Old Video Games? Whups.

Okay, so a few days ago the Nitsdawg (Longest unfixed type-o evar!) went on a bit (Eds: A lot) about video games. Now being Nits I'm sure he was listening to some crazy non-mainstream music at the time while he went on and on about all of the games (about 7 games or so) he played when he was younger. But he got me thinking.

I could do that! But unfortunately that would take approximatley forever to detail all the delicious videogaming I've done, on consoles and PC, so we'll move on to the slightly more topical (and shorter) sub-section of this thought.

Old video games rock.

Like all of my thoughts is a 100% true and accurate statement. Unfortunately, again like many of my thoughts, it is also incomplete. I mean, old video games rock, IN YOUR MIND. The problems crop up when you go back and play them. Now, I had this oppertunity in the last few days (right in the middle of midterms, awesome things in life have terrible timing I often find) because my parents cleaned out the attic in anticipation of getting a new roof ont he house, and lo. They found a BIG box full of software boxes. Many of them games. MANY OF THEM STILL CONTAINING THEIR SOFTWARE!!

WarCraft 2, 7th Guest, Privateer, Master of Orion (1 AND 2!), Civalization 1, and this game called Castles which had a version of its software on a 5.5" floppy (Eds: *smirk*) AND 3.5" floppy (Eds: *bigger smirk*) disks, which I remember as being "the shit" to play on the ol' P100.

Now, the thing is, I was all, "Sweet! Old video games!" and naturally picked one at random and installed MoO2. I'm glad I installed that first. I mean, I had good memories of it, but I also recall it being only 'okay'. Kinda fun a few times, but too easy on the easy difficulty and frighteningly difficult on the harder ones. But a playable game.

I installed MoO2, and I beat it. In about 3 hours. I realised that this game was REALLY dumb. Like, I've come to expect more from playing turn-based stratagy. The game is almost enitrley non-intuitive, and can you believe as a FEATURE of the second game, they included the oppertunity for a "random encounter" to come and ANNIHILATE ONE OF YOUR COLONIES with almost zero hope of survival early on in the game? Who thought of this, "I know, let's make this random encounter that, given enough bad luck, can make you lose regardless of how well you play!"

Aliens from another dimension? Super. I had 5 battleships, 4 destroyers, 17 frigates and 6 troop transports defending that system against 3 frigates of theirs... Lost every ship and didn't even kill a single one of them. Not that killing them has any benefit unless you get all of them.

Why am I glad I installed Master of Orion 2 first? Well, I'm considering NOT installing the others (definitely not 7th Guest. It is a puzzle game, only fun once anyway). I don't want modern reality to rain on my memories. I mean, what if I had installed Privateer? In my opinion THE FINEST splinter of the Wing Commander series (and superior to pretty much the enitre series, combined). What if THAT sucked. I had invested literally HUNDREDS of hours playing that game. What... if it sucked?

What would that mean?

Now, back to studying for the Quantum Mechanics midterm tommorow. Oops.