Remembrance of Games Past

Just a list of games I can remember playing in my misspent youth.

C16/C64 (~1987-93)

My first computer was a C16, followed by a C64. I probably got the C16 around 1987, and the C64 in 1989. Sold the C64 and all disks at a flea market a few years later, still regret that.

• Fingers Malone. Platformer, a bit like Donkey Kong. Played it in an emulator recently, and boy is that game hard. I remember reaching somewhere around level 8 or 10 as a kid, couldn’t even get past level 2 this time.
• Robot Rascals. Hard to define, had some elements of M.U.L.E. but also a bunch of physical playing cards that you could use to influence the game. Lots of fun in multiplayer.
• Desert Fox. Nasty war game about the African Campaign of WW2.
• Summer Games. The obligatory destroyer of joysticks.
• Paper Boy. Not 100% sure if I played that one on the C64, or a console. I usually tried to hit as many windows as possible instead of the mailboxes.

Consoles

I had a NES, a Gameboy, a SEGA Master System and a Super Nintendo (probably in that order).

NES

• Super Mario Bros. I remember that I got the NES on my birthday in the morning, and by the evening on the same day, I had a blister on my left thumb from playing Super Mario Bros.
• Duck Hunt. Nintendo Zapper FTW!
• Snake Rattle ‘n’ Roll. Fundamentally a Jump’n’Run, but with isometric 3D graphics, which made it pretty difficult.
• Super Mario Bros. 2. I had a deal with my parents that I could buy the game when I had an A in my Latin test, and the teacher actually wrote “Congrats to your new game” on the test afterwards.

Gameboy

• Tetris. Well, Tetris. ‘nuff said.
• Super Mario Bros. I remember that it was occasionally quite hard to play because of the Gameboy’s sloooow display that blurred quick movements.

SEGA Master System

Honestly can’t remember any games for that one. Maybe After Burner? I’m pretty sure I did not have anything with Sonic. Apparently, the rest didn’t leave a big impression.

Super NES

• Super Mario Land.
• Zelda.
• F-Zero.

Not as much memories for these anymore - perhaps I was sort of growing out of the console phase at that point.

PC (486) (1993-…?)

I got a 486 DX2 with blazing 66 MHz in (probably) 1993, and it was all PC gaming after that, progressing through various self-built Pentium, AMD Athlon, something I can’t remember, Core2, and Core i5 machines thereafter.

• DOOM I & II. Doom probably left the biggest impression of them all. I distinctly remember playing late at night and being so scared and pumped full of adrenaline that I was shaking all the time. At some point, I started playing deathmatches with my longtime friend @maximilianh over a 14.4 kBps modem link, and we got so insanely well trained on the first level that we could partly play by ear, i.e. hear the other guy jumping off a ledge and fire a rocket down the other hallway to actually hit him just as he was rounding the corner.
• Mortal Kombat. Also got years of practice playing this on one shared keyboard against @maximilianh.
• Dune 2. I distincly remember accidentially self-destructing a full-blown Devastator tank in the middle of my own ranks. Ouch.
• Command and Conquer. Early LAN Party favorite, along with DOOM, over 10Base2 coax cable ethernet. Ah, the fun we had with second-hand T-connectors and terminators.
• Sea Wolf. Quite realistic submarine sim which I played with my neighbor a lot. We actually built a serial link between our houses, first testing with a long 3-phase power cable (it worked! RS232 is really bullet-proof) and then stringing up a spool of phone cable up on a long clothesline. That crashed to the ground after freezing over with ice during a winter storm, and we replaced it with a buried cable in the spring. I assume that cable is still somewhere in the ground between my parents’ house and the neighbors’.
• North and South. Actually predates the 486 era by quite some time, really ancient CGA graphics, but still fun.
• Duke 3D. Looks a bit reactionary today, but obviously a great fit for teenage boys in the 90s. And so awesome in multiplayer, with weapons like the Shrinker where you miniaturize your opponents and then have to try and step on them :-P
• Quake. Also mostly played in deathmatch at LAN parties, was the first game I wrote a mod for (clones of the Holoduke and Tripmines from Duke 3D).
• Quake III Arena. Was intentionally built for multiplayer, of course, so also a LAN party staple. At one point, we scanned in some crappy passport pictures from all players and pasted them on the model textures for a bit of individualization (“hey, I shoved a rocket in Nico’s face :-D”)