who will teach them the classics?

[orangerful]

whitemartyr posted about Oregon Trail today and it got me thinking about all those classic shareware and not-so-shareware games that I had back in the day of my Apple IIe. The pre-nintendo generation. haha.

Yeah, my family has techno-joy! I grew up with an Apple IIe and an Atari 2600 and they weren't just my toys, my parents had them before me!

My dad would come home with disks full of cracked games (and they say this whole file swapping thing is new! It was just more manual back in the 80s as you had to physically give someone the file on an actually floppy floppy disc!). These games weren't very amazing, lots of text adventures and very basic games. Let me see if I can remember some of my favorites:



Choplifter - flying my little helicopter around and saving the poor hostages...or if they pissed me off, landing on their heads and watching then go squish...all the while avoiding tank fire!

Family Feud - Jeopardy for hillbillys haha. I loved this game as a kid since you could randomly guess anything and usually get a right answer. I remember being scandalized though, as one of the topics was "favorite pastimes" and I was playing against my aunt. I could not guess the #1 spot, so she typed in "SEX" and it was the right answer!

Labyrnth - based on the movie, damn that game was hard! I would always get stuck in an ubliete (or however you spell that...and put that down on my random words I know list).

Black Cauldron - based on the disney movie that didn't get a video release until I was in high school! The game was 3 discs long! I never beat that game, I got stuck climbing up the mountain to the bad guys castle. Poor pig boy fell to his death. Or the dragon creatures got him. So sad.

Mad-Lib-esque rip off- this was one of the many shareware games, I just remember plugging in C3P0 and R2 for the names portion and it spit an little adventure of theirs on the beach. Look, when you're 7, that's freakin' HILARIOUS!

And then there was the Atari:

River Raid - my all time favorite game. I don't really know why it was, but it was.

Q-Bert - oh man, so many hours with this little guy, jumping around the screen on that pyramid of death.

ET - I never understood this game as a child and I always assumed it was cuz I was too young...now I'm watching all these G4 specials and finding out it's just crap!

Raiders of the Lost Arc - see above.

Combat - the little pixel tanks would blow each other to the other side of the screen and spin out of control! Good times!

Freeway - run chicken RUN!

Atlantis - if I had been epileptic, this game would have killed me. BEEP BEEP FLASH BEEP BEEP FLASH! Did I win? I was only playing for 3 seconds!

Asteroids - I don't think you were allowed to own an Atari and not have Asteroids. Simple yet perfect game.

Space Invaders - see above.

KABOOM! - my friend had this one, with the special twisting paddles. Talk about a game made for kids hopped up on caffiene.

Oh man, my friend across the street had the Commodore 64 too ("we have to stop playing now, it will over heat if we don't turn it off"). She had such classics as:

The Barbie Game - Barbie gets a phone call from Ken telling her this evenings plans, Barbie must run out to the store and buy a new outfit in time for this shindig...but when she gets home Mr Commitment Issues calls and says the plan has changed so poor Barbie must hop in her gas guzzling corvette and head out yet again to find the perfect ensemble. (there was no "screw you KEN! I'm staying home and eating ice cream" option)

California Games - oh this took skill! The roller skating championships...the dirt bike rides...surfing (that was freakin' hard!) I adored this game.

Medical Game who's name I can't remember - This one never went well. I think it was also shareware, so it had no instruction manual and we didn't really care about saving the patient, we just took the scalpel and dragged it over the body and watch the black blood on the green tinted screen. EEEWWW! (again, at age 8, this is freakin comedy GOLD!)

Then I got Nintendo...but that's another story....



So how about you guys? Any video game meories you want to share? What's the earliest gamer memory you have? Games that you wish you had an ancient computer around so you could still play them? Games that frustrated the heck out of you? Games that you always played with friends because of the awesome 2 player mode? Or were you deprived as a child and your parents made you play outside or read books or something? Share your stories of adventure and woe with me!

Comments

[whitemartyr.livejournal.com]

I remember Prince of Persia and Kings Quest, and a game where you got to be a theif and pick locks and navigate through crazy alleys and mazes (not sure what that was though)...and some game where it was dangerous to go out at night because there were evil things in the woods and you had to visit the alchemy shop alot??

[whitemartyr.livejournal.com]

I totally spelled THIEF wrong didn't I? LOL...

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

my dad bought me Kings Quest: Tales of Rosella or something like that, because Rosella was a blonde chick and I am blonde! haha. I remember it being really hard, especially for a young player like myself.

I don't know how i missed the original 'Prince of Persia'. Must have come out after my parents stopped being on top of video games but before I was haha.

that other game sounds familiar...maybe someone else will recognize it!

[whitemartyr.livejournal.com]

Oh! And Where in The World/Time is Carmen Sandiego? Those were fun, and frustrating at times. And there was some math learning game that I had to play because I sucked at math, that was actually a neato game. And one other learning one that had crazy egyptian stuff in it...

[vertigozooropa.livejournal.com]

YAY! GEEK MODE!

It was King's Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella.

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

I remember you had to tame a horse in that game...and it was really hard. I was a little girl, all I wanted was the damn pony, screw saving the kingdom!

no wait, it was a UNICORN! You had to sneak up on it or something...it was odd.

