You kids and your "Xbixes,"

[Kjata]

you make me sick. Back in my day, we had a wonderful little gadget called the N64. We could only get 4 people playing, huddled around our 4 inch tvs. Not only that, we had to run cords across the floor, and walk across the room to turn it on. Upstairs BOTH WAYS! In the snow! And gorram it, we LIKED it! :durkon:

And what, 64 ain't good enough for ya? You had to get all fancy with your circle numbers?

(Title typo intentional)

[Morph Bark]

Well back in MY day, we had no internet! If'n we wanted ta know somethin', we had to walk all the way over to the library 'n git a book! In the snow! We dinna even have gaming forums (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=26) fer if we wanted ta look up stuff or talk 'bout Jumpman!

(kinda wrong forum, good sir)

[Lord Raziere]

old man, you are like, SOOOO out of date. No one is about the X thing anymore. now its all like, totally imitating the Wii with motion-sensing junk? thats whats "in" right now. :smallcool:

[Serpentine]

N64? Clearly the height of gaming was my beloved SNES.

[thubby]

N64? Clearly the height of gaming was my beloved SNES.

LIES AND SLANDER! truly, the genesis is the epitome of high art!

[GolemsVoice]

Ha! You hav eit all wrong, dekadent Amerikans! Back when I was jung, we had fun by invading anozer country and joining those nice jouth Klubs provided by ze state. Zat is all. Wallow in your digital fils, Amerikans.

[OhJohnNo]

u stoopid old peepl. LOL. N64 is SUX, Gensis too. COD is MAX PWNAGE BROS.

[dehro]

this is rapidly turning into a 4 yorkshiremen joke..

[Yora]

When I was a kid, we had 5 TV channels and no VCR. I got my first console in 2007, which is a PS2.

But that was mostly because we were poor, as I learned when I got older and our family reasonably wealthy.

I also remember my dads first CD player.

[SiuiS]

N64? Clearly the height of gaming was my beloved SNES.

Word.


When I was a kid, we had 5 TV channels and no VCR. I got my first console in 2007, which is a PS2.

But that was mostly because we were poor, as I learned when I got older and our family reasonably wealthy.

I also remember my dads first CD player.

you had Five channels? Man! I had three. Channel 5, channel 11, channel 3, and U, which had its own weird separate dial.

But yeah, I was lucky as a wee'n. My mom loved Terri's and Mario, so I grew up with a Nintendo. Literally. Evn when it was stolen – and it was stolen a lot – we had a new one in good time. Think I went through eight of them between 5 and 9. And we even had final fantasy 2 at one point! That's so weird.

Course, being the young impatient filly I was, I totally balked that j only had Mario 1 and not the much cooler Mario Anything Else. Man, I was lame.

[Aotrs Commander]

Pssh, you and your fancy-shmancy high-tech N64s! When I were a lad, we had a 48K Spectrum and we had to wait half-an-hour in the freezing rain everytime you wanted the play a game while the tape recorder loaded!

[Trixie]

You kids and your sneses and spectrums. You make me sick. Back in my day, we had a wonderful little gadget called Programma 101. We could only get one people playing, huddled around printer as PC-connected displays weren't invented yet. Not only that, we had to program all moves in advance, as it had no real time input, and pretty much any game to play at all besides. Upstairs? Pfeh! And gorram it, that's the only (wo)manly way to play!

And what, assembler ain't good enough for ya? You had to get all fancy with your graphic displays? Try 80 x 25 text mode! :smallyuk:

[Radar]

@Aotrs Commander
And if someone turned on a fridge or any other appliance? You got an error and had to start the loading all over again (that is true by the way).

From funnier bits of old-timey computer experience: computer magazines used to print program codes and some radio stations would broadcast programs as well (this worked best for Atari XE, since it's encoding was the most tolerant at the time). Things got way simplier, when the diskettes got popular.

this is rapidly turning into a 4 yorkshiremen joke..
You were lucky to have a 4 yorkshiremen joke. We only got one yorkshireman joke and we had to go 10 miles uphill in snow to see it and it wasn't even funny.

[TheSummoner]

Bah, back in my day if we wanted to rescue a princess we had to get our torches and pitchforks and storm the castle ourselves. And we were lucky if there was a bottomless pit to drop the dragon into, much less a pool of lava! Most of the time, he just got dropped two feet and then came back angrier than before!

[GolemsVoice]

This is relavant to the discussion (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kB78hM_lkI)

[Nerd-o-rama]

You kids and hipsters and your "pinnacles of gaming". When I was a kid we had an NES. No "S", no fancy graphics, no game design that tells you what to do other than walk right and jump. There was no "pinnacle of gaming", no "console wars", it was Nintendo or nothing.

