[22] Procastination is the Thief of Time

 Remember me?  I'm the guy that used to write occasional blog entries.

Each time I plan on it, I get sidetracked and put it off.  And then put it off again.  "I'll do it tomorrow."

So today, let me get back to an entry I intended to write in April.  It was after I took my yearly trip to Wall, New Jersey, to check out the annual VCF East Festival, run by the Vintage Computer Federation (formerly MARCH, or Mid-Atlantic Retro Computing Hobbyists)

Before I get there, though, I need to eat.

It's become somewhat a tradition of mine to start the morning there with some Cannoli Pancakes from the Sand Dollar Pancake House.  Along with a bottomless coffee.  Because breakfast IS the most important meal of the day.

First, the facility.  The VCF has a museum that, over the years, has grown into a large section of an abandoned barracks at a decommissioned army base.  Camp Evans was a major base in the development of technology such as radar, and as such, the main road it faces was long ago renamed Marconi Road.  A collection of smaller museums has been developed there, under the banner of InfoAge, that are mostly science-related.  While my visit was primarily to the Computer History Museum run by VCF, I have a soft spot for the Military Technology Museum of New Jersey.

Mostly cars and tanks you'd see in M*A*S*H or an Indiana Jones feature, but there's a lot of random, one-off production models to be found also.

But the main focus of my visit was the museum run by VCF, to see what was new.

The VCF museum has many systems that range from the very old...

...to the more recent.

And, of course, the show.  Some random shots:

And there's always a marketplace for those who wish to buy/sell/trade.  For those who know me as a reviewer at the TAG blog, I almost found some new games to play:

Back to the boardwalk at the end of the day, and a visit to another important destination.

How about a museum dedicated to 80 years or so of pinball machines (and a few other notables) which you can play unlimited, by the hour?

And then, the drive home.  All this is just about 2 hours from my house, so it's not an imposition.  (Anyone in the area, my lunch choice is a Korean-fusion taco place nearby...)

[21] Blame Canada

Let me get away from the computer screen for a little while.  I'll do something we haven't done in ages, and read a book.

My favorite author from age 8-13 or so was Gordan Korman, author of many books about kids my own age doing wacky and unusual things. About 20 years ago, I decided to start looking up some of his works on the internet, since I had long since given away or misplaced my books (or so I had thought).

[20] Do not pass GO, Do not collect $200.

As a kid, I always loved to play board games, even though my parents never really wanted to play them.  One of the favorites was, of course, Monopoly.  What kid wouldn't like this game, sculpted around (in some ways) the "American Dream"?

My family still has this edition somewhere, I hope.

The history of Monopoly is a storied one, with many books and documentaries about it.  One of my favorite books is a book about the history of Parker Brothers, which makes you almost long for the olden days, but there are many other sources as well.  The following is loosely adapted from another (perhaps slightly biased) account.

[19] Imitation is the Most Sincere Form of Flattery

I apologize for my absence.  Since my last post, I moved into a new house, helped family with an overseas move, and was otherwise procrastinating.  I started writing this post back when I was doing a playthrough for TAG, and almost from the start, I had to wrestle with the question of emulation.  After all, it's a DOS game from 1993.  I don't have a souped-up 386 sitting around, so I had to find other ways to run the program. 

Emulation isn't just about MS-DOS, but it's a starting point for this discussion.

Modern incarnations of Windows choke at the thought of running a DOS program.  So, over time, people have come up with ways to run the new programs, the ones the hardware merchants and operating system folks wish you would just forget about, so that they can sell you new replacements at a new higher profit.

[18] I Think I'm Gonna Be Back in Time...

 

A new post is coming soon.  Promise.

But until then, I'm doing another playthrough for the community over at The Adventurer's Guild, for the Coktel Vision 1993 release of Lost in Time.

Introduction Post

Gameplay Post 1

Gameplay Post 2

Gameplay Post 3

Gameplay Post 4

Gameplay Post 5

Gameplay Post 6

Gameplay Post 7

Final Review & Scoring

[17] Things To Do When You're Board

 Well, I'm a nerd.

(Don't everyone run up here at once to dispute that...)

But as I write this post, it's becoming the nerdiest one I've written so far.  And that's saying something.

