Mario, Wolf, Doom, Need for Speed...What was the first computer game you ever played? When did you first lose time consciousness to a programme? When I was about 14, my dad's bank got computerised. Which meant that the top management send them early versions of the home computer - 286s and 386s - and my dad and a few of his colleagues were packed off to Chennai from Nagercoil to study COBOL. When dad came back, naturally he was excited. So he decided that his son - that's me- should also be well-versed in computers. So he send me off to study BASIC in a fairly good institute. It was a three storeyed building I remember getting lost in. I did it over the summer between my eighth and ninth standards.
Those guys had four games: World Space Commanders, Chess, and two games I don't remember the name of, but let me describe them to you. In one of the games, you get a bat which was flat 2cm long thing and you had to keep hitting it on the sides of the screen. After you play a while, two balls appear in the screen and you will have to hit them. In the other one, the computer screen was a grassy surface through which you send this cylindrical eating tiny monster that eats points as it is chased by the system's monsters. All the four games ran on MS-DOS. Nagercoil had not heard of Windows yet. I am not sure if Windows 3.1 was released by that time.
I don't remember a darn thing about BASIC anymore. But I have not forgotten anything about the games. Even today, I kinda know what keys I pressed to do what, etc.
The next games were played when I went to learn windows and word at Brilliant's Tutorials. Guys preparing for competitive exams must remember this institute as a drab place. I had fun there.
Later, at the insistence of my brother, dad finally bought a run-down, assembled, second hand PC. I don't remember what processor ran on it. But it wasn't very fast. And Nagercoil in the mid-90s still had not heard of the Internet. By brother and I used to play Wolf on it. But the game that really we obsessed over was Doom. You may have played it. I have often wondered if that game made kids more evil than they were.
Today gaming has come a long way from those early days. A couple of days ago, I was reading the two links given below. Thought I will write about what games I have played.
BTW, what games do u play?
Here's a link to a Guardian blog on PS3.
Read about LittleBigPlanet here