[Trog]

Well back in Trog's day all they had was Low definition TVs and they came embedded in huge hunks of wooden furniture. They wouldn't even run right until they had properly heated up. There were no buttons in those days and all they had were knobs. And they were happy to get them! Changing channels meant getting up off your butt and turning the knob, which would indicate the number by having holes in the metal to let light shine through from a small orange glowing radioactive chicklet looking thing. And there was only three channels.

And all they had for "video games" was this thing called "imagination" which was a program you could run on your "brain" IF your family was lucky enough to have one at all. Some families didn't even have those. Instead they'd spend their free time drooling into a gutter somewhere. And some didn't even have gutters! We did, when Trog was young, and we were happy to have them gutters!

"Quit your belly achin," mum would say, "there's some folks who can't even produce drool! They just have to force down the dry bitten up bits with a long stick. ... And some of them don't even have sticks!"

Ahh good ol' mum. Always kept us lookin' on the bright side of the cave.

...

*blinks*

...

What were we talking about again?

...

*blinks*

...

*attention drifts and soon ambles off, scratching self*

[Mx.Silver]

Bah! Spoiled, the lot of you! Back when I was a kid we didn't have a fancy-shmancy 'telly-vision' we had to make do with old books. In tiny print. And if the candles had burned outm we couldn't even have that! And we have none of you 'compy-uters' or your 'segatendos' neither. We had to entertain ourselves with the family abacus, and if we were really really lucky we might get to put something on the phonograph at the same time.
And you know what? We had the decency to be grateful!

[GolemsVoice]

You kids and hipsters and your "pinnacles of gaming". When I was a kid we had an NES. No "S", no fancy graphics, no game design that tells you what to do other than walk right and jump.

Wouldn't that be just a NE then?

[Drakeburn]

Can we please turn down the hate a bit? It is getting ridiculous.

I remember playing my first video games when I was in the hospital as an infant.
I think I might've played the Sega Genesis first, and then the SNES, but I can't remember. (seriously, I was just a baby! What do infants know about game consoles back then?)

It wasn't until I was 7 or 8 years old that I got my first gaming system: A Gameboy Color. I played Pokemon Gold and Silver on it so much. It wasn't until some auction that I decided to let go of my beloved childhood, and pass it on to some other child.

I think it was on my 12th birthday that I received my first gaming console, which was a GameCube (with my right to have my own opinion, I would like to say that it wasn't as bad as everybody believes).
And the first game I had with it was the Sonic Gems Collection disc. The first game I played on it was Sonic Fighters.
It wasn't until years later that for a Boy Scout project I decided to collect blankets and toys for a hospital for children. As far as I know, I ended up donating 100 blankets and I didn't count how many toys I donated, but to my surprise that my mother donated my GameCube, and all its games, to the hospital was well. But again, I was ok with it. Pass on your childhood was what I believed.

So now I'm stuck with a Wii (with my mother and little sister, you can bet that I can't get away with buying all those violent games for the Xbox and Xbox 360). The only good that came out of that Wii was the latest Legend of Zelda game.

It is amazing to believe that I had good memories from all those games. The time my little sister defeated me in Sonic Fighters, the time I got so excited playing a game (I can't remember which one) that I ended up putting my foot in a plate of spaghetti.

Now and days, I want to explore the strange and unusual. Which place am I looking in? Dungeons and Dragons. Potentially the most fun thing I have in my possession. It is really sad how the DDO game is not the same as the usual pen - and - paper game.

So, there is a large fragment of my childhood right there folks.

[Loki_42]

This is also relevant to the discussion (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pa6SGYWADU&list=FLkpKS8M7MaZAFewtUz24K3A&index=6)

[TheSummoner]

Wait a second... Let me get my chair.

http://www.gamerreaction.tv/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/dk-Cranky-Kong.jpg

Bah, kids these days. Back in my day we only had TWO dimensions and we LIKED it that way. We had to walk uphill both ways to the castle where they kept the princess in the snow with a pair of jerks throwing hammers at us.

And we didn't need these quicksave features either. We had to go to save points! And that was if we were lucky! Half the time we had to remember nonsense password codes.

And we only needed three colors per sprite! And all of our princesses were redheads because blonde and brunette didn't stand out well in 8-bit!

And another thing! There's too much talking in games these days. Back in my day game characters knew when to shut their mouths and listen to their elders!

Too much violence too. Back in my day when you beat a bad guy he had the good sense to fall off the screen.

