Memories of good old gaming. How my love for Point & Click adventures games was born.
I don't have much time for games anymore but playing Streetfighter with Ezzy has renewed my interest for them a little bit.
It has triggered me to want to replay my all-time favorite games series. The Tex Murphy adventures. I already finished Under a Killing Moon and am now playing the Pandora Directive.
Bianca is already calling me addicted. Which I think is a bit over the top. She has no idea how much I used to play games when I was younger.
My favorite genre when I was younger and today are point and click adventure games.
I still have the original box of this Sherlock Holmes game from 1996-1997, I was 12)
The first adventure game I ever played was called Déjà Vu. I played it on the Macintosh when I was around 4-5 years old. I couldn't read English (or read at all, I'm not sure) at the time but it didn't matter. Clicking and just trying to figure out what to do I played that game endlessly.
I loved it. Although I don't remember ever finishing it.
Between Déjà Vu and my next game is about 7 years and an NES and a Sega Mega Drive. Which I both played every day after school and on the weekends.
I'm now 12 and we have our first PC at home.
I think it was a Compaq 133mhz. Made from that Beige white color that slowly turns yellow over time. I remember it had speakers on the side of the monitor, like big ears.
It was running Windows 95. But to get some games to work you had to boot from a floppy to get to DOS.
In DOS I had to set the Soundblaster and load the mouse drivers manually. I forgot the commands. But it was perfectly acceptable at that time.
The first real point and click adventure game that I played and remember on that PC was called Beneath a Steel Sky.
I played a demo from a disk I got with a magazine and loved it. (I pretty sure @eqko was there too, although I don't remember 100% sure)
I wanted to play the full game but back then it wasn't like today. You had to go out of your house to find the game. Going to shops and look for it.
But I was young and could only go to our local mall and it wasn't there.
I forgot about the game until my mom and I were in Rotterdam one day, many months later. She had to go to V&D. V&D was a famous department store (that no longer exist).
I had never been there before but quickly found out they had a game section, full of PC games. It was heaven.
Going through all the boxes I found Beneath a Steel Sky!
I still got the original box I found that day.
At some point, I was stuck in the game. This happens with adventure games. It's part of their charm. Trying to find out what to do next.
I just could not figure it out and this was at the time you couldn't go online and just look up the solution. (this and only having 3 lives is a struggle kids today will never know. It was so much fun and awful at the same time.)
I decided to just try everything on everything. Going from screen to screen using every item in my inventory on every clickable item in the game.
I found the solution 2 weeks later. I had to use a card and combine it with a lock, to fiddle it open. To this day I remember the character saying:
"It's an old trick but it still works."
I finished the game with @eqko not much later.
Finding that solution was the best feeling the world!
My love for point and click adventure games was born.
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Beneath a Steel Sky! OMG! That was a beautiful game for it's time!
I played this game for months on the Amiga, but never completed it. I think it held the record for the most disks, 15 I think, topping Monkey Islands 12.
Its funny how 2 hours on a game could mean to some we are addicted, there was a time where at the weekend I would play 16/17 hours straight - sometimes until my mum flicked the power off downstairs! How I wish sometimes I was 8 again and fully submerged in a game like the above.
Thanks for the memories! :D
You can now get it for free! https://www.gog.com/game/beneath_a_steel_sky
Nice!
Still playing the odd bit of Elite:Dangerous - now that's a game that's cost me a few months!
The memories. I still remember 'Sodium Pentathol' from Deja Vu ... and while reading, I also remembered 'it's an old trick, but it still works' I will NEVER forget that line. (or the game, I think it was the most epic Adventure we played together, with Indiana Jones & The fate of Atlantis coming in as a close second)
God the memories. I wish we could relieve those times. Though we are still making memories now :)
Sodium Pentathol! WOW! I forgot about that. Such good times! The Fate of Atlantis, what a classic too!
Wow, you really took me on trip back to my child hood with this post. We didn't have a computer, but my best friend did and we would play these games constantly. In middle school, when the Nintendo was out, all of my friends and I would beg our parents for the same game and then have a contest to see who could beat it the first. Yeah, in those days there was no internet to help you out, just good old fashion persistence and ingenuity. Man did I love those days.
Some games that immediately come to mind were Ninja Gaiden and Mike Tyson's Punchout. I played both of these feverishly to be the first one to beat the game.
You've really allowed me to take a walk down the path of childhood innocence brother and remember a time when each day was a new wonder all unto it's self. . It's about time I brought that same level of excitement back to my life. Thank you!
Ninja Gaiden was freakin hard!
This post brought back a lot of great memories.
To play many of these games on a PC (in the early days) , I remember manually configuring my autoexec.bat and config.sys repeatedly until I got everything to work. The joy I got from seeing the text show that I was as close as possible to 100% memory usage without going over was occasionally better than the game (There were many cheesy games back then).
Great memories!
I like games that push our curiosity, every time I solve a mistery it feels good, Tomb Raider was one of my favorites, I played countless hours.
First Tomb Raider I played was part 2. Playing in Venice. Such good times.
@exyle I am glad that you wrote about your adventure games that made you happy as a child. Like I mentioned in your previous post about going to the arcade. I was always looking for the NEXT New Pinball Game when it came out. Even though it was so FUN to play certain Pinball Games over and over again, It was always such a TREAT when a New Pinball machine hit the Arcade. I think you know what I mean about that feeling.
Man, I totally understand! It's the same feeling!
wow fantastic post @exyle, well it's great thing to recall your memories because it makes you feel that you are the same child with no fear and enjoying the life at most, it's also nice to hear that you love playing games right from the younger age and i think it's great think because in my opinion these games sharpen the mind and develops a love with computer and person becomes addicted to use computer, which is absolutely essential in modern world.
i remember i don't have computer when i was young so coming back from school i use to play games on gamezone shop and on that time my favorite games are, snow bros, cardillos dinasaur, street fighter1, kings of fighter and we buy one token for just 1 cent at that time and enjoy playing games a lot, thanks for sharing your beautiful memories my friend, stay happy and blessed.
Maybe you should do some videos commentating the games as you play. Or maybe livestreaming. Anyway nice trip down memory lane :)
Oh yeah, these are good memories, in my youth I was very fond of games, especially on the Sony PlayStation and it was not forgotten times. Especially I liked the game Air Combat, that was exciting! Thank you @exyle
I never had a PlayStation. But I know it had great games!
Thanks, thanks to you, I remembered the same as playing until 3 am, and in the morning I had to go to school. It's a very good memory. I'm sorry that unlike you I have nothing left, we left and everything remained in the old place.