[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":