[GloatingSwine]

Pssh, you and your fancy-shmancy high-tech N64s! When I were a lad, we had a 48K Spectrum and we had to wait half-an-hour in the freezing rain everytime you wanted the play a game while the tape recorder loaded!

Tape recorder?

You were lucky.

We 'ad ZX-81, wi' program listing we 'ad type in arselves wi'out even rubber keys. And no colours mind, colours were for the posh kids who 'ad memory. 1K we 'ad and we med do.

[dehro]

Can we please turn down the hate a bit? It is getting ridiculous.


Ridiculous is what we're aiming for. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo)

[JustSomeGuy]

this is rapidly turning into a 4 yorkshiremen joke..

When i were growing up we dint have no '4 yorkshiremen' jokes, and i grew up in yorkshire!

[Lex-Kat]

Back in my day, all we had was Atari 2600. And you were lucky if you could use the darn paddle wheel controllers, and the joystick would sometimes get stuck, or the game itself would freeze. And if you played Adventure, you found yourself running from giant ducks that were supposed to be dragons. Ahhhhhh!! :smalleek:

Oh, and if you owned a desk top computer, you were rich.

[VanBuren]

Pssh. You kids and your fancy electricity, and your hoity-toity written words.


When I was a kid we used to play "Dodge the Mammoth". And we were damn happy to play, because it meant we got to eat that night.

[Welf]

Back in my days we only had mechanical computers, the only game was "word", and it had only black and red colours.

[Traab]

Ah back in the good old days, when I could play games like oregon trail, and paperboy with these giant floppy discs. But back then you had to be clever. You see, these discs were actually SQUARE! It made tricking the thieves a lot easier as they would be looking for limp circles to take for big bucks.

[Amidus Drexel]

LIES AND SLANDER! truly, the genesis is the epitome of high art!

Quoted for truth. The genesis is still my favorite console.

I also like the Infocom (and other companies too, I suppose) text adventure games, although that is something I've done more recently, rather than as a small child.

[Caesar]

Grew up playing Atari (tank and asteroids for the most part) on crappy analogue joysticks that never worked properly.

When nintendo (NES) came out, it was like a magic box from the future. I remember when I got The Legend of Zelda for my birthday and was just amazed that the cartridge was gold. I mean, wow.

Years later, dial up modems (2400 baud) were the thing and we played turn based games like Usurper on bbs's, on our DOS machines. Then this wierd ass thing called windows showed up, and with it, the world wide web as it was known back in the day. Of course, there were no search engines and most websites were horrific flashing text on black backgrounds, but hey, it was awesome. Mudding became quite the thing, I played on TorilMud (formally known as Sojourn) and one day some guys asked me for their help.

See, MUDs were text based online DnD games, and they were going to take the whole thing to a whole new level with graphics. They wanted my help designing cool levels and stuff, but I laughed them off of course, considering it took 15 to 20 minutes to download a single jpeg, and even then, you weren't even sure it would contain boobs, as thumbnails wouldnt be invented for at least another 7 years or so. A graphics based multi-user online game? Come on...

A few years later, those guys launched Everquest. Crap.

So dont come complaining to me about your N64 or SNES and especially your xbix. You kids never had to carry a fifteen kilo beta-max machine home from your uncles house on the handlebars of your ET inspired bmx bike.

[KillianHawkeye]

When I was a kid we just had books (http://youtu.be/9kxYApOPnW8?t=30s)

[Felyndiira]

When I was a child, I had one of those "learning computer" machines that was preloaded with LOGO. Basically, to play a game, we would type about 26000 lines of code in LOGO, run it, and play it once. If we reach a game-over, we would have to type the code again (until we learned how LOGO loops work, that is).

Entirely serious, too. LOGO was the first programming language I learned because of that. Ah, the memories of a childhood in China =p.

We did later get those bootleg Chinese cartridges loaded with like 200+ NES games though. Of course, things like "Super Mario Bros, start at world 1-1", "Super Mario Bros, start at world 3-1", and "Super Mario Bros, start at world 6-3" are all counted as separate games for those cartridges, so most of them had at most 10 games. Still cheap, though, given all of it is bootleg.

[Traab]

In all honesty, the oldest "game" system I had was either an atari or a commodore 64. On the other hand, we DID have this fancy schmancy electronic board game called Dark Tower. http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_PgzWtj7VIiM/RgVeJRfEcqI/AAAAAAAABwY/3ym8SrfDZhI/s400/Dark_tower_box_cover.jpg

That game was released the year I was born, and we still have it in most of its original box! (lots of tape holding it together. :p) Back then they made games that LAST.

