Long before the 2010 film…
For the past few days, I’ve been flashbacking about two decades and reliving my very first encounters with computers, particularly computer games of the early 90s…
The first computer I ever laid hands on belonged to a childhood friend of mine (since I wouldn’t get my own computer until 2001). It was the early 90s and I didn’t have a clue about computers back then. I don’t remember what kind of computer it was or what operating system it had (I’m pretty sure it was Apple). But what I mostly remember that first computer for is that my friend had tons of games on it. I spent many hours of my childhood watching him play all kinds of games (strangely, computers intimidated me back then so I preferred to just watch him play, though I did play sometimes). He had complex games like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, Sim City, and old-school World of Warcraft, as well as more simple ones like learning games and level-based games.
A few days ago, I suddenly started thinking about all these old games and that I could probably find them all online, just like how you can use emulators to play old video games. And sure enough, I discovered DOSBox, a program that lets you play old Microsoft DOS games on new computers (even though I’m pretty sure my friend had a Mac, apparently all those games had MS versions too).
So now I invite you to take a trip to the past and remember how computer games used to be twenty years ago…
Prince of Persia
Many Prince of Persia games have been made, but the original one is what I remember. This Aladdin-esque game is many levels long and involves you maneuvering a nameless prince through various dungeons full of traps and enemies in order to rescue the princess in less than 60 minutes. You have to jump, run, and climb to find your way out of each maze. It’s not as easy as it sounds – the 2D environment and setup of the dungeons makes it easy to make grave mistakes that will force you to have to restart the level. A lot of problem-solving is involved in figuring out whether you need to jump this way, climb down that way, open this gate as opposed to that gate, etc,. Even by today’s standards, the original Prince of Persia is very innovative but also very difficult!
A sample of PoP gameplay in the very first version
The version I played with updated graphics and levels
The prince could die some pretty gruesome deaths o_o
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The Oregon Trail
Like PoP, Oregon Trail has had newer releases but the old 1992 deluxe version is the one that I played. The game takes place in 1848 and your goal is to guide your wagon of travelers across the Oregon Trail from Missouri to Oregon. The game does the work in terms of moving your wagon, but what the player has to do is make choices such as rest for a few days if someone in the party is sick, hunt if food is low, trade with people at certain landmarks if supplies get used up, and ford or ferry across rivers depending on the depth. Random events will happen that will delay or wagon, use up your supplies, or even kill off a member of your party. You want to reach the end of the game in the shortest amount of days with the most people alive. Much of the game is luck-based, but there is skill involved in deciding what actions to take. LOL, when you begin the game you can assign names to the people in your wagon and I would always name them after friends and family, then it would be so tragic when bad things happened to them such as “so-and-so was bitten by a snake” or “so-and-so has cholera” XD
The beginning of the journey
Unsuccessfully fording a river
You lose the game if your entire party dies
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Lemmings
Lemmings is a unique, completely strategy-centered game. Your goal is to guide a group of lemmings to the exit of each level. Only problem is that they’ll only walk straight ahead and won’t do anything on their own to avoid danger such as falling off cliffs. You have to assign some lemmings certain tasks that will create a safe path to the exit. For example, make one a Blocker that will prevent the others from moving forward while you make another lemming a Basher that will break through a wall in the way, and then a Builder that will build a staircase over a pool of deadly lava. Obviously the levels get increasingly difficult as you have to keep track of what many lemmings are doing at once – I’m currently on level 23 on the easiest difficulty and already it’s getting hard 0_o
Using a Miner lemming to make a path to the exit
A Blocker lemming keeps the others away while a Builder makes a bridge
Digger lemmings
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SimAnt
One of the original Sim games, SimAnt has you play the role of an ant that lives in a black ant colony in the front yard of someone’s house. Your goal is to expand your colony by digging to make your nest bigger, foraging for food, protecting your queen ant, and mostly, invading and destroying the neighboring colony of red ants. There are also other dangers such as spiders and ant lions, or death by a human footstep or the lawn mower. As your colony grows and you continue to conquer the red ants, you can even move beyond the yard and into the house! Considering SimAnt was made in 1991, it’s a surprisingly long and complicated game.
Surface view of the player’s yellow ant outside its colony
Inside the black ant nest
Red and black ants duke it out over some food
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There were many more fun old DOS games my friend had on his computer (a lot of which I can’t remember the names of unfortunately), as well as some I used to play on the school computers at my middle school. These were just four of my favorites. It’s amazing that these games are almost as old as I am yet I still find them enjoyable after all these years. Like with old video games, often I prefer to play my favorite old games over and over rather than check out new ones. Old games like these may be less graphically impressive and detail-oriented than new games, but they’re just as fun, creative, and challenging in my opinion ;)
Ahhh… The Oregon Trail. I use to play with that game when I used a really old Macintosh. It was fun naming people random things, but it’s one of those classics that remain fun… even though I haven’t tried the hardest levels in the game.
I also liked SimCity 2000, which I had the DOS version. Eventually I got the Mac version several years later, but it was pretty nice and addictive game. Building cities seemed so much fun even though I had some trouble starting a new city back then since I don’t know the concepts. Now I know, and I can make my population grow relatively quickly. Also, I have the classic SimCity on the Super Nintendo. Not as advanced as 2000, but fun.
I grew up with Macintosh in my kindergarden and private school years and I remembered some of the games I played such as Number Munchers, Oregon Trail, Kids Pix and other games I don’t remember off my head. I still have the old computers that allow me to replay these games… So yeah, story like today’s games doesn’t really matter much and focused mainly on gameplay.
