I don't remember my SNES coming with Spyware preloaded. I don't remember Monkey Island collecting my personal information for Microsoft. I don't remember Monkey Island II handing Bill Gates a remote control for my 386. I don't even remember my 386.
What do you think? Was life better when it was in 256 colours?
I don't know, but I started with 2 colours, as my first PC was a 8088 PC with CGA graphics on a Green monitor...
(I am talking about PC, not that I didn't play with other better things like Apple II and Famicom though...)
Yes, but Apple II and Famicon don't allow the American Government to spy on you to this day. The PC, on the other hand, is the biggest spy since James Bond. I'm thinking PC Bond.
I remember the good ol' Atari ST days.
I doubt Sam Tramiel could have got my personal info, especially when I was using a 14.4 modem to log on to bulletin boards -- no internet back then!
Even if PCs are spies, I personally don't see much harm. I can't imagine it being very personal, since Microsoft only cares about statistics and demographics.
I don't care about my personal information. I'd be happy if my computer stopped installing ad delivery software and creepy porn browser plugins without asking me first. I can't believe it's even legal to do that..
I don't think that is legal.
It's just that the internet seems to be in a gray zone when it comes to the law.
If the authorities do nothing, cybercrime is rampant. On the other hand, if they crack down on it, they risk infringing on the privacy of law-abiding citizens.
I'd rather their new Pandemonium or whateverthehellitscalled system didn't automatically delete files that it finds offensive. One step closer to a 'Democratic Communist' era.
Ha ha! I live in Europe! We'll stay free for at LEAST 2 months after you americans have been enslaved by your own government.
I'd love to go back to 1990, do you know that? Not only was I not being spied on, and not only was I nearly as good as proffesional animators on Dpaint, but my family was a happy one.
Maybe I associate 256 colours with a non broken family.
Does anybody else have this weird thing where they always imagine their parents as kids... in BLACK AND WHITE!?
you would have been 4 years old in 1990 though wouldn't you?
Spies? I never had internet connection when in the 256 colour era...
Actually, I remembered this guy in a black trenchcoat who always wrote in a notepad -- He stood over me and watched my every move on my Atari ST.
Me: What are you doing?
Trenchcoat man: I'm a spy watching your every move.
Me: Why?
Trenchcoat man: Because the internet hasn't been invented yet and Bill Gates need to know everything about your PC.
Me: But this isn't a PC -- It's an Atari.
Trenchcoat man: Really? Oh. That's different.
Me: ...
Trenchcoat man: ...
Me: Get out of my house.
Ahh... When my dad brought a laptop from USA... It was such an exitement! It was in black and white and I spilled water on it the first day and the Alt key and left arrow didn't work since and it didn't have a second Alt key or Num Lock because it was so small... It was 1994, I was 7 and about to start school. I played doom on it. I was a one bloodthirsty kid.Now we moved to Australia and we still have the laptop though it's old and we don't use it. That was a lovely time...
Doom in black and white???
MY GOD!!!
Not black and white, not 2 colours but pinkish-greyish-white and black.Later we got a colour monitor for it and replaced the keyboard, so it was easier.
heh I was playing LSL2 with that green monitor at that time, it's hell, as there was a screen where you have to watch out for the traffic light to cross the street, which made no difference what colour the light was in... though it's nothing compared with the evil parser bug that prevented me from beating that game for years...
Quote from: Yufster on Mon 07/07/2003 04:28:52I'd love to go back to 1990, do you know that? Not only was I not being spied on, and not only was I nearly as good as proffesional animators on Dpaint, but my family was a happy one.
Listen to the Yufster, all of you, for she speaks true! Computers that had their OS on two floppies, games that had some actual gameplay in them. Cheaper beer ... er, that's about all I could think of. Mostly it suxx0red as much as now, or as much as the future will. Memory has this wipe-away-all-the-nasty-details quality to it I guess (well, mine does). ;)
why? I remember my old time when I played KQ5 on floppies...
Oh, KQ5 on floppies...
On the Amiga as well.
I think the first 256 colour games I played were World Class Leader Board and Mean Streets (still love that game!). Both also had synthesized speech(!) through the internal speaker. Just imagine the possibilities!
I remember my dad's first computer cost 18000SEK (about $1800) and was a 286 with 3.5'' floppy and VGA screen (640x480!!!). Top of the line at the time. He even got this huge printer that shook our whole house when running... Playing all those old great Sierra titles. Police Quest is an all time favorite, of course.