[Sith_Happens]

http://static1.fjcdn.com/thumbnails/comments/4142985+_dff31eae1e1308d28f43621283b7bc7f.png

[Wyntonian]

I grew up playing Link to the Past on my Grandpa's Nintendo 64 (I meant SNES. I was reading earlier posts and got them mixed up. Feel free to aim your collective nerdrage lazors at me.) It was awesome.

[Raimun]

Back in my days we had wooden or plastic swords and that was enough and we liked them!

The fact that I have now a PS3 has nothing to do with any of this!

[Kjata]

Alright kids, this is why you don't drink and post. I was looking through the threads, and saw I started this one... I was like :smallconfused:

Then I read it, and was like WTF?

[OracleofWuffing]

Alright kids, this is why you don't drink and post. I was looking through the threads, and saw I started this one... I was like :smallconfused:

Then I read it, and was like WTF?

Back in my day, we didn't have drinks!

[Anarion]

Back in my day, we didn't have drinks!

You're over 10,000 years old? :smallconfused:

[OracleofWuffing]

:smallannoyed: Are you calling me old, whipper snapper!?

[Aotrs Commander]

Hah! Back in my day, we di'n't have none o' this new-fangled oxygen! All we had to breathe was chlorine gas, which was hot enough it would have been on fire if they were any oxygen! And we din't have any of this pansy water either: we made do with boiling magma and we liked it! We didn't have no entertainment, either! Our Dad would wake us up by slicing our faces off with a rusty axe at half-past-the start of the solar system every day, and we worked down the mine for a million year every day and the owner pulled our intestines out through our nostrils for the priviledge! And every night our Dad would ritually torture us to death with a blunt rock, and you never heard us complain!

[dehro]

my earliest gaming experiences are twofold in that I don't remember which came first. anyway, sometimes in the late 80's I think.
my dad's neighbours had a kid who would invite me to play outrun on his C64 when I was visiting my dad. at home, my mother's second husband had something that looked a lot like this
http://www.itsolutionsnwf.com/uploads/1/0/2/6/10264347/8813460.jpg?340
on which I used to play games like space invaders, pong, possibly arkanoid, frogger..
before that, back in Holland, my dad had acquired his first computer, for which he paid a hefty sum, having then to spend just as much to have his secretary trained to use it, because it was a misterious and unknowable object.
I was not even allowed to go near it, let alone find ways to play with it.

[VanBuren]

Back in my day, we didn't have drinks!

Back in my day we didn't have days! This was before the Sun was invented, you see.

AND WE DID JUST FINE.

[0Megabyte]

Hah! Back in my day, we di'n't have none o' this new-fangled oxygen! All we had to breathe was chlorine gas, which was hot enough it would have been on fire if they were any oxygen! And we din't have any of this pansy water either: we made do with boiling magma and we liked it! We didn't have no entertainment, either! Our Dad would wake us up by slicing our faces off with a rusty axe at half-past-the start of the solar system every day, and we worked down the mine for a million year every day and the owner pulled our intestines out through our nostrils for the priviledge! And every night our Dad would ritually torture us to death with a blunt rock, and you never heard us complain!

Chlorine gas! Well, back in my day, you were lucky to have chlorine gas! When I was young atoms had yet to coalesce! It was all subatomic particles all mushed together, running this way and that. You could never help but get hit by them! And they were scorching hot, too! Oh, those were the days, the universe was smaller then. Much smaller. The entire thing could fit in one tin cup, if I remember right, and all the matter of the universe was there. Chlorine gas, I wish! We didn't even have atoms!Hell, time had barely existed! I had to be my own father, and kill my own self, and I was lucky if I killed myself with a blunt rock. No rocks existed! I had to use my own fingernails! And I thanked myself for it!

[Radar]

Can we please turn down the hate a bit? It is getting ridiculous.
Hate? :smallconfused:


Now and days, I want to explore the strange and unusual. Which place am I looking in? Dungeons and Dragons. Potentially the most fun thing I have in my possession. It is really sad how the DDO game is not the same as the usual pen - and - paper game.
It can't be the same - there is no way to cram in the limitless into limited. :smallwink:

