And so it begins…or is that began?
Welcome to Present Perfect Gaming! Gaming from the past…in the present.
What follows in this inaugural blog post is the obligatory introduction where I state my motivation for starting this website and what I hope to achieve.
The motivation behind starting this website was to go back to where video gaming all began for me; my origin story, if you will. Here, I’ll be reliving some of the memories by replaying the games that have had an impact along my journey. I’d like to share these old memories and new (re)experiences, and bring others along for the ride.
Getting this website started may also have had something to do with me reaching a certain age-related milestone and getting all reflective (cards on the table: it was turning 40). It definitely has something to do with my own son being a similar age now to me when I began my journey. For him, video gaming is nothing special, nothing out of the ordinary—he’s been surrounded by devices and computers since day one. But for me, when I was his age, we still had rotary dial phones, TVs without remotes, and having a VHS player was a BIG DEAL. Yes my friends, welcome (back) to the 80s!
One day, I can’t even recall the exact year, in the late 80s when I was about seven or eight years old, It appeared. It was there sitting on the dining room table, this mysterious metal box with what looked like a futuristic version of a typewriter connected in front of it.
This was the IBM Portable Personal Computer, and my dad had brought it home from work for me to have a play on. This was it, one of those moments you look back on sometimes in your life, when you can pinpoint the exact moment when something sparked in you and would never leave. The catalyst. This was where my gaming truly began.
Looking back, it was also one of those rare moments where my dad’s job directly interacted with my life. At that age, I barely understood what he did every day when he went to the office, and by barely I mean I had no understanding at all. But at this time, as I later found out, my dad was actually using these new computers at work. For me then, I was in the right place at the right time. I got a head start on most kids my age, with computers not yet being commonplace in homes or schools. I haven’t yet had such a moment with my own son, where my work directly interacts with him, but recently he did for the first time in his life, at age seven, ask me what I do every day when I go to work. I’ll take it.
Now back to the story, it wasn’t the first time I’d experienced video gaming. I’d seen arcade machines around, and as kids, we’d sometimes go to birthday parties where a friend had hired out a Nintendo Entertainment System for the weekend from the local video store.
But this was different. Gaming on an arcade machine or a Nintendo was a shared experience. Now, having this computer in front of me, I was in control. It was up to me what I got out of it. I had to make it go—and this is what I did.
My memory is a little fuzzy on the actual games I played on this machine. There’s only one I can recall with certainty: Donkey. The premise was pretty simple; in fact the picture below almost says it all. What I didn’t know until researching for this blog post, was that it was co-written by Bill Gates to demonstrate the capabilities of the IBM Personal Computer.
It wasn’t until my dad started bringing home a newer model of computer that I really started exploring what was out there in the world of PC gaming. Basically, being a kid, and with home computing in its infancy, I took whatever I could get my hands on.
This newer model was the IBM Personal Computer XT. I remember the model I played around on had two 5¼ inch floppy disk drives, and an external 3½ inch one. It also had an external monitor. The only specs I recall are the 20 MB hard drive and the 512 KB of RAM it had. The computer I’m writing this on has 32 GB of RAM, which is equal to 32,000,000 KB, or 62,500 times the RAM the old XT had…
My vocabulary increased very quickly, with words (or more accurately, acronyms) such as RAM, CGA, and DOS. It was another language, and I was learning fast. I had to, as games were quickly becoming more visible, now being displayed in appealing game boxes on store shelves. I wanted in, and I needed to understand. Specifically, I needed to understand the specifications required to run a game, and then how to actually run it. The answers to these two questions were on and in the game box. Below are shots of the front and back covers of the very first two game boxes I remember owning. I still own them (they’re…somewhere).
As I reflect on this now, the classic PC game box has all but been relegated to history, with the proliferation of digital downloads over the past decade. But back then, in those late 80s and early 90s, pre-internet, going to department stores or electronics shops (or actual game shops, if you were lucky), looking at the humble game box was all I had to learn about a game. It wasn’t for another few years during the mid 90s where I remember having access to gaming magazines, which made it easier to be informed about what was out there.
Getting back to the specifications and running games, you had to read the specifications on the game box to determine if you could run the game on your home computer, and the installation and operating instructions were contained within another relic, long since gone from video gaming: the game manual. These things had everything, from installation instructions, to how to play the game, as well as tips and hints, and troubleshooting FAQs (before they were even called FAQs). Here’s a snapshot of the contents page from another early game experience (massive bonus points if you know which game it comes from):
Reading through these game manuals was instrumental in building my knowledge of DOS (Disk Operating System), which was the operating system of the time on the IBM Personal Computers. You can still see what it looked like if you ever use the Command Prompt in Microsoft Windows (see picture below). There was no mouse you see (or not that I had), so commands were typed out into the command prompt in DOS. Opening a directory was not achieved using the click of a button, but by speaking the language of DOS. For me, supporting game documentation was a fundamental part of gaming back then. It was educational, but fun. It was offering me an education in something I couldn’t get at school. It was the right type of education for me, where I had an incentive to learn (I want to get that game running, so I can play it!) and a practical way to apply my newly acquired knowledge. I really do look back on these early days with great fondness, as it was that pioneer spirit where I was venturing into something unknown and exciting.
Now, not having any disposable income as a kid, or certainly not enough to purchase one of these new shiny computer games I was seeing in the shops, I relied on what my dad brought home. The two earliest purchases my dad made (and quite possibly the first two) were Wargame Construction Set (1986) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: The Action Game (1989). Looking back, I believe these two games were among my first in depth gaming experiences. I will explore the experiences with these two games in future blog posts.
So I was set on my journey now: I had the hardware, and I was gaining in knowledge. Little did I know at the time, but I was now a gamer.
Oh yeah, and bringing this post full circle back to what I hope to achieve with this gaming website? Three words: Replay, Relive, Reminisce. I want to replay some of the memorable games from my gaming history, so I can relive the experiences and reminisce on some great old times.
So maybe you’ve experienced a similar journey to mine and can relate, or maybe you’re curious about some of the old (and not so old) classics (or maybe you thought this was a website with grammar building games—you’ve probably worked out by now that it isn’t). Whatever your gaming background, you’re more than welcome.
Thanks for stopping by! Hope to see you again soon.
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