In jr. high (1971!), the math teacher set up a computer in the lab, the kind that used 0s and 1s. A couple of the math geeks programmed it to run in a loop, and the printer used up all of the paper that was in a very large box.♾️
I had an Atari 800 in the early 80s and remember well the cassettes. I had more fun programming it than playing the actual games.
Later, I got on several BBS and had a great time “surfing” those. The early days sure were fun, weren’t they?🔚
Louise, my folks got to use punch cards back in the 60s and they told me about it! I love hearing (and remembering) all of this. It has changed SO MUCH, and it's hard to articulate what the world was like even during the 80s.
Or the 90s. Yesterday, I took an old Mac Powerbook G3 (1997) to the Apple store to be recycled. It still works, but the power cable broke. I don’t have the time to fix it or find some to buy it. Anyway, I told the salesperson that it really could go in a museum. Sad to think it might be torn apart, but what can you do with a computer that has 3G of memory and still connects with a telephone line? (When I bought it, I thought, “Oh, I’ll never use 3G of memory!”)
What a fantastic and well made machine! It's just that even the best made stuff gets passed so very quickly thanks to Moore's Law, which kind of also applies to data storage. It's an incredible rate of change, and it's not wonder we (the humans in the world) are having such a hard time keeping up!
I think the longest I've had a functional laptop is five years or so. I am not allowed to have nice things.
That, or I just break them. Seriously, I'm bad at keeping electronic devices in good shape (or really in functioning shape). I guess I've always thought of the information as the truly valuable thing, not the device that conveys the info (which wasn't all that great when I had virtually zero money!).
Oh man, I remember coding basic stuff in, well, BASIC. I even remember drawing entire pictures by programming each line at a time. I believe you had to first tell it the coordinates of the screen as the starting point, and on the next line tell it which direction to draw and when to stop. Then off to the next "brush stroke." Took ages, but I was so damn proud.
Can't say I've ever played the Star Trek version but I definitely played games where you could type basic "natural language" commands. Have the same memories about it as you do. Voodoo magic.
And I've always been a huge fan of turn-based games. My favorite turn-based strategy to this day is the X-COM series. And my favorite turn-based RPG was hands-down the Fallout series (although I started out at the Fallout 2 stage and never played the original).
I think you tend to get smarter by playing those types of resource-allocating games (Age of Empires is definitely in that category). You really learn how to run something like a small business.
"Turn based strategy" probably better encapsulates Civ 2, but given the limited options in the Star Trek RPG, Civ 2 actually probably gave you more agency and decisions at various turns than Star Trek.
My favorite RPG is Advanced D&D first edition, hands down.
It started probably Christmas break of 1990. Before they all got obsessed with Sega Genesis. We continued to play it ironically for several months thereafter.
"The hobbit makes a quick move and steals your +37 boots!"
Genesis was gold, but role playing didn't really need too much fancy stuff or computing power beyond just a good initial architecture. I certainly revisited strategy and role playing games many years past their primes. I'd play Civ 2 right now if I had it!
I learned to write batch files on an IBM XT so my kid could easily launch our favorite games such as Pharaoh's Tomb and a Fisher Price Fireman game. Pretty sweet feeling of accomplishment! Some years later, we played a haunted house game where the player had to type in actions, as you described with the Star Trek game.
It was great for the time, a really solid machine. There was also an XT in the office where I worked, with RBase and Quattro Pro. Later they got a little Macintosh with the first WYSIWYG programs I ever saw. Mind blown!
I played (a little) on a friend's Mac too, but I don't think I really got to use it much because it was so expensive... but it was pretty cool to see up close!
Oh my goodness! Cassette tapes? I used floppy disks, then stiffy disks, the 3.5in hard case ones with only like one megabyte of memory... and Windows 3.1 on our old 486 Pentuim... What a time~ My dad taught himself to use it from a book, and we had to input the setup manually to get the thing to start. He wrote it out on a page stuck against the wall, 'enter, enter, down enter, left enter, etc...'
It was amazing at the time and lots of fun. The first game I remember, was The Jungle Book, some Sega type thing that had so many glitches it hardly worked. But I do remember an adventure where you had to type your instructions called Hugo. And that game is the reason I first read Tolkien. One of the riddles was what's the name of the protagonist in JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit, and I had to find the book at the library and read it to figure out the answer was Bilbo, and I've been enamored with Tolkien ever since. What a journey. Thanks for asking.
That's really cool about Tolkien! What a neat way to be introduced: looking for an answer!
The original Sega system was very good, although also very glitchy. The games were in many ways more innovative than the NES games, but the Genesis really knocked my socks off with Altered Beast and games like that. Fun to think back!
I think I'm a little older than you are. When I was in high school, the school had a terminal connected to a computer at a local university, that we used to play STTR1. That was the original Star Trek game, back when there was only the original Star Trek.
It was all number commands. You had to know when to use a short range sensor scan and when to use a long range sensor scan. The results of both came back as text art. I think that was the first computer game I ever saw and it needed a LOT more imagination than today's games. Fun times!
