settings, tight gameplay, and best of all no sniggering about a certain overdue sequel (this was before Apogee even became 3D realms.) Good times.
Later, my dad bought a game called Red Baron (packaged with A-10 Tank Killer.) I still regard this as one of the most immersive games of all time, even though it looks like this:
First of all, if you turned on all realistic settings, it had a fairly accurate flight model (I, of course, usually turned off damage to my plane, resulting in many a frustrated pilot blasting away in futility at my invincible ace. In my defense, I was about four years old.) Turning on "Realistic Navigation" was especially interesting - you were expected to navigate by observing landmarks (mountains, rivers, railroads, etc) and consulting a number of maps that came in the box. This was probably the coolest thing I had ever seen. A videogames with paper maps? That actually mattered? Awesome!
Red Baron also had the single best manual in the existence of computer games. Yes, there was the obligatory set-up, controls, troubleshooting, and whatnot, but after that was done there were approximately 50 pages of historical background on WWI, focusing on aerial combat, There were biographies of aces, description of tactics, a detailed timeline of the air war, and best of all, full color diagrams and specifications of all the aircraft featured in the game. I have yet to see anything like it since. It's not just that the manual was thourough and detailed, plenty of sims have such things. What still amazes me is the amount of effort that went into immersing the player in WWI by placing him in the correct mindset and giving him (or her) all the information necessary to think like a combat aviator in the Great War.
A-10 Tank Killer I didn't play as much, mainly because it was complicated and hard. I never quite figured out how to operate missles, so I usually just turned off all realism and went around blowing stuff up with the avenger cannon that never overheated or ran out of ammo while all range of anti-aircraft weaponry bounced harmlessly off me. At times I wouldn't even take off, simply rolling around on the ground like a glorified tank blowing up anything that showed its face.
Anyway, the next major phase in my gaming life was none other than Command & Conquer. I recieved C&C95 Gold Edition from a friend for my birthday , and immediately found that my computer couldn't handle it. I read and re-read that manual over and over again until my family got a new computer (I remember reading the Dell magazines and being wowed at the $3,000 machine that was a whopping one gigahert pentium 4.) My one requirement was that it be a Pentium processor and have at least 100 mb of hard drive space - enough to run Command & Conquer. When I finally could run it, I learned most of what I know about modems setting up dialup games with my friends (for the record, dialing up somebody to play a computer game and then hearing somebody pick up the phone and start asking who's calling through the speaker on your modem is pretty freakin' funny.) When Red Alert came out I bought it and played it. When Tiberian Sun came out, I bought it and played it. I pre-ordered Red Alert 2 and Yuri's Revenge and loved both of them. This series will always have a fond place in my heart, despite the sharp decrease in charm following Westwood's dissolution.
Command & Conquer was my first time in conflict with the ESRB, as it was rated T for teen and I was not, in fact, a Teen, something with made my mother hesitant to allow such a purchase. The second and much more difficult battle was Half-Life. I played it at a friend's house, loved it, but couldn't buy it at home because it was rated M. My mother, God bless her, is one of a very small number of women in the world with enough sense to review the content of the media she buys for her children. At the time I hated it, but now I'm quite glad of having that sense of responsibility drummed into me. Anyway, this introduced me to pirating - I couldn't buy the game, so I downloaded it over my 56k modem over several nights, when everyone was asleep.
Through Highschool I started broadening my interests, exploring lots of classics thanks to Home of the Underdogs and sites like it. I installed X-Com on the computers at my job, bought Mount & Blade when it was in version .650, and played all sorts games. FPS, strategy, God-Games (I was absolutely enthralled by Black and White. Never finished it, but damn it drew me in) Flight sims, RPGs, pretty much everything except Puzzles. Most of my finest purchases were off the discount rack at major retailers - its where I found Freespace, Fallout, Deus Ex, and countless others. Today I mostly play PC games, and I've fallen off the "waiting for next big release" bandwagon and started exploring older games that I've missed.
I think videogames can be art if they are treated as such. Instead of traditional reviews, I'll be offering up 'critiques' of games here, as well as essays on the industry and medium. Occaisionally I'll be firing off a "Check this out!" post, as well. I hope people can derive at least some sort of entertainment from my ramblings, and if not, well, there'll always be pretty pictures.
Until next time -
Bobbicus
I recently came accross your blog and have been reading along. I thought I would leave my first comment. I dont know what to say except that I have enjoyed reading. Nice blog. I will keep visiting this blog very often.
Ann
http://externallaptop.net
Anonymous
April 15, 2009 at 4:44 AM