Anyway, memories come back to this old curmudgeon. First computer we had, was Atari 65XE (or maybe Atari 800XL and the 65XE later - I'm not sure) - it's still in working shape. Joysticks were of quite bad quality at the time, so my father build a couple keypads, which were way more convenient even if a bit unusual. Back when most games were on tapes, some really long ones had minigames, which you could play, while the main game was loading. As for the games themselves, we were quite lucky to have Boulder Dash (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EC3rqDQopKs) (with the level editor), International Karate (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cH6brs93mD8) (great music for it's time and aging well; good fighting game as well), Frogger (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_gqaWBNXpo) (duh!), River Raid (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXItN8PLmdo), The Last Starfighter (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYJhu-jycBU) (later rebranded as Star Raiders II, because the movie flopped badly), Alley Cat (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nkj71R16kVQ), Archon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozJXd324w8Q) and Montezuma's Revenge (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7SzOzj4s74). Lucasfilm deserves special mention for an igenious graphic engine used in Eidolon (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9cTvuwYi3w) and Rescue on Fractalus (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbZ-chrOgGg).

Another very special mention is due for LK Avalon game studio, which brought us Robbo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=902GLc4r0qM), Lasermania (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQvYvyoS4IY), Fred (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2Ni4ZEl8k8), Misja (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6atCvXMCXOg) and among other goodies the Chaos Music Composer (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH-ScL1GhPI).

...and I got carried away.

[Kjata]

I love how some people are posting actual discussion material, and some are posting garbage along the lines of my original post. It's really entertaining to see somebody post something in a serious tone about their childhood gaming, and have it be followed up with somebody drinking lava and daily murdered multiple times. Makes for a good laugh.

[KillianHawkeye]

I grew up playing Link to the Past on my Grandpa's Nintendo 64. It was awesome.

No you didn't, because that's nonsense. (A Link to the Past was an SNES game.)

[Amidus Drexel]

I love how some people are posting actual discussion material, and some are posting garbage along the lines of my original post. It's really entertaining to see somebody post something in a serious tone about their childhood gaming, and have it be followed up with somebody drinking lava and daily murdered multiple times. Makes for a good laugh.

Back in my day, we didn't have any laughs! We were unhappy and frowned all the time, and BY CROM we LIKED IT!

[Scowling Dragon]

And in my day we didn't have any lungs! We had to force ourselfs not to die through will alone-And we liked it that way!

[Lord Raziere]

back in my day, we didn't have this universe. no not even when it was small before your new-fangled big-bang. back in my day, we hadn't even had a big crunch yet! back in my day, we had to zlorggagle the msjakitiszl and bligmag any hofmaykiti that flaljekubdimsokjcadejekc so vibihino nes BOTH dwsarindares! cause we didn't have your physics! we have Kirszanistics! much better! more gi'akr'aizrts! our ylgionatistic maggle of time was hrrglin and we LIKED IT.

[Traab]

And in my day we didn't have any lungs! We had to force ourselfs not to die through will alone-And we liked it that way!

You only had to will yourself not to die? PANSY! When I was a kid, we had to will ourselves into existence, and if we stopped concentrating we just vanished! Do you have any idea how HARD it is to will yourself into existence before you even exist? It still makes my head hurt. But I dont complain, the pain lets me know I still exist!

[Amidus Drexel]

You only had to will yourself not to die? PANSY! When I was a kid, we had to will ourselves into existence, and if we stopped concentrating we just vanished! Do you have any idea how HARD it is to will yourself into existence before you even exist? It still makes my head hurt. But I dont complain, the pain lets me know I still exist!

Back in my day, we didn't have heads to get hurt! We didn't have wills, either! We mulled about in our non-existence, and we LIKED IT!

[Mystic Muse]

Back in my day, we didn't have people who said "Back in my day"

[Wyntonian]

Back in my day, we didn't have people who said "Back in my day"

Aaaaaaaand that's it. Meta-joke limit reached. We're done.

[TheSummoner]

Bah, back in my day we didn't even have days. It was dark constantly. No light. We had to walk around waving our arms wildly to find things.

[Kjata]

Aaaaaaaand that's it. Meta-joke limit reached. We're done.


Bah, back in my day we didn't even have days. It was dark constantly. No light. We had to walk around waving our arms wildly to find things.

God damn it, didn't you get the memo?

:smallwink:

[Sith_Happens]

Aaaaaaaand that's it. Meta-joke limit reached. We're done.

Bah, kids these days have no tolerance for meta-humor.:smallyuk:

[grimbold]

Bah, kids these days have no tolerance for meta-humor.:smallyuk:

back in MY day
we didn't even HAVE meta-humor! we just had plain old jokes!
and not to many either!

[Morph Bark]

Day in my back, humor didn't even HAVE we. Grumpy cats sat around like we and it LIKED we!

[VanBuren]

Back in my day we didn't have days! This was before the Sun was invented, you see.

