LOL - when I was an undergrad oh so many years ago, I had a friend in the Comp Sci dept. We would go play Lunar Landing on a PDP standing tower machine in the room adjacent to the main-frame. On a screen built in. Could only do it after normal hours - but my friend was a Research Assist and had a key. About 35 years ago. Yikes (well, I was a very young undergrad). Then we got "asteroids" and a version of pong.
Eventually we could do Pong on terminals, and then there was a Dungeon fantasy - verbal only - that we could play.
There was a story the other way round, so to speak, and longer ago that
35 years. A big firm was bringing in a brand new computer and software system. The staff were worried how they would learn how to use the new system. What the firm did was to get just about every game there was, and let anyone play with the computer, at lunch hour, and other times. When the system finally came on line, everyone knew the software inside out. Jim.
Oooo! I remember Adventure! It was great! We played it on the University mainframe in 1975. It took *ages* to work out what to do with that blessed stick, but my goodness it was addictive. You weren't allowed to play in business hours, so we used to take rugs and pillows and thermoses of hot coffee up to the computer centre and play all night. Sigh. Those were the days.
Those old Infocom games were great too. DS just *loves* them and would play them still if we had a going Mac.
D'you remember the Wizardry series? As you say, you had to draw your mazes on graph paper and that was half the fun. Woe betide you if you got something wrong, because you'd be lost in the maze for ages and your hit points would be going steadily downward, what with vorpal bunnies and gelatinous cubes. Oh! Heady days! They were such fun to play and so exciting to see as they became available.
It's been a long time since there's been anything quite so exciting. The Bard's Tale kept us (DS and me) occupied for quite a while and The Fool's Errand was new and exciting, but we never saw a sequel to it, sadly. DS solved that one in just ten days when he was only nine: better even than his old Mum!
The Sierra series of games was fun too. We preferred the King's Quest story, but will you ever forget Leisure Suit Larry? LOL! AFAIK, it's still going strong, but I just can't imagine Larry in anything other than his original blocky, pixelly graphics.
Aside from The Sims, I think Spore's been the only really innovative thing that's come out since Adam wore knickers. I tend to play puzzle or strategy games most these days, since the adventure genre seems pretty much mined out. It's been *so* much fun watching it all evolve, though! ;-D
My husband's site is totally devoted to Sierra soundtracks for which we have permission to not only post but enhance.
As well, we've been involved in the remakes of several of these games from EGA to VGA along with enhanced story lines and new music which we compose.
We also composed the music for a new commercial adventure game
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which didn't do as well as expected but has been translated into German and Russian and is doing well there. We've recently been approached to write scores for ipod games, as well as another commercial adventure game featuring wizardry, which we look forward to doing. My last favorite game was Wolfenstein. Haven't played any since, except the ones we work on.
Omigoodness, Dianne! DD was three when she began playing King's Quest and Rosella's song from KQ#7 is her theme song! We still sing it with DD's original translocution of the words:
'Gwow up young lady Thath what they all thay Ith time to thettle down Put childish fings on ways You will be fwilled alighted You're going to be a bwide Yeth I'm tho exthited I want to wun outside!'
Is that one of yours??? (Not the words, of course, but the music? It's a great song!) ;-D
No, Trish. We didn't write the original soundtracks, but we're re-writing them as a team of us redo the EGA to VGA versions. Sierra has been sold to a lot of companies who have allowed this genre to languish, but because of our quality (the game programmers and hubby and I) the past and current owners allowed us to reissue the games. Rosella was VGA so isn't part of our projects.
You might enjoy replaying some of the updated King's Quest. You'll find them at
Ahhhh... for a minute there, I thought were going to be having one of those 'small world' moments! LOL! I'll certainly have a squizz at the King's Quest site and thanks for the pointer. ;-D
Actually, Tandy was first with GUI in a program called "DeskMate". And several programs during that time had WYSIWYG (Professional Publish? Gosh I'm having trouble remembering names). Berkley software (can't remember name of program) then had a much-touted GUI and Windows then broke onto the market . . . again making deals so that computers came loaded with it, thus pushing out the competition.
Windows 3.1 is when it really started to catch on. Before that, you had sales people (and Apple) telling everyone how hard DOS was. It wasn't.
My husband is the techy/guru for Windows and hardware. I am happy with Microsoft support when I've had to use them - especially during my last computer meltdown. My only gripe is that I would have like to have seen what might have happened had there been a more level playing field.
The advances made in such a short period of time is nothing short of awe inspiring. I'd be lost without our computers.
I know that it is what is called an emulator, but I still use DOS for a couple of specific things I do. DOS was not difficult but I believe it did put many people off trying to get started.
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