Back around 1990, perhaps a little late in the game compared to some, I got my hands on a modem and discovered Dial-up BBSs.  It came late to me, because I lived in the middle of nowhere, and there were no systems a free phone call away yet. Still, I convinced my parents to make the occasional call to a system about 30 miles away, and started to get a lot more up to date with the world.

No BBS user was this attractive, and never had such an attractive girlfriend looking over their shoulder.

[16] Driven to Success

 Like most red-blooded American boys, I wanted to drive from an early age.  Perhaps my desire started with being jealous of a neighbor when I was in Kindergarten.  Walking with Mom down the street to a public park, we passed some slightly older neighborhood kids driving around their driveway and the street in what is now an iconic 1980s toy.

"I love my Power Wheels.  It's so rad."

My desire never changed after that.  So, even though I wasn't tall enough to reach the pedals, I practiced driving electronically.  Well, as soon as the computer industry caught up, that is.

[15] Going to College with the Alpha Betas

In my last post, I talked about using magazine and website reviews to get free games and gear.  But another great way to do this is beta testing.  

The very neat and organized computer desk in my dorm room, circa late 1997.

Back when I was in college, I had lots of free time on my hands.  I also didn't really have a big budget for brand new things. So, when a friend of mine started beta testing new releases of Windows,  I made sure he referred me as well. Beginning with Windows 98 SE, I started to test the upcoming versions of Windows before they were released to the public. This is way, way before the Internet was used as a distribution method. So, I relied on getting CDs in the mail from Microsoft, usually send second day air or overnight, with what was the latest build.

[14] Conversations with Video Game Legends

From about 1999-2000, while a college student at Orenthal James' alma mater, I started a web site geared toward adventure games.  This is when the genre was starting to fade, but there were still many, many fans left.  At the time, the competition was mainly Adventure Gamer (which would later evolve to Adventure Gamers, thanks to losing their domain name) and Just Adventure, which soon later added a plus at the end as a way to remove the word "Just" at the beginning.  So here enters Adventure Central, which lasted a few years and had a few guest reviewers, but I never made any serious moves about it.  

Running this website was a great way to appear legitimate to get review copies of games from publishers for free.  I had actually started doing this 7 years earlier with a zine-style magazine I had created.  It never actually went to any readers, but I wrote articles and sent sample issues (and reviews) to the publishers all the same.  I got many games for free, and even got some impressive hardware, but that was usually loaned and had to be mailed back.  But I had some nice sound and graphics cards for a month at a time, sometimes.

The game companies would often send games, and sometimes promotional materials.  For example, Lucasfilm Games (later LucasArts) would provide screenshots in the format most preferred by the magazines... color slides that the printing presses would reproduce.

I have a collection of slides, mainly from LucasArts and Sierra.

Sierra sometimes came through with simple, but cool merch.  For example, they sent me some prints of the original artwork used in King's Quest V.

[13] If you're selling, I'm buying...

 I've read tales of the great "computer faires" of the 1970s, where the long-haired, hippy computer folk would get together to show off the latest and greatest, interface, and procure new toys.

Okay, so this picture is from 1982, but still, a time to be treasured.

All the industry greats were there, from the small mom & pop companies, to the mega-(for the time)-retailers, to the media.

Famously, it was at one of these that Bill Gates had his BASIC interpreter for the MITS computer stolen, copied, and distributed so widely that it prompted him to write the famous "Open Letter to Hobbyists":

[12] And we'll dig a deep hole; and we'll bury the castle

 I promise, a return to posts very soon.  (I'm working on one right now, as we speak.)

But first, here's some posts I've done for another blog.  It's a reach-back to the first post on this blog.

The game Castle Adventure, the first game I remember knowingly playing somewhere other than at school, has some special memories for me.  I'm doing a play-by-play review for The Adventurers' Guild.

• Introduction Post
• First Gameplay Post
• Second Gameplay Post
• Final Gameplay & Score Post 

♫ Musical inspiration for the post title

[11] Don't do the crime if you can't do the time

Growing up, I always had a soft spot for police procedurals and detective shows.  Early on, shows like Inspector Gadget would intrigue my elementary school mind, and later I would be exposed to it's spiritual predecessor, Get Smart.  Two things I wouldn't learn for a few years -- both starred Don Adams, and Get Smart was an early project of the great Mel Brooks, but at this point, I had probably fallen in love with Spaceballs or Blazing Saddles without knowing the connection.  Nick at Nite showed reruns of the classic Dragnet, and later, Adam-12.