AND WE DID JUST FINE.


Bah, back in my day we didn't even have days. It was dark constantly. No light. We had to walk around waving our arms wildly to find things.

Too late, I beat you to it. Not that I blame you for assuming it hadn't been said. There were only ten of us back then after all, the odds were in your favor.

[OhJohnNo]

Back in my day, we didn't have odds. We used to have to say "Never tell me the probabilities!" But did you hear us complain?

[Dr.Epic]

You kids these days and your complaining! Back in my day, we didn't have any complaining and we liked it that way! In fact, if you even thought about complaining the pharaoh would send you to dinosaur island. And another thing, back in my day we only had two elements and we liked it that way! As far as I'm concerned, lithium and all those other phoney elements are just a scam invented by alchemists to steal my hard earned dollars! And another thing, back in my day, we didn't have any dollars and we liked it that way! If you wanted something, you'd just have to trade enough chickens for it.

[shadow_archmagi]

You kids and your kids! Back in my day we didn't have kids! When we died, the human race just ended! It was a bleak and conclusive existence and we liked it!

[dehro]

You kids and your kids! Back in my day we didn't have kids! When we died, the human race just ended! It was a bleak and conclusive existence and we liked it!

human race, you say? bah, back in my day we were still waddling around on fins, trying to figure out how to get back in the water. And if we complained, our dad would throw us, well.. when I say throw us it's more like waddle us towards, the nearest lava pit.

[Lord Raziere]

Yea back in my day, we didn't have wills or consciousness. we couldn't even will ourselves into existence! there wasn't even the concept of the word "concept". we had to make do without even the concept of nothing! we didn't even know what nothing was! or what any words these words mean!

[TheSummoner]

Too late, I beat you to it. Not that I blame you for assuming it hadn't been said. There were only ten of us back then after all, the odds were in your favor.

Bah, back in my day we didn't have people beating us to things. For that matter we didn't have thingds that came before my day. My day was the first.

[JustSomeGuy]

Back in my day (yesterday), life was quite reasonable, all things considered.

[VanBuren]

Bah, back in my day we didn't have people beating us to things. For that matter we didn't have thingds that came before my day. My day was the first.

Dammit Gronk I pantsed you in front of the ancient ones once already and I'll do it again I swear.

[JoshL]

Back in my day, we didn't have people who said "Back in my day"

Yes, you absolutely did. You may not have paid attention to them, but they were there.

On topic, my parent bought an Intellivision when I was 3 (1980). I've not known much time without it. Still dig it, in addition to those newfangled game systems. Glad I grew up when I did...it's hard to go back, but going forward is always awesome.

[Yora]

That means you were fully aware of 80s music, fashion, and entertainment. I'm glad I was too young for that before the 90s arrived. Before that, there is only a vague memmory of fashion hell. :smallbiggrin:

[SaintRidley]

Back in my day we didn't have a lot of things you kids take fer granted. Let me count the ways.

Language. We didn't have any of yer nancy-fancy language. We did just fine with grunts and burps and high-pitched vowels. That's it. Nobody looked at us weird, I tell you. Everybody got along just fine withouten any language, and there weren't no disagreements neither. It's just a modern convenience you kids cain't imagine life without.

Walkin'. We didn't walk up hill both ways in the snow to git anywhere because there wasn't any walkin'. Wasn't invented yet. We had wheels all right, and we had pushin', and we even had crawlin' commando style, but walkin'? Fuggedaboutit. You lazy kids and yer walkin' don't even realize how good you have it. Yer belly was either on the floor all the time or you was at the mercy of somebody else pushin' you and hopin' they knew where they was goin' because they couldn't understand what you was tryin' to say (see point one about language again).

Hair. Didn't have no hair back in the day, neither. Everybody was bald as a baby's backside and they liked it. Why do you think I'm bald nowadays, eh? "Because yer old," it says. No, not because I'm old. Because I didn't see the point in gittin' no hair. Didn't have it back then, no need fer it now. Lazy convenience is all it is. What's the point of hair when you could just wear a blanket or a hat or a bonnet? And we didn't have any of those long-haired hippy freaks back then because they couldn't grow their hair out. Or any of those hooligan punks with their mohawks and all that. Bald is the way of nature, kid.

Toilets. You think you have it so nice, sittin' on yer throne to poop. Well back in the day we went where we pleased, and we carted around our waste until someone, out of the kindness of their heart, decided to relieve us of our burden. Just a little bag was all we had, and we liked it. Didn't have to worry about anybody judgin' us at all. Cain't do that nowadays and that's a damn shame.

