Monday 2 January 2006

Pic of the day: "Sic transit gloria mundi" - in this way passes the glory of the world.

More games destroyed

Ultima VII 2 – Serpent Isle. For a moment, I considered keeping it. But only for a moment. Then I remembered the despair that pervaded the game, and the numerous times the Avatar met pretty women, got to know them, and had to kill them as they turned on him. I could see once or twice, but when it became such a pattern that I started wondering about the private life of Richard Garriott ... No, not my style. And its technical excellence is longs since surpassed, leaving only a game that is very finicky as to what machines it can run on.

Rex Nebular and the Cosmic Gender Bender. I am sorry and ashamed of buying this game, which you would know how pathetic is just from the title. In my defense, it was by MicroProse, which I had only the best experiences with at the time. (This was near the beginning of my game buying career, as it were.)

Reunion: I have no memory of ever installing this game, and I certainly don't plan to begin now. Some kind of science fiction strategy game, I think. (c)1994.

Seven Cities of Gold: Found this at the same dark spot in the cupboard with the previous one. I assume I have bought it, though I just might have got it for free for some service rendered to the owners of Databladet or something, it must have been around that time. I think this was a kind of Colonization clone.

Sim City for Windows! OK, some good memories here. And in fact, its simplicity still makes it an alternative to the hyper advanced later versions. Not that I play them either. Keeping install disk just in case.

Sim Farm: Another of the infamous Sim turkeys, this holds a special place in my heart because I am a farmer by birth and childhood, although allergies kept me from staying on the farm in the long run or seek such a career. For sentimental value I'll keep the disks, although I doubt I'll ever use them.

The Shadow of Yserbius by Sierra. "The Nation's #1 multiplayer fantasy goes solo". I never got around to playing the multiplayer version, and it says something about the times if it really was number 1. But it was a simple, funny dungeon haul with amusing player races and quite forgiving of defeat. My main complaint was that it took place in dungeons, and I am a bit claustrophobic in such matters. At first I was automatically going to keep the disks, but then I realized that it was just becoming a habit. There is nothing in this game that isn't done better in recent role playing games, except being able to play pixies or some such. Let it just live on in our memories...

1830 is the progenitor of Railroad Tycoon. Or rather it is an almost direct conversion of the board game that inspired RRT. Sadly for this game, RRT is just so much better in any way you care to mention. Sorry guys. But at least you got my hard earned money.

Oh man, I have destroyed games for several months' salaries by the time I bought them. OK, at least one month. Games were pretty expensive in the beginning, often costing 500 Norwegian kroner or more, while my income back then was lower than now too, surely less than kroner 10 000 after tax. Which means that I probably tore up a month's salary the first day. And still have a few months' worth to destroy before I move out.

***

Valhalla: See earlier about interest in Norse mythology. This is one weird RPG, the only one I can think of where you can grow lots of extra fingers to wear all those magic rings. Extra eyes too, I think, although I don't remember what those were for. Creepy. Off with its head!

Global Conquest: A small and inferior subset of Civilization, I think. I am not sure why I have been saving this in my kitchen cupboard for over 10 years. Probably because I never looked?

A-Train: I loved this game! It was like a more local version of RailRoad Tycoon. I so enjoyed making the small Japanese rural villages into booming cities using my trains and buying and selling stocks and property. Its most direct competitor is probably Transport Tycoon (Deluxe), and in the end I played that quite a bit more. Still, it was fun for a while several times over. Keeping the floppies. If I haven't played it the next time I move (and I probably haven't), I guess they go too.

Maelstrom, a 3-dimensional strategy planetary war game. Did I install this? I cannot remember, nor why I bought it in the first place.

The Manager, a soccer strategy game from 1992. 'Nuff said.

Companions of Xanth based on the book Demons Don't Dream by Piers Anthony. I think the book may have been written with that in mind, too. Piers Anthony is an inspiration for my own writing. I mean, if the guy can sell enough to eke out a living, why shouldn't I be able to write too? After all, I can write puns without the pointless child nudity. Well, there's the small difference that he actually completes his books, while I don't. But apart from that, we're not so different. The game kinda sucked though. Even back then.

Quest for Glory III: Wages of War. Not as good as No II, in my opinion. Not that I completed either of them. Sierra ... the name guarantees gloss over substance. At least in adventure games. Or perhaps all adventure games are like that, I haven't seen any with other appeal than the pretty pictures. (As opposed to role playing games, which usually have deep gameplay and ugly pictures.)

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? This edutainment software for children is actually quite fun and I enjoyed it. Also included the hefty World Almanac and Book of Facts 1991. But let's face it, VGA graphics are not likely to impress me ever again.

Global Domination, the Ultimate Multi-Player Conquest Simulation. I cannot remember whether the multi-player part was also simulated. Probably in my case at least, since it was well before I got Internet access. Looks quite a bit like RISK, not that I had played RISK yet at the time.

Might and Magic: Clouds of Xeen. This series of games had atmosphere. I am so glad I managed to give or sell for a symbolic sum an earlier game in this series while it was still playable. Wish I had done that with this too. But I may have already forgotten it, it was lying very deep in the back of a kitchen drawer...

Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Treasures of the Savage Frontier. I did not come far in this RPG, but at least the rules were familiar. What's with role playing games and breastesses anyway? I guess they do appeal to the same target group, but so do snacks and cola, and you don't see role playing games with snacks and cola on the box.

Castles II – Siege & Conquest, a strategy game. I liked it less than the original Castles, where a lot of the time was spent watching tiny computerized people build castles. This is more strategic. It is also from 1992, so not a pretty sight.

Star Trek 25th anniversary: I am not a trekkie. No, seriously. I bought this by accident. I bought every computer game I could find at that time, I think, except Leisure Suit Larry. There are limits even for me, but they were pretty far down.

Vikings Fields of Conquest – Kingdoms of England II. Decent strategy game with resource management. About Vikings, at least in principle, so no wonder I bought it. Not that I didn't buy pretty much anything. I found this in an original plastic carrying bag from Datakjelleren, complete with the Commodore 64 logo on the bag, although the game itself is for PC (also available for the Amiga!). How nostalgic. The happiest years of my life, eh? And I spent them on computer games. No wonder I was usually broke.

OK, that's one plastic carrying bag filled with floppies and the occasional CD. Impressive. I haven't really killed off any programs I can imagine myself playing again, although I threw away the manuals of a couple possible candidates. I think what hurts is the fact that I spent months of my life paying for this stuff, not to mention the attempts to play it. But seriously, that bag contains several month's of pay after tax and rent. Admitting that this is simply gone, that it is reduced to fading memories in my brain (at most) ...

I know in a theoretical sense that all that has form is subject to decay. But seeing it, experiencing it, actively enforcing it, is something different. At that point,there is always a voice inside begging: "Father, save me from this hour!" In small matters like this is is just a tiny voice, of course. But even so, there is no computer game about the road to nothingness. It is always about growing, collecting and winning. That is what makes sense to a human. But in the end, does the one who dies with the most toys win? I don't believe so ... except that "what someone truly believes can not be ascertained from his creed but from the assumptions on which he habitually acts". A disturbing observation indeed.