Looking back, Adam-12 was probably a big inspiration for the game that I next played.

[10] Shiny Happy People

 On November 27, 1987, the number one song in the US was, appropriately, "(I've Had) The Time of My Life", the dance finale from Jerry Orbach's best acting work until Law & Order.  The day before, Scott Miller released the first in a series that basically started a game company.

The Kroz series of games was the result of Miller having written a couple of Infocom-inspired text adventures, and realizing how much more could be achieved on the computer instead, he upped the game.  His own words:

"After writing [two] Infocom-inspired text adventure games, Beyond the Titanic and Supernova, I decided it was time to step up my game and make something with graphics.  This was style four-color CGA days, and while 16-color EGA was making headway, the vast majority of PCs didn't have it.  So, I decided to try making a game with ASCII characters, using a lot of the high-end character, many of which worked quite well for games back then." - Scott Miller, from the release notes with the Kroz source code released in 2009.

I've already mentioned in my first post the game Castle Adventure, and this was likely also an inspiration to this and another game series we will discuss.  

Skipping to the end here

Kroz is Zork spelled backwards, and although that was an influence to Miller, a bigger impact was made on him with the game Rogue, a 1984 game that looks very similar, but has little AI and leaves more to random chance.

[09] I Lost on Jeopardy, Baby

Edit: Sadly, this was posted barely a day before the death of longtime Jeopardy host Alex Trebek.  Rest in peace.

So this brings me to the 5th grade, when I won a few prizes on a Nickelodeon show.

It was a show called Total Panic, a variety show somewhat modeled after the original You Can't Do That on Television episodes aired in Canada in the late 1970s, before being picked up by Nick.  Amongst the fun, I did a call-in contest where I won a Casio keyboard, a 110 camera, and a trip to Busch Gardens, Florida -- and their water park, known at the time as Wild Water Kingdom.

The tech story isn't in Florida, although the 7 day, 6 night trip was too short (and my parents made me give up a couple of those days to visit my grandparents, losing valuable theme park time).  No, it's the flight back, when my piece of luggage was lost.  It took them a while to find it -- and then had to drive it over 2 hours north from the airport -- so it wasn't until weeks after the trip that I was able to enjoy two bargain-bin games that I bought there.  For CGA monitors, in DOS, here's Pat Sajack and Alex Trebeck.

[08] Hit it, Rockapella

For years, computer game companies and computer stores tried to sell more games by adding a little bit of "educational" content and then claiming that it was really educational software made fun.  More often than not, they were just lying through their teeth.  But sometimes, they did it right.  Every now and then, a company would make good on this "edutainment" market.

Take, for example, the company Broderbund.  Founded in 1980 by brothers Doug and Gary Carlston, they often tried to be the clean, pure company in comparison to the wild and crazy competitors such as Sierra.  But competition in that time was friendlier -- at the same time each one would try to outsell the other, they also went on vacations together, rafting trips, and the like.  And there was an unspoken gentleman's agreement to not step on each other's toes so much.

So Broderbund later diverted their attentions more to educational titles, while Sierra pumped up their games.  They both still did a little of each; Sierra taught us a lot about sea life, for example, and Broderbund polarized the adventure gaming community with the non-standard interface and design of their best -selling adventure.

[07] Going down a rabbit hole...

I was in the middle of writing my latest post, and circumstances happened.  I found myself impulse buying a new computer to replace my 10 year-old desktop (Thanks, Amazon Prime Day!) So I got to thinking about some of my routines, whenever I upgrade hardware.  The last time I upgraded my monitor (to a 28" I still use), the last computer upgrade, the last time I got a larger TV.  How do I test these new things?

For the new TV, I pull out the DVD for my favorite movie, the 1980 sleeper classic Used Cars.  New speakers?  The gunshots near the beginning of Grosse Pointe Blank. For that one, I was introduced the the movie by a friend of a friend, showing off the new subwoofer in his college dorm room.  It's what started this tradition for me.