Solid food. Food hadn't advanced to the third state of matter yet because the world, well, it weren't cool enough. All those peas you kids eat, growin' out of the ground and whatnot, we didn't have that back then. Peas grew in jars and they looked more like yer grandma's vomit than food, but that's what we had and we liked it. Nothin' to chew on, nothin' to choke on neither. And that's good, because it brings me to the last thing I've got on my mind that you kids have it so easy on.

Teeth. No teeth back then neither. Couldn't chew nothin' because we had nothin' to chew with. You think you have it so nice with yer thirty-two teeth, all easy and nice. Well let me tell you, I remember when teeth were invented and they were a pain to install. Comin' in one at a time, breakin' through yer gums, it wasn't any fun. And that was just the first set. Then they came out with teeth 2.0 and started uninstallin' yer teeth only to make way fer bigger ones, and more of 'em. Now, don't git me wrong, I like teeth. Gives me more options fer food, but you kids don't know how good you have it havin' 'em and not knowin' what it was like in the beforedays. And even though I'm down to nine like Gollum, I don't want to go back to eatin' food that ain't solid. So I got me some dentures, and those things is an amazin' invention, I tell you what.

You kids just don't know how good and easy you have it. Now bring me my glasses, I want to watch my stories.

[JoshL]

That means you were fully aware of 80s music, fashion, and entertainment. I'm glad I was too young for that before the 90s arrived. Before that, there is only a vague memmory of fashion hell. :smallbiggrin:

Naah, I've never been fully aware of fashion, even now :smallwink: Some pretty awesome music though! And some pretty terrible stuff...just like any other time period, only I definitely acquired a taste for electronics!

[Chromascope3D]

Back in my day, these new-fangled time machines were still just theories. You kids take too much for granted, we couldn't even control the weather! I had to have my car drive me to and from school in the snow, uphill both ways!

[Socratov]

gorram youngsters with your fancy PeeeCeees, Back in my day we had a powermac 8.5 without internet and playable games. No fancy smancy graphic cards.

[dehro]

all of this rather reminds me of my first actual lesson of IT in high school.. some 20 years ago.
For the first 6 months of the year, the teacher (a somewhat elder lady) spent time telling us how she'd learned to work on computers back when they were as large as buildings and her task was that of moving punched cards about. We're talking about when there were about 2-3 such machines in Italy.
When she'd finally run out of excuses not to take us to the computer lab, she had to ask her younger colleague how to turn them on (there was a master power switch she wasn't aware of).
After a few minutes it became painfully clear that she hadn't the faintest idea what she was doing, and me and a classmate who both had computers in our dad's offices took over the lesson, teaching our classmates about DOS.
If only I'd understood back then that computers would become much more than glorified typewriters and tools to play Pong with...

[Kitten Champion]

I don't think I've had a day.

I'm not sure how I feel about that.

[Radar]

all of this rather reminds me of my first actual lesson of IT in high school.. some 20 years ago.
For the first 6 months of the year, the teacher (a somewhat elder lady) spent time telling us how she'd learned to work on computers back when they were as large as buildings and her task was that of moving punched cards about. We're talking about when there were about 2-3 such machines in Italy.
When she'd finally run out of excuses not to take us to the computer lab, she had to ask her younger colleague how to turn them on (there was a master power switch she wasn't aware of).
After a few minutes it became painfully clear that she hadn't the faintest idea what she was doing, and me and a classmate who both had computers in our dad's offices took over the lesson, teaching our classmates about DOS.
If only I'd understood back then that computers would become much more than glorified typewriters and tools to play Pong with...
Heh, reminds me of my high school IT teacher. He wasn't that incompenent, but we did spend 6 months in front of turned off computers, while he was drawing on the blackboard how a Windows starting screen and desktop (with icons and other details we could readily see, if he let us turn the computers on) looks like and other inane stuff like that.

[pendell]

The first console I owned (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_5200). This was in 1982. People complained that the joystick was too complicated. But nobody complained about the playstation controls. Changing expectations for changing generations, I suppose ...

My First RPG (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adventure_(Atari_2600)). I didn't own this one. I saw it in the toy counter on an Atari 2600 and piddled with it while my parents were shopping.

The toughest game I remember (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wizardry_IV:_The_Return_of_Werdna).

Games today are much more graphically beautiful, and some of them have incredible production values. But in some ways that's a two-edged sword: People are a lot less willing to take a chance and be innovative when the investors are dropping a hundred million dollars on the game and DEMAND commensurate profits. One reason why all the innovation seems to be in the flash games and on phones these days.