The problem with going back in time, though, is that you'll always end up in the future anyway...
eee when i was a lad!
my first contact with a PC was a ZX81! Super 1k memory, and you could crank it up to 8k,with a add on! the ultimate in crash and burn, took about 3 hour program to make a "X" go from top to bottom, (5 hours debugging as well)
scarey thing is you can still get em! in DIY form :-\
*Paranoia feels very very very old now!*
The life of 256 (or 386's) was deffinatley more creative for me in terms that any games I made, I had to make the engine too - rather than just load AGS and make the game ;)
It did however, mean Windows 3.1, which suckckckckcked.
m0ds
hehehe I remember playing KQ5 on floppies
and seeing my parents play LSL (I was told I was too young to watch)
and playing Police quest
Quote from: Gilbot V7000a on Mon 07/07/2003 03:14:06
I started with 2 colours, as my first PC was a 8088 PC with CGA graphics on a Green monitor...
hehehe one of my teachers had one of those he let me fool around with it after school all the time.
tell me could you even play games on it really?
oooh the balance and the influences.....
clever foes
my 2 eurocents:
I loved the old computer era, although I was quite young, but somehow I think that all this fancy technology isn't really nessecary. A great part is due to the games business.
although the technology rises, it also becomes more buggy and crappy like shit. In my DOS period, my computer never hung. Nowadays, every program runs at the same time and jams eachother up.
/me looks at the icons next to the time.
The old atari's had a great sense of rhytme and just worked, my old cheesy keyboard hung to that and I made some great cheesy midi music with the first cubase. I feel sorry I threw away the atari.
Now I have the newest cubase and theres always something wrong with it. Then this doesn't work, then that doesn't work, error here error there
Aside from the errors, my new cubase has difficulties with playing real time and registers everything too late. The atari was always 100% realtime and never lagged or hung.
I don't get it
because the atari had like 5 mhz or something?
now with 2200 mhz it still isn't right. I just don't get it....
oh well... :)
Quote from: cpage on Mon 07/07/2003 10:59:33
hehehe I remember playing KQ5 on floppies
and seeing my parents play LSL (I was told I was too young to watch)
and playing Police quest
Quote from: Gilbot V7000a on Mon 07/07/2003 03:14:06
I started with 2 colours, as my first PC was a 8088 PC with CGA graphics on a Green monitor...
hehehe one of my teachers had one of those he let me fool around with it after school all the time.
tell me could you even play games on it really?
yesh,
We also had an 8086 pc without a harddrive,
it had 2 floppy drives (those very big floppies). One for the OS and the other for applications like word-like programs (damnit what was that name again) and games just like sokoban, digger, test drive 1, airborne ranger, calgames, sopwith, snake, pong etc etc
/me pinks away a tear
Well... I don´t understand the question very well... It is ambiguous, but I can say that I preffered games in 256, pixeled, without all that requirements. The games were simplier, smart, more addictive. Now, all they seem the same, quakes, aliens, predators, Matices... Shit, It is the same I feel when I see modern films... Have you seen "the Hulk"? I havn´t, but the images of the green beast are so unreal for me...
Yes... 256-colour time were better, IMO...
I really loved my 386 days
there were alot of fun games to play at that point in time
the 8088 was fun I think I played robotron for a while without it dying
it had a hard drive tho cause i remember you have to stop it so the arm doesnt scratch it. but I think I would ditch the 2 color for 256 any day.
I had so many fun times playing games on the 386 and 486 that its umbeleivable
and I also remember me and my older bro playing atari 2600 all the time
mostly joust and mario bros.
Quote from: Yufster on Mon 07/07/2003 04:28:52
I'd rather their new Pandemonium or whateverthehellitscalled system didn't automatically delete files that it finds offensive. One step closer to a 'Democratic Communist' era.
Yeah. If you look at the American government you will see it has things in common with Communist Russia.
There is a secret police force (CIA).
There is no free speech, (even though they say there is).
You can't speak out against the president without being accused of treason.
Quote from: Yufster on Mon 07/07/2003 04:28:52
Ha ha! I live in Europe! We'll stay free for at LEAST 2 months after you americans have been enslaved by your own government.
Heh me too.
Or you could go even further back than the 386 and reminiss about Lemons ;)
How many posters would you like to put up?
m0ds is right,
there's nothing wrong with having more colors,
the only difference is people get lazy.
aslong as you create with style there's nothing wrong with having more colors
Quote from: N3TGraph on Mon 07/07/2003 11:14:08
The atari was always 100% realtime and never lagged or hung.
It did crash though when a program didn't work.
