Origins (Part 1)

I was reading an article today about conducting roleplaying games over Google’s Wave service, and it got me thinking a little bit about my own habits when it comes to gaming and RPing. This inevitably always brings me back to thinking about how I got started with online gaming - nay - the internet itself, so you get to read about it here.

A brief history of me, is that I am not actually from America. Being born overseas has some privileges - better highway system, better school system, second (and almost third) languages - however, I did not have two things that greatly set me apart form my peers when I finally came to the US in fifth grade: cable TV, and the internet.

Thankfully, due to my father’s connections with the military, I was given the chance to start fiddling with a computer at a fairly early age. As early as when I was 8, I had full access to a Commodore 64, complete with external 3.5” floppy drive, Muppet keyboard, and roughly 50 or so game diskettes. Some of these were simple clones of games, such as Arkanoid, Space Invaders, Mario Bros., or Lode Runner, but one always struck a chord with me.

Thus came…

Little Computer People

I loved this game. I do not think I could properly express then, or now, what drew me to the game, but for unfamiliar, here is a brief write-up about the software on Wikipedia. For those who may not be interested in looking, it is essentially like The Sims… only with one person (always male), a possibility of a random pet, and you never leave the house. Oh, and you can’t really control the character, except to make suggestions as to what activities to engage in. You can watch him eat, watch TV, play music, or write letters in his computer diary.

And I would do this for hours. Sometimes while doing homework, I would leave the computer on and just look up every now and again to see what my person was up to. Others, I would try out new commands, to see if I could figure out what else the game could do. I lacked an instruction manual, and didn’t have internet access at the time - or, rather, I didn’t even know it existed. I could not get enough of it.

About a year later, my father was close to retiring, and wanted to change stations to a city closer to where his family. What did he do when he decided it was time to pack up and move? Sell my Commodore. I don’t have words for how angry and heartbroken I was, but my dad promised me that I could have his old IBM compatible once we were settled in, because he wanted to buy himself a new PC. And so, I took it in stride, set up the new (to me) machine, and settled in for my first taste of strategy and RPG goodness:

Sid Meier’s Pirates! Gold

Ahoy, mateys! I have easily put more time into this game over the course of my life than any other RPG to date - yes, even more than my 200~ hours of Final Fantasy Tactics. It had so many things that were foreign to me, and are enjoyable to this day. Character options, rich dialogue (at the time), an intuitive interface, fun combat, and exploration!

Whoo, this is going on quite longer than I wanted. I’ll pick this up later!