Also, games back in the day were brutal. Zoarre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caverns_of_Zoarre) was even tougher than nethack. Any use of teleport had a significant probability of sending you into solid rock, resulting in instant death. Trolls and spiders also instakilled with poison and paralyzation. It was the age of the Sierra games -- we made up for primitive computer technology by making traps and monsters very, very lethal.

This essay (https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!msg/rec.games.roguelike.nethack/v-m55ENZx_0/GpGiOch4wZMJ) gives some idea as to the difference in attitude.


Commercial games want you to win.

NetHack doesn't care if you win or lose.

Slash'em wants you DEAD.


Commercial games cheat for you and against the monsters:
The unarmed orc falls to the ground, dying. "Whirling
Blades of Doom... backpack", he gasps. "Barbecue
sauce... left pocket."

NetHack plays fair between you and the monsters:
The orc wins the race to the Whirling Blades of Doom.
He seizes it, grins, and whirls it at you. You fall
to the ground, dying. Your last sight is of the
orc reaching for his left pocket.

Slash'em cheats against you and for the monsters:
Staggering and more than half dead, you advance to
the slain monster. If you can use the Whirling
Blades of Doom against the rest of the pack, you
just might live through this.

...There is no weapon at the corpse. The Whirling
Blades of Doom are an intrinsic attack, not a
separate weapon.

The next platypus in line opens its bill. This one
is a fire breather. Thoroughly barbecued, you fall
to the ground, dying. When you hit the ground,
something breaks in your left pocket.


Commercial game developers are sometimes interviewed
by gaming magazines and shown in publicity shots.

The NetHack Dev Team is faceless and mysterious.

The Slash'em Dev Team kills and eats interviewers and
photographers. All those tentacles are hard to fit into a
photograph, anyway.


Commercial game developers advertise their games widely.

The NetHack Dev Team only speak to announce a new release.

J. Ali Harlow is the Voice of Saur... I mean, of the
Slash'em Dev Team.


Commercial game developers never release their source
code.

NetHack releases all source code. Players "source
dive": read the code.

Slash'em releases its source code. Odd: I don't
recall ever reading a posting from a Slash'em source diver.
Something must happen if you read the Slash'em code. Some-
thing that precludes ever posting again....


To get support for a commercial games, you can go to
the company which made the game. The advice will be good.

To get support for NetHack, you can go to the newsgroup
and ask other people who play the game. The advice is not
always good.

To get advice for my Slash'em Valkyrie, I could go to
Eva R. Myers. Unfortunately, she's on the same land mass as
J. Ali Harlow. Conclusion: she was killed and eaten years
ago, and it's Ali at the keyboard, pretending to be her. Or
she is one of THEM, right down to the tips of her tentacles.
(If she advises me to buy barbecue sauce, I'm moving to
Australia! Err, OK, maybe not Austalia. I know: Transyl-
vania! That should be relatively safe.)


Does garlic work? How about silver bullets? No?
Well, how DO we defend ourselves? And why did someone mail
me this bottle of Wostershire sauce?]


I should give a rant about the good ol'days, but the fact remains that the good ol'days were a lot like now: Reams and reams of chuff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_(video_game)) spiced up by the occasional all-time classic that will live forever. I'm pleased and delighted modern gamers can still come out with a skyrim or a Mass Effect 3. Video games are not declining. On the contrary, the best is yet to be.


Respectfully,

Brian P.

[grimbold]

Back in my day, these new-fangled time machines were still just theories. You kids take too much for granted, we couldn't even control the weather! I had to have my car drive me to and from school in the snow, uphill both ways!

back in my day we didn't even have THEORIES

[Hiro Protagonest]

I should give a rant about the good ol'days, but the fact remains that the good ol'days were a lot like now: Reams and reams of chuff (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E.T._the_Extra-Terrestrial_(video_game)) spiced up by the occasional all-time classic that will live forever. I'm pleased and delighted modern gamers can still come out with a skyrim or a Mass Effect 3. Video games are not declining. On the contrary, the best is yet to be.

Replace "Skyrim" with "S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat" (I just picked that one because it's the most recent, and because I refuse to use Far Cry 3 as an example of a totally awesome game, mostly due to personal preference of having more realism, and some minor verisimilitude problems) and "Mass Effect 3" with "Planetside 2", and I mostly agree.

And if you want to get more indie, we have Terraria and the up-and-coming Xenonauts (god, I can't wait for my X-COM machine guns to actually have more ammo than the rifles. The autocannon is fine for other reasons, but it's the worst LMG ever).