I should check out newer versions of Oregon Trail. I know there’s an Oregon Trail 2 and and more updated releases on other platforms.
My friend also had SimCity on his computer but it must have been an older version than 2000 since we played it in the early 90s. We had fun building the cities and then unleashing disasters on them, like tornadoes and Godzilla XD
I remember Kid Pix! The painting program right? I loved messing around with that. It’s hard to believe there was no Photoshop then and games like that were considered good painting programs =P
Actually, Photoshop existed when it first came on the Mac in the 1980s. Soon after, Adobe bought it over and made a Windows version… so yes, it exist.
Oh yes… Disasters are pretty fun to watch with buildings going down and stuff… Sadly, it takes effort to rebuild it, which is why I turn off disasters in Simcity.
Man, I remember having played PoP and really not getting far beyond the first couple levels because of my inability to learn fencing maneuvers back then. If I were to tackle it now, I think I’d have a better chance. Oregon Trail was more or less a game that everyone played in elementary school, so yeah, definite memories there. And then there was a time I was fully hooked on the original Civilization. Once CD-ROM came out along with classics like Warcraft, Lords of the Realm, and other goodies, gaming really took off.
Also, what? Floppy diskettes? What are those? If only young ‘uns had a clue how limited disk capacity was back then.
I’m playing PoP now and I’m having so much trouble just on the second level. Gosh, how did my friend make it look so easy all those years ago XD
Now that you mention CD-ROM, I remember my friend had to use those for some games, like Warcraft, while most others were already saved on his computer (I guess those would be the floppy disk games).
Heh, young ‘uns certainly are spoiled with the ability to play such realistic games that let you constantly save your progress. The limited capacity of these old games makes it that much easier to mess up and have to restart the game again and again.
Surprised you only found out about DOSBox relatively recently, it has been around a long while. I relived a lot of good old games but recently DOSBox when reinstalled gave me…errors.
Anyway I was a wee lad when I touched the very first PoP but yeah never even got past that guy in the first level since I totally had no idea. SimCity 2000, Civilization, Romance of the Three Kingdoms 2, and One Must Fall 2097 were likely the most memorable for me.
Well, I never actively sought out anything related to DOS until just recently (didn’t even know that’s what the operating system was called 0_o Like I said, I had no clue about computers back then).
Maybe I’ll check out those other games you mentioned =)
I never made it past the first level of Prince of Persia either! Back in the 1980s, when I got my first computer (which had a green monochrome monitor), I played some really fun games like Alley Kat and Lode Runner and Digger. Then when we upgraded to a better computer, I played a lot of computer RPGs based on the Dungeons and Dragons roleplaying system set in worlds like the Forgotten Realm or Krynn, all run from the MS-DOS system. I actually credit the command line interface for teaching me to type so quickly, even though I only use 6 fingers. I’ve switched to using a Mac now, but I’ve heard there are some DOS emulators for the Mac OS. Maybe over the summer I’ll look into revisiting these old games!
Sounds like you had a lot more computer exposure early in life than I did :3 Mine was just through my friend’s computer and computers at school until I got my own in my sophomore year of high school.
Heh, I learned to type fast with the wrong fingers too (mostly through web site work rather than games). But since I took a typing class at community college about five years ago I learned to use the correct fingers (still have trouble with numbers and symbols though).
SimAnt used to scare the crap out of me. I used to love SimCity, but found SimAnt frustrating and boring, as I’d find myself out wandering for great periods of time, looking for food or doing whatever the object of the game was. After 15 minutes of nothing happening, finding my screen suddenly occupied by a group of fast-moving ants or a giant spider always freaked me out. Needless to say, I never got very far in this game.
The animated gameplay pic you posted from Prince of Persia looks remarkably like one of my favorite videogames of all time, Flashback. The level design and character movement look uncannily similar. It definitely makes me want to play PoP, and maybe even think about Flashback in a whole new light (since PoP predated it by a few years, apparently). Anyway, if you really like Prince of Persia and wonder what it would look like in a sci-fi setting, check out Flashback (or its spiritual cousin, Out of This World).
I actually haven’t played much SimAnt myself since I mostly watched my friend play. So I can only say that watching someone play the game is fun, but maybe that’s ’cause he was good at it and I didn’t have to do the work myself :3 I’m gonna give it a go with DOSBox when I have the time. But I do remember it was kinda freaky when the big ‘ol spider would just come out of nowhere and run after your ant, or your ant would just randomly get killed by the lawn mower.
From what I’ve read, PoP was very innovative for its time, so I’d imagine its design influenced other games of that period =)
Prince of Persia was fun, and it was pretty hard. Back in the days with no internet, no walkthroughs, no hints and tips; I guess games were not more challenging, we just had less places to look for information. So completing games like Betrayal at Krondor on your own, or Bard’s Tale (drawing all maps by hand!) really, really felt epic. Ah, the good old days :) Gaming really has changed.
Yeah, we’re so spoiled nowadays with being able to quickly look up a walkthrough or cheats for any game within hours of its release. I remember in the old days I would buy these video game booklets that had lists of cheats and secrets for various games. Used them all the time when I had my Sega Genesis. Don’t see those books around anymore since we can find all that info for free online now =P
I saw ‘Oregon Trail’ and all I could think was ‘you have died of dysentery’. Story of my life right there.