However, I used the expression 'bombed out' because, instead of an actual error message, it would display a row of little bombs with fuses and the number of them corresponded to the error message.
Quoteand not only was I nearly as good as proffesional animators on Dpaint
Let's see that.
Quote from: PeaceMan on Mon 07/07/2003 11:44:00
You can't speak out against the president without being accused of treason.
That's not true.. If you're white. That's what bothers me most about post-9/11 America. We seem to be ignoring peoples' rights for the sake of "national security", which basically means keeping all the white people from getting upset.
Quote
However, I used the expression 'bombed out' because, instead of an actual error message, it would display a row of little bombs with fuses and the number of them corresponded to the error message.
Cool! I think Microsoft should do that. At least it would make crashes more fun.
Or rich.
Some of my favorite computer memories:
- Getting my dad to type a few hundred lines of basic code from a book so we could play a crappy game, and getting bored with it after two minutes. Here's the system (http://www.ricks-graphics.co.uk/area99/computer.htm)
- Swapping between the six 5.25 disks between each room in SQ3. We had a lot more patience back then. Here's a pic of that system (http://www.8bit-micro.com/images/tandy1000.jpg)
- Booting up SQ4 for the first time on our new clone 286 and seeing glorious 256 colour graphics for the first time. I don't think anything has ever blown me away like that since.
- Booting up SQ4 on my friends computer with a Sound Blaster installed. We got one of those puppies within a few weeks after that.
- My friend getting kicked off of a BBS for completely dominating their Pimp Wars game. Bastards.
- Finishing the final project for our 'programming' class in high school while the teacher was talking during the first day. Don't be impressed.
- Having an intricate system of turning on/off lines in the autoexec file depending on what game I was trying to play.
- The internet while it was still 'under construction'. (http://www.gifanimations.com/Image/Animations/Construction/construction_1.gif)
Mmm, games were a lot more creative. Lucasarts were producing loads of interesting and funny games such as MI and S&M, and the Dig also... and Grim Fandango... anyway... now they just produce a CRAP load full of Starwars ... for lack of a better word... BOLLOCKS.
On the other hand, I guess they ARE releasing S&M2 and FT2... on the other hand, AGAIN, no new material there :-[
And something I hate about recent games.... back in 256 colour days, they *sometimes* painted every single background with loving care... *maybe*. Now they just made a few 3D objects, throw on some eyes and legs, and call it a "Character". Or make a box with a few other, SMALLER, DIFFERENT boxes inside it, and call it a room.
Curse you lucasarts, Curse you and your crappy employees. See, you should have given Tim Schafer a raise when you had the chance.
Eh, I'm too young to remember CGA. Or even EGA. Though I had an EGA computer with DOS 2.0 on it, and 2 5.25" floppy drives. *salutes*
I remember playing my first adventure game: Simon the Sorcerer. Yes, I was spoiled in the retro game sense there, with glorious VGA graphics and 320x200 res. I was convinced all games were installed on all computers, so when I got home from my grandparents house (where I had first played it) I typed all these messages at my dos prompt:
CD SIMON
SIMON
SIMON THE SORCERER
CD/SIMON
A:SIMON
B:SIMON
CD.. SIMON
Bah. Little did I know that StS did not exist on 5.25" floppies, and even if it did, I hadn't put any disks in. The only games I had were Frogger, Digger, Tetris, Space Invaders, Asteroids, and many, many more EGA games. I even played Frogger soley with the A button. Later on, we got a 66Mhz Win3.1 computer with 256 colours. I played Chips Challenge on that one, as well as my second Aventure game, StS2. There were three more I watched someone play, and I instantly fell in love with them. DOTT, S&M, and Full Throttle. On my Win3.11 computer (133Mhz) I tried my hand at Delphi, Paintbrush, and other games. I remember looking at games in a shop and rejecting them because they were for Win 95. Ah, the perils of computers... and I only learnt most of the things I know about computers in the last two years.
well, I remember the old days, hell, my familly's first computer was a rockewell 1086 with a SINGLE line led display that worked only on assembly lang. then we went throught the normal gamut of 1088, 286, 386, 486 (dx whaterver) p75, p3 233, blah blah blah...
and to tell you the truth, things are better today. See, games Like BaSS and DarkSeed (you HAVE played DarkSeed RIGHT??) load up fine, then when I get bored of that, I load up one of my emulators and play some console games and after that I play Hitman and SoF in all of it's 3d glory.
Sorry guys, I like where gaming is going, it leaves more of a niche market for us, and keeps me from having to only talk to Ut3k[clan]memberz.