Hey, Jenny Slater.

For a new computer, it's often one of my favorite games, even if it's something not graphically impressive.  I've played some favorites like the original Police Quest often (and I promise, I will be getting to that game on this blog soon), but this time, the first game I played was a game that forced me to buy a new graphics card for my old desktop.  On this trip down the rabbit hole, we're going down into The Cave.

[06] Now, This is the Game of a Carpenter

For the last few entries, I have been excited about writing this post.  Finally, the first graphical adventure game, which from this point on would become my favorite genre.

Then, I started playing the game, and realized I had no reason to be excited, because this game wasn't very good.  But this blog is a blog of firsts, of memories -- if I was writing simply an adventure game blog, I would skip this game for the much, much better follow-up entry in this game series, Fate of Atlantis.

But that's getting ahead of myself.  First, let's set the stage.  Another game I copied from my friend Troy came on a bunch of floppy disks and had a seemingly-important, very large manual, the grail diary.  To be fair, if I had seen the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade yet, I'm not entirely sure.  But it would definitely become one of my all-time favorites.

This is the companion, of sorts, to the 1989 cinematic gem by George "Star Wars" Lucas.  Set in 1938, Dr. Indiana Jones goes off in search of the biblical Holy Grail, after his father was lost on the same quest.  Some of the historic locations include Hitler's Germany, a scenic Italy, and more.

In replaying this game after some time, I planned to run the CGA/EGA version, but sadly, I decided I couldn't stomach it.  I think this is why I gave up on the game very early back in that time.  Well, that, and the fact that I didn't have access to a BBS to get a walkthru yet.  Nor was I yet a subscriber to QuestBusters, and their incredible hint pages each month.

[05] Many Hours of Productivity Down the Drain

 Another game Troy had in his collection was Pipe Dream from LucasFilm Games.  A simple game, you needed to quickly lay down the pipe shapes you were given into the grid, so that the liquid (flooz) would flow far enough away from the starting point.  I found in research that a later re-release of the game from a later publisher added a goal of connecting the output to an appropriate exit -- something definitely missing from the original.

From a blurb in Computer Gaming World:

PIPE DREAM: This is a spatial strategy game that'll keep you on your toes. As a Plumber-in-Chief for a chemical company, you've got stay one step ahead of the flowing 'flooz' as you try to build the longest possible pipe system. The pipe segments appear at random and you've got to use quick thinking and forward planning in laying the pipe. As the rounds progress, you'll have to deal with obstacles, one way pipes, and faster flowing flooz. One or two players.

So in a way, a game that is reminiscent of Tetris -- here's a bunch of random pipes, quickly lay them, but try to plan ahead.

I wanted to do my replay in CGA, as I played it then, but I could not get the program working under DosBox for anything less than EGA.  So, enhanced graphics I didn't have at the time.

A title screen that accurately depicts the game to come

[04] A Rad Execution of a Quarterpipe by a Computer Semi-Pro

Well, it seems Mom won't drive me all the way to Keith's house, so we'll go halfway -- to my friend Troy.  Not a massive gamer of his time, he would later go on to work at a local McDonald's in high school, help me get a job there with him, and use that money to buy his first car, a 12 year-old Pontiac that he would upgrade with, among other things, a light-up neon license plate border.  But this isn't the tech you were expecting to read about -- so, back to the topic on hand.

Up to this point, I don't think I owned a lot of commercial releases of software myself.  Most of what I had gotten, some with my grandfather's help, were shareware and freeware titles.  And the rest, well, were (ahem) obtained over the SneakerNet.

Technically, this ad campaign didn't come about until a few years after this post...

[03] Having a daffy time in the third grade

 Back in elementary school, one of the greatest joys, besides trying to get your playground swing to do a 360°, was when we spent time in the library, which often meant we could use the computers.

Memories, memories... I have more than this computer could hold in it's RAM.

For anyone in Generation X, or even those a few years after us, certain games at school were a rite of passage, a required step in life.  Lemonade Stand, for example, was a 1979 classic that was played for over a decade without upgrade or revisions, and has since been ported and re-released multiple times over.  Oregon Trail is another one that has avoided dying of dysentery for many decades, most recently, as a card game that I have yet to experience.