[jellibean.livejournal.com]

We always had these old-school computer games. My dad had a disk with Frogger, Pac-Man, Q-Bert, Space Invaders, etc. but I only played PacMan and Frogger. I didn't like the other ones--too hard for me! At school we played the Oregon Trail and some horrible game where you were a truck driver that had to deliver your shipments on time. We always fought over Oregon Trail though.

The earliest game I remember is "Big Bird's Special Delivery," which is where Big Bird had an object that you had to deliver to the right person (like a spoon for a chef or something.) I also had Reader and Math Rabbits (HATED Math Rabbit.. stupid subtraction killed me.)

When I got older, my dad got Rebel Assault, and we played that together. I could never do the practice level (Beggar's Canyon), so he'd do that for me, and I'd do the level where you just float around and shoot asteroids. We played "Where in the USA is Carmen San Diego," too..

We played Sega Genesis games together, too, especially Toy Story and Aladdin. I was young, so I couldn't get "violent games," but I had Sonic, Sonic 2, Aladdin, Toy Story, Jurassic Park, X-Men and Spiderman (which was really hard..), Power Rangers, and Bubsy II. Bubsy was fun, cause he was a bobcat who shot Nerf guns at the bad guys. You went around a museum (I think..) shooting people and collecting cards, and at the end of the level you could buy more Nerf balls and guns and stuff.

In 5th or 6th grade I got the "Logical Journey of the Zoombinis Deluxe," where you made little creatures and had to take them through challenges to Zoombini land or something. I also had a game called "Math in the Real World," where you were a band that had to tour and make a music video and do math. lol.

[whitemartyr.livejournal.com]

Oh! Sonic! My friend had Sonic...Sonic was cool until they made him a TV show, then he was lame. But the game was fun, even if I sucked at it. ;)

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

I remembering watching 'sonic' very faithfully on saturday mornings. I even still have the little cartoons I used to draw, I bet I could still do a decent Sonic now if I tried.

I still blame my chili dog addiction on the Sonic cartoon because that was all he would eat. I didn't like hot dogs until he told me to put chili on them

Yes, TV warped my young mind. and?

[whitemartyr.livejournal.com]

Hee hee...chili dogs and Sonic. Oh yeah! I shouldn't say Sonic was lame actually since I used to watch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles...lol

[jellibean.livejournal.com]

omg. Ninja Turtles rocked! I was one of two kids who wore my Ninja Turtle PJs on Pajama Day in Pre-K

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

I second that!!! I love the TMNT. Very fond memories of them. I had a lot of the action figures too. In fact, jimithingy bought me a Michelangelo figure last valentines day (all his gifts were related to my past crushes).

[jellibean.livejournal.com]

I MAY have had an action figure... if he was missing a leg. My cousins used to give me their action figures if they had torn the legs off or something. I had a bunch of G.I. Joe's with one leg.

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

haha, I dropped Donatello in the snow and my dad "found" him with the lawnmower after the snow melted. He ended up being "battle damange" Don, since one of his legs was chopped off in the process.

[jellibean.livejournal.com]

I liked Sonic 2 because Tails was cute and could fly. :) I wasn't too bad at Sonic, but parts of it were really hard.

[whitemartyr.livejournal.com]

Yeah! Tails was SO cute!

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

oh man, READER RABBIT! That was THE game when I was little. I don't think my parents bothered getting the math one but I remember the reader one. Wasn't there some sort of train involved in that?

Big Bird sounds really familiar too...I have an image in my mind of a big bird graphic and a spoon and BB looking perplexed...hm...

[jellibean.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think there was some kind of train on Reader Rabbit.. I don't remember though.

Yeah.. Big Bird had on a postman's hat and there were three doors and you had to pick the right stoop/person that went w/your object. Fun times..

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

I remember my dad copying 'carmen sandiego' from someone, but the game is worthless if you don't have the little factbook that goes with it. So I just watched the TV show instead...until it sold out! I swear, the rules on that think were wonky, I used to get so upset when the kids would lose.

I remember, at the time, Aladdin's graphics were so awesome haha. I wanted that game so much cuz it looked just like the cartoon haha.

ZOOMBINIS! I remember that. Ranks up there with Lemmings as one of those fun yet frustrating games.

[vertigozooropa.livejournal.com]

We had an Atari 5200, back in the days before Nintendo. We actually had two. The first one died, and we eventually bought another. I remember the day we bought it, because to this day, I could swear that Super Mario Bros. was available for it. They had it on demo. It's only just now occurred to me that maybe they had a Nintendo I couldn't see, because I remember the demo for the Atari 5200, and there being Super Mario Bros. on it.

We had Mario Bros. for our 5200, so SUPER wouldn't have been a stretch. But now I don't think so. It was probably an NES I didn't see.

I have tons of these stories.

We didn't have a PC. We had an Atari ST, which was just like a Macintosh 2.

We bootlegged a lot of games. Had to, really, because this was a computer used mainly in Europe, and games were rare here. Plus, I was ten, and couldn't buy my own.

I think I'll post about this later...

[orangerful.livejournal.com]

I think I'll post about this later...

bwhahahaha, yessss, post more!

I didn't get a Nintendo for a very long time. I think by the time my parents bought me one, the Super NES was out. They actually bought mine used so I got a ton of totally random games with it. Later we got the JVC version of the sega CD/cartridge system. Wasn't until the new consoles that I finally got with the times.

But my Nintendo remembrances will be a whole other HUGE post, so many days spend glued to the screen, or wrestling the controller out of my mom's hands so I could play Dr Mario before my bedtime....