COMPUTER GAMES

Me and computer games go back a long way. Before I launch into my no doubt riveting tale let me just explain precisely what I mean by computer games. I mean exactly what it says; computer games.
Not, and this is important, not Nintendo, not Playstation nor Sega nor any other kind of console-based game. I simply do not play console games. (I admit to owning an Atari 2600 in the early eighties, but that´s the only console I´ve ever owned.)
Not unless I have to, that is. Why? Because I think that consoles, more than anything, have contributed to the fact that computer games are still seen as a past-time for children, and have set back the development of good computer-based games by decades. The reason for this is that the original consoles were designed by retarded adults, for children, while the original computers where designed by young adults for young adults. This can clearly be seen in the existing software and parapharnelia extant for the different consoles, as compared to that of the computers.
First, the control pad itself is a freakish torture device undoubtly designed by a fiend in human shape. It is uncomfortable, unnatural and as blatant an abomination in the eyes of God as I have ever had the misfortune to see. It doesn´t allow for true 3D movements, since it´s essentially flat and digital, so you can´t even get the illusion of 3D movement. It can only be used for simple 2D platform-style games. Now compare this hellish device with the true and tried beauty, functionality and elegance of a "flight-stick" joystick, or an arcade-style joystick for that matter.
Incomparable, I hear you cry.
With a proper, true joystick, you can dodge, weave, dive and spin, all in glorious 3D. With the proper attatchements, you can even feel yourself bumping into wall, or the opponent shoot you or whatever.
Hang on, I hear you say dosn´t these sort of things also exists on the consoles? Yes. They do. But they stole it, as they have stolen everything else, from the computer!
And consider also this, that there has been not one, not one, original idea, neither in design, concept or execution, present in a console based game. All the innovation has taken place on the computer platforms. This is a truth.
The very lack of a keyboard or other proper control devices make playing anything more sophisticated than a simple shoot-em-up intolerable. And as this list of woes were not enough, there are further items of evil that I must point out.
Sometimes one hears little children (Ignorant children, no matter their true age.) say something to the effect that the consoles have better graphical capabillities than the computers. Base lies! Be they damned for dogs!
First of all, the memory and processing power of a console such as the N64 is vastly limited compared to a computer. Of course, a N64 does actually have better graphical capabillities than your standard PC or Mac, (Never let it be said that I don´t give credit where credit´s due.) but that´s because it´s custom made for the purpose. A decently equipped PC or Mac kicks the snot out of the N64 and Playstation and Saturn and all the rest! Of course, had the PC industry had the sense to include seperate graphic chipsets to take the strain off the processor from the very beginning, (like my favorite computer, the AMIGA) by now N64 would have been totally obsolete. On the other hand we might not have had so fast processors as we do now, but, such is life.
To be fair I must admit that it´s more expensive to get a good graphics card and a good 3D card, than it is buying a console, but that´s the greedy companies fault! Secondly, the reason the graphics may look better on the consoles are that they are displayed on a TV set, instead of a monitor. This makes them all blurry and indistinct, so that one dosn´t see that they are displayed in what corresponds to slightly lower than VGA on a computer, that is 640x480. The reason one can see the pixels on a computer is that the monitor puts out a so much more sharp and clear image than a TV set.

Now that that little piece of unpleasantness is out of the way, let´s start talking about computer games!

In the beginning there was....... SpaceWar.
Or, depending who you talk to, there was Adventure, or, Colossal Caves, as it was later known. Suprisingly enough, since SpaceWar first showed up in 1962, and Adventure didn´t appare until 1967. The early games were much like Marshall McLuhans definiton of man´s mental state before the invention of writing; