My First Computer/Console Games

     I had computers almost as early as I can remember. I remember learning math on the computer more than I remember learning it at school. I have limited programming experience, but my first one was typing a book into the computer. It had maybe ten pages, with two sentences each. Press "Enter" to read the next page. Not a complex program, I grant you. And yes, plagiarism. Give me a break, I was eight.

     I was ten when we got a Nintendo. We only ever had a handful of games for it, but I played the heck out of Super Mario Brothers, when I could pry the controller away from my brother. Later, my sisters and became hooked on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles game. At the time, it was one of the toughest games I had played. But I remember beating it with Donatello - maybe it was Michaelangelo. Tetris came later for me. It took a few years before I really enjoyed Tetris, however. I think my brain just wasn't ready for that type of puzzle.

     I played a bunch of computer games. I can't remember many of them in great detail, except for "So You Want to be a Hero" and it's sequel, "Quest for Glory 2: Trial by Fire". My favorite computer games ever. And they were each originally split between several 3.5" disks. Yes children, I am that old. They were my older brother's disks, and he let me and my sister's play the game, though we had to share a character.

     They were my first role-playing game. You could choose a class, interact with people by typing 'ask about' or 'tell about'. You could click to interact with things, or type what you wanted to do, such as "Pick Nose". I was amused by the responses in both. If you play the game, just give it a try. (Save it first.) They were funny and adventurous, full of interesting characters. It was such an influence on me, in fact, that I recently ran a campaign based on the first, and am working out how to lead it into the second game.

     It also inspired me at that time to want to learn how to program games onto the computer. (I had let my mad skills decay since I was eight.) I picked up a few lessons from my brother, and even wrote a few basic games. But I had my eyes on a huge world I had mapped out using two sheets of graph paper. I was in high school before I finished a stripped down version of it. It was a castle with 16 rooms. You had to find out who stole the jewels and return them to the king. There were five or six NPCs, very limited interactions, and no inventory (Except, of course, for whether you had the jewels themselves). I never claimed to be a genius programmer. My brother is the programming genius in our family.

     When I was thirteen, my computer broke. I didn't get another one for two or three years. The internet was new and all dial-up at the time. The first thing I did? Install Quest For Glory II: Trial by Fire. I didn't have a copy of the first game.

My next post will return to Dragon Valley.