That is VERY old-school! From what I understand, the original Star Trek iteration was during the 70s - kind of remarkable how close in time that was to the TV series, and how limited the user base was at first during the early 70s, but then again, it's not like there was ANYTHING more influential than Star Trek on the likes of the Home Brew computer club.
My first computer was a TI 99/4a. It was a WHOPPING $149 which I saved up over a couple years. And then the Timex Sinclair came out for $99 and got me all bummed out over having wasted $50 that could’ve been spent on Legos or candy or both. But then I learned the Sinclair was pretty much useless.
The TI 99/4a used both tape cassette AND cartridges. I didn’t have any games, but I rocked a typing cartridge I had and turtled the fuck out of Logo. I eventually got a modem and logged into a BBS until I got lectured on being a dumb kid in the very serious world of BBS discourse. Or something.
Bulletin Boards! Those were everything in the very early days. By the time I was exposed to the internet, AOL was thing and more was built out, but bulletin boards were still a huge component of the nascent web.
I'm not sure which TI we had, but it was very similar, but no controller. I played Fake Space Invaders with the keyboard like a mAn..
Nice, that's what we had when I was maybe 7 or 8. It was extremely helpful for me to have a computer around to fiddle and learn with, and I'm eternally grateful for that chance. I took it and I've never looked back.
The “Loading. Still loading” picture made me laugh and reminded me of the 25 minutes it took for the tape to load Heroes of Karn, a text based RPG back in the day. Sometimes I’d lose patience with my C64 and press Runstop to try and rewrite the program to make it easier to complete 😁. Never worked though 🙄
In jr. high (1971!), the math teacher set up a computer in the lab, the kind that used 0s and 1s. A couple of the math geeks programmed it to run in a loop, and the printer used up all of the paper that was in a very large box.♾️
I had an Atari 800 in the early 80s and remember well the cassettes. I had more fun programming it than playing the actual games.
Later, I got on several BBS and had a great time “surfing” those. The early days sure were fun, weren’t they?🔚
Thanks for the memories!
Louise, my folks got to use punch cards back in the 60s and they told me about it! I love hearing (and remembering) all of this. It has changed SO MUCH, and it's hard to articulate what the world was like even during the 80s.
Or the 90s. Yesterday, I took an old Mac Powerbook G3 (1997) to the Apple store to be recycled. It still works, but the power cable broke. I don’t have the time to fix it or find some to buy it. Anyway, I told the salesperson that it really could go in a museum. Sad to think it might be torn apart, but what can you do with a computer that has 3G of memory and still connects with a telephone line? (When I bought it, I thought, “Oh, I’ll never use 3G of memory!”)
What a fantastic and well made machine! It's just that even the best made stuff gets passed so very quickly thanks to Moore's Law, which kind of also applies to data storage. It's an incredible rate of change, and it's not wonder we (the humans in the world) are having such a hard time keeping up!
I think the longest I've had a functional laptop is five years or so. I am not allowed to have nice things.
Or nice things just don’t appreciate you.
That, or I just break them. Seriously, I'm bad at keeping electronic devices in good shape (or really in functioning shape). I guess I've always thought of the information as the truly valuable thing, not the device that conveys the info (which wasn't all that great when I had virtually zero money!).
Oh man, I remember coding basic stuff in, well, BASIC. I even remember drawing entire pictures by programming each line at a time. I believe you had to first tell it the coordinates of the screen as the starting point, and on the next line tell it which direction to draw and when to stop. Then off to the next "brush stroke." Took ages, but I was so damn proud.
Can't say I've ever played the Star Trek version but I definitely played games where you could type basic "natural language" commands. Have the same memories about it as you do. Voodoo magic.
And I've always been a huge fan of turn-based games. My favorite turn-based strategy to this day is the X-COM series. And my favorite turn-based RPG was hands-down the Fallout series (although I started out at the Fallout 2 stage and never played the original).
I appreciate the shoutout, too!
Oh wow, we just finished "Fallout" last night (season one, I mean). It is spectacular.
I think my fave for RPGs is Civ 2. Many a night went by in the blink of an eye.
Civ2, that's the one with the talking advisors, right?
Yes! I would always turn the avatars off (after the first year or so I played the game).
Hey! I remember Civ 2 too! Wow. Never got very far, was a bit advanced for me at the time, but I loved Age of Empires.
I think you tend to get smarter by playing those types of resource-allocating games (Age of Empires is definitely in that category). You really learn how to run something like a small business.
I'm yet to watch the series but the games (Fallout 2 and the first-person Fallout 3) are probably in my top of all time.
I also love the Civ series but I'm not sure I'd classify them as RPGs though. Civ 2 was also my entry point into the franchise.
"Turn based strategy" probably better encapsulates Civ 2, but given the limited options in the Star Trek RPG, Civ 2 actually probably gave you more agency and decisions at various turns than Star Trek.
My favorite RPG is Advanced D&D first edition, hands down.