C.
I'm saying life in GENERAL was better in 256 colours, not just games. I remember it as sitting on a HUGELY oversize Bean Bag (Or maybe I was really small?) next to a real fireplace that lit the room up, trying to solve MI2 with my dad and brother (My dad later decided to become retarded so we left). Our tiny, crappy Sound Blaster speakers.... ah yes. We lived in a gorgeous cottage because half my brothers and sisters weren't born yet. There was this hill in the back garden... me and my brother constructed the COOLEST EVER GO-KART. We searched through a rubbish dump and found an old pram, so we uses the wheels on that, an old orange crate and some rope tied to either front wheel as steering. We used to tear down that hill, around the corner and into this kind of FOREST of "Chinese Knot Weed". In case you don't know what that is, it's gardeners hell. It spreads like cowcrap, and grows about 5 foot high. It's hollow and filled with liquid that can cause rashes, and it's very easy to break and grows in thick forests. It was twice as high as me at the time so it was great fun. We had a treehouse, and an orchard, and this weird kind of CELLAR in the garden that had a locked door that we never got a chance to explore because my parents sold some of the land to the building council so they could BUILD THE F*CKING MAIN ROAD THROUGH PART OF OUR GARDEN. Life was good the way I remember it.
Wow, does anybody else remember... Dr Sbatso (sp?)? He was like a doctor for the computer, you could make him faint by swearing?! Where can I get him!? I wanna talk to him again! AND THE TALKING PARROT?!???
Or The Lost Files of Sherlock Holmes... I remember those graphics looking SO REALISTIC....
Quote from: Yufster on Mon 07/07/2003 21:23:23
Wow, does anybody else remember... Dr Sbatso (sp?)? He was like a doctor for the computer, you could make him faint by swearing?! Where can I get him!? I wanna talk to him again! AND THE TALKING PARROT?!???
Thats the fastest I've seen ANYONE go mad.
I swear to god he was real, he was a computer psycatr...psychiastrist....(sp?) and he listened to your problems and suggested remedies in a COMPUTER VOICE. And there was a talking parrot! You said stuff into a microphone and his MOUTH MOVED. Soundblaster! I wanna download him again! I wanna download the obselete psychiastrist!!!!
maybe you could try and make one? :D
He sounds funny. Was his voice strange? Like he had no emotions?
I remember Dr.Sbaitso and the talking parrot. You can get Dr.Sbaitso from Home of the Underdogs. I can't seem to get his voice to work, but it's still fun to talk to him.
YOU BEAUTIFUL THING!!! Where?
Yeah, I've still got a copy of Dr Sbaitso here on my hard drive, dates back to the 386 I had with an original sound blaster.
His voice only works if you have a proper sound blaster card (ie. probably older than 5 years old), but his mis-pronounciations were a great laugh.
Those were the days ;)
Quote from: Yufster on Mon 07/07/2003 23:14:06
YOU BEAUTIFUL THING!!! Where?
Right here: http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=330
I prefer Daisy, though, mainly because Daisy says she loves me and Dr.Sbaito tries to keep our relationship professional, so denys any feelings for me by saying he's in love with a math coprossessor.
Doctor Sbaitso molested me! Doctor Sbaitso molested me!
EXACT conversation as follows!!! ( I still have the window open :D and the voice works fine for me :D...)
Doctor Sbaitso is in CAPS
>your voice is retarded
MY VOICE IS RETARDED IS NOT OF YOUR CONCERN
>So, tell me about you, doctor
WE WERE DISCUSSING ABOUT YOU, NOT ME
>Okay, what do you wanna know?
WHY DO YOU ASK THIS QUESTION?
>Because you... wanted to talk about me?
DOES THAT REASON EXPLAIN ANYTHING ELSE TO YOU?
>...Are you messing with my head????
PERHAPS IN YOUR FANTASIES I AM MESSING WITH YOUR HEAD
LATER IN THE SAME CONVERSATION:
>okay
>TOO LITTLE DATA, SO I MAKE BIG
*He fainted*
>Okay. Bill Gates.
REALLY? DOES THAT BOTHER YOU?
>No, I like Bill Gates.
JUST NOW YOU WERE TALKING ABOUT COMPUTERS. I WANT TO KNOW MORE ABOUT IT.
>I like drawing
WHAT COULD YOU DO TO HELP RECTIFY THIS?
>No, I mean I LIKE drawing
I WOULD LIKE TO SWITCH BACK TO THE TOPIC ABOUT LOVING ME
>No. What? Uhh... I love you
ME TOO
SMART ASS PROGRAM
Priceless - "I am Sbaitso. Don't question my intelligence, it's fake"
>You're cute!
