[Editor’s note: Scientist tz takes a trip down memory lane with the Commodore 64 for his contribution to thismonth’s Monthly Musing.— CTZ]
I could type that command line with my eyes closed (and I often did) when I was 8.Back in the deep, dark 1980’s, my parents were simple folk who couldn’t see any point to having a NES in the house. Therefore, I missed out on the golden early days of the NES era. We owned only one television and it was for watching programs (my dad’s words). I never owned the goldenLegend of Zeldacartridge nor did I play the firstMetroid. More after the jump.
I have fuzzy memories of earlier videogame experiences when I was maybe 4 or 5-years-old. I remember playing that horseshit version ofPac-Manat a Babysitter’s house on an Atari. I remember asking her why Pac-Man can’t eat through the walls and I remember her answer of “because they’re made out of gold.” I remember playingTime Banditat the Driftwood in Sister Lakes, MI.
But videogames never entered my home until I was 7 (I think.) My mom, a teacher, decided she needed a computer with a word processor. My parents settled on a Commodore 64, that being the most affordable home computer in 1986. I remember driving with them to a mall an hour away to buy it because our local mall didn’t have any in stock. Did we really buy that shit at Kay-Bee Toys? I actually think we did.
Later that week we went to Toys R Us to buy software back when you could buy productivity software at Toys R Us. My mom bought some command line word processor for herself and a game calledMotezuma’s Revengefor me. We also had about ten discs of various shareware and pirated games from my Babysitter’s brother who apparently was a l33t haX0r by 1986 standards.
It is because I had this great wealth of games available that I have chosen the simple command line that started them all as the start of the affair. I wasn’t tied down toMarioandZeldalike so many emerging gamers were back then.
In a way it’s remarkable that I kept gaming through the C64 era. A lot of those games wereincrediblydifficult and many of them were difficult because they were horseshit. As a kid I never considered the fact that a game might be bad; I always assumed that I just lacked the skill to finish it (or I required a color monitor, maybe.) The clerks at Babbages in the mall knew me as one of those kids who habitually bought games and returned them if they were too hard. I returned a few classics such asHacker.
Everything kind of clicked when I gotBeyond the Forbidden Forestfor my birthday.
Here was a game with all of the elements that today we consider to be integral to a good game. Graphics, music, atmosphere, plot, controls. Back then I mainly cared about the sweet graphics and cool monsters. I think I probably sank 100 hours into this game. When I beat the Demogorgon at the end I ran around the house like an “idiot” (mom’s words) and had to take a “time out” to calm down.
“Another visitor. Stay awhile… staaaaay FOREVER!”FUCK YOU ASSHOLE.
I never finished it and I never will…but I digress.
Good games likeBeyond the Forbidden ForestandSkate or Diecombined with overwhelmingly tough games likeImpossible MissionandJumpman(EPYX ftw) clinched the addiction. In the summer of ’87 I started scraping money together to buy a TV, a NES, and a skateboard. I never got any good at the skateboard but as the 80’s were drawing to a conclusion amidst a sea of stonewashed jeans and inexplicable swatches of neon pink and green all over everything, I had become incurably hooked on videogames.