A college friend of mine pulled out his old Commodore 64, which had a tape drive, so we could play Telengard. https://www.myabandonware.com/game/telengard-6w/play-6w
Nice. Do you remember (about) what year?
It started probably Christmas break of 1990. Before they all got obsessed with Sega Genesis. We continued to play it ironically for several months thereafter.
"The hobbit makes a quick move and steals your +37 boots!"
Genesis was gold, but role playing didn't really need too much fancy stuff or computing power beyond just a good initial architecture. I certainly revisited strategy and role playing games many years past their primes. I'd play Civ 2 right now if I had it!
Check out 50 Years of Text Games. Good stuff.
https://if50.substack.com/
I learned to write batch files on an IBM XT so my kid could easily launch our favorite games such as Pharaoh's Tomb and a Fisher Price Fireman game. Pretty sweet feeling of accomplishment! Some years later, we played a haunted house game where the player had to type in actions, as you described with the Star Trek game.
Neat. I never really got to play with the XT other than possibly a few times at school. How was it?
It was great for the time, a really solid machine. There was also an XT in the office where I worked, with RBase and Quattro Pro. Later they got a little Macintosh with the first WYSIWYG programs I ever saw. Mind blown!
I played (a little) on a friend's Mac too, but I don't think I really got to use it much because it was so expensive... but it was pretty cool to see up close!
I was immediately entranced by Excel and have never stopped loving it. Nerd alert!
Excel is powerful! It was a very important engine for one of the businesses I owned, very much responsible for a part of the success formula.
I played Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy way too much because it was surprisingly hard.
Great book series! How is the game play?
I thought I would have an advantage, having read the books. I did not.
Oh my goodness! Cassette tapes? I used floppy disks, then stiffy disks, the 3.5in hard case ones with only like one megabyte of memory... and Windows 3.1 on our old 486 Pentuim... What a time~ My dad taught himself to use it from a book, and we had to input the setup manually to get the thing to start. He wrote it out on a page stuck against the wall, 'enter, enter, down enter, left enter, etc...'
It was amazing at the time and lots of fun. The first game I remember, was The Jungle Book, some Sega type thing that had so many glitches it hardly worked. But I do remember an adventure where you had to type your instructions called Hugo. And that game is the reason I first read Tolkien. One of the riddles was what's the name of the protagonist in JRR Tolkien's The Hobbit, and I had to find the book at the library and read it to figure out the answer was Bilbo, and I've been enamored with Tolkien ever since. What a journey. Thanks for asking.
That's really cool about Tolkien! What a neat way to be introduced: looking for an answer!
The original Sega system was very good, although also very glitchy. The games were in many ways more innovative than the NES games, but the Genesis really knocked my socks off with Altered Beast and games like that. Fun to think back!
I think I'm a little older than you are. When I was in high school, the school had a terminal connected to a computer at a local university, that we used to play STTR1. That was the original Star Trek game, back when there was only the original Star Trek.
It was all number commands. You had to know when to use a short range sensor scan and when to use a long range sensor scan. The results of both came back as text art. I think that was the first computer game I ever saw and it needed a LOT more imagination than today's games. Fun times!
That is VERY old-school! From what I understand, the original Star Trek iteration was during the 70s - kind of remarkable how close in time that was to the TV series, and how limited the user base was at first during the early 70s, but then again, it's not like there was ANYTHING more influential than Star Trek on the likes of the Home Brew computer club.
For reference, I graduated high school in 1993.
My first computer was a TI 99/4a. It was a WHOPPING $149 which I saved up over a couple years. And then the Timex Sinclair came out for $99 and got me all bummed out over having wasted $50 that could’ve been spent on Legos or candy or both. But then I learned the Sinclair was pretty much useless.
The TI 99/4a used both tape cassette AND cartridges. I didn’t have any games, but I rocked a typing cartridge I had and turtled the fuck out of Logo. I eventually got a modem and logged into a BBS until I got lectured on being a dumb kid in the very serious world of BBS discourse. Or something.
Bulletin Boards! Those were everything in the very early days. By the time I was exposed to the internet, AOL was thing and more was built out, but bulletin boards were still a huge component of the nascent web.
I'm not sure which TI we had, but it was very similar, but no controller. I played Fake Space Invaders with the keyboard like a mAn..
I think I had the fake Soace invaders too but man, that typing teacher. 🤣
I didn't do the typing teacher one, or at least I don't remember it. Maybe I should watch someone play those emulators to jog my memory, though.
All sounds familiar to me, though I quickly left gaming for programming. I started in 1981 with a Radio Shack CoCo.
Nice, that's what we had when I was maybe 7 or 8. It was extremely helpful for me to have a computer around to fiddle and learn with, and I'm eternally grateful for that chance. I took it and I've never looked back.
The “Loading. Still loading” picture made me laugh and reminded me of the 25 minutes it took for the tape to load Heroes of Karn, a text based RPG back in the day. Sometimes I’d lose patience with my C64 and press Runstop to try and rewrite the program to make it easier to complete 😁. Never worked though 🙄
The kids will never know!