I THINK YOU ARE ALSO CUTE!
I'm falling in love with a machine!
Dr. Sbaitso rocks. I still have him somewhere. Always lots of fun making him say things. Yeah, those were the days. Because we were little then. I suppose back then there were people saying that the early 80s were the days.
He won't stop talking about Love. I mean it. He keeps saying, "Let's talk about you loving me" and stuff. He's scaring me!
are you sure you didn't download "Peado Sbaitso"?
I want to make my own one of them. Itd be fun.
Remember the old 'Game&Watch' games, they were a small LCD display with a couple of buttons.
I had a game called 'Turtle bridge' You had to jump on turtles backs across river and get a package and bring it back, the only problem was the turtles often went for a dive, and if you jumped then, you would drown. That was basically the game. (wonder if it was the inspiration for Frogga, or a very basic spin off???) I think The original 'Donkey Kong' was on Game&Watch, it was so cool, it had 2 screens.
They were made by nintendo before any of the nintendo game machines were invented.
OK....Dr Sbaitso keeps asking whether I love him...... :-\
life was better in 256...
my first computer was a 386dx. it had windows 3.1, dosshell, and was 75mgz. I played my first adventure game on it, (robin hood: conquests of the longbow) my dad hadnt gone nuts yet...i was like, 7 years old, and we were the first kids on our block to have a computer with sound blaster. it was sooo cool, it made little beeping noises.
Mr Panda, your story is the same as mine, right down to the first computer you ever had with soundblaster (not counted Speccy coz it was retarded) and your dad going nuts.
whats your dad got? mines manic depressive/bipolar. he doesnt work anymore...he's on disabilty. it sucks, cause some days he's allright, and cool, and can do dad stuff, other days he just kinda yells and cries.
I realized I was getting "old" when I saw a SimCity2000 on an Abandonware site the other day...
Man, I remember like if it was yesterday the first time I played that game.
Gosh, this takes me back. I spent an unhealthy amount of my childhood playing Infocom games in the basement. It was freezing down there in the winter, and the only heat would come from a portable heater that was next to my feet. It would clunk when it got too hot, and then would shut off briefly to cool down.
It's weird. Back in the day, there was no such thing as a walkthrough. I played Infocom's "Spellbreaker" for months, not making any progress, plugging away for hours at a time... AND ENJOYING MYSELF... before I finally broke down and ordered the hintbook (which were quaintly called "Invisiclues" because the hints were invisible until you used a special pen). Nowadays, I get frustrated and reach for a walkthrough after maybe a few hours of being stuck. Usually even less than that.
Has the internet sapped my attention span? Or maybe I'm just older and just don't want to waste the time anymore.
I have the same problem. With MI1, I was stuck on the god foresaken ship for at LEAST two weeks. Why? I didn't look in the chest. I didn't even SEE it. So anyway, I loved being stuck. It made getting unstuck even fun-er. I played it again five years later, got stuck in exactly the same place, and got a walkthrough within five minutes of not knowing what to do.
My dad is just insane. Turned violent. Attention disorder, keeps claiming he's deadly ill and going to die. All sorts of shit
Welcome to the oldies club, Dave. Think about 1998. Not that long ago, right? Just. Uhm... FIVE YEARS!?!? Ahg!
Oh, when playing adventures when I was a kid I barely knew half of the words... I think I've learned most of my english from adventure games... Fuck school.
Doesn't sound good with your dad, Yufs. Just try giving him any support you can.
Oh I'm just relating to Mr Panda. My dad doesn't need support. If he was on life support, I'd unplug it. What's it called? Forced Ethusasia or something? Seriously, I'm one of those unlucky people with only one parent. The father just donated his sperm.
Quote from: Vargtass on Wed 09/07/2003 00:16:26
Welcome to the oldies club, Dave.
Wiigii! I'm 27 and I'm an oldie.
Ha ha ha! Oldie! Oldie! I'm young! My joints still work!
Hey... seriously... how old is Tim Schafer and that lot?
EDIT: That Lot not... did not make sense.
I'm not old at all, but I really felt it when I was in the attic and found my spectrum and one of my games (that wasn't covered in cobwebs): Playdays. I can't believe I used to play that. Old stuff was fun though. I don't enjoy arcade games unless they are in low res, and few colours. I find it more fun than playing games that have every single detail you can think of. I guess thats why I loved the atari. Ahhhh.......good times.