Childhood Recall

I may not be that old yet, but I have memories of great PC classics that me and my mates used to play in the computer laboratory to kill time. My old, old computer at home used to have classics of it's own... Wolfenstein 3D, Test Drive, Lotus Racing Evolution, Commander Keen... We even had Chip's Challenge and Doom one and two then. Prince of Persia, Overkill...

These classic games gave my prepubescent fingers a joyride through outstanding gameplay and monitor burning 8-bit graphics. My ears are now thankfully partially deaf due to the tinny bleep-pings of games of yore.

I think that's why I keep away from the very latest games... (that, and I can't run them on my now ancient P3).

So I scoured the Internet and the old BBS for shareware games that I played long ago. Then a particular site-type caught my eye. They were sharing free games of pre-DirectX/Direct3D fame. Not only free but complete(sort of).

So comes my recent activity. I'm collecting these "abandoned" games and playing them to my heart's content. Blood, Postal, Carmageddon, Zork, Leisure Suit Larry (oh yeah!), Halloween Harry, Ultima...

I remember Ultima. Especially Ultima Pagan. That was some amazing game. I guess the split virtues of my being sprouted out from that game. It was a screenshot of morality packaged into a 3dimensional Demon-hacking-festival.

And Carmageddon. After playing Ultima, play Carmageddon and watch as all the moral lessons you accumulated start flowing out of your body as fast as the gibs that flow out of your new human hood-ornaments.

The gratuitous violence and copious amounts of the red-stuff has become my personal stress reliever. Watch as the pitiful road waffles pray for you to spare their pixellated lives.

Now, I can indulge my inner child with these timeless classics. I'm kind of ashamed though, that I have to leech them from the school's Internet connection.

The other thing is, none of my classmates seem to like the simple pleasures of killing a generic 2D sprite using the front of your blocky fender. Or the joys of playing text-only adventures. They'd rather play Counterstrike or Ragnarok, or some other MMORPG/MMOG. Waste of money, I say. Play Zork, and see how much fun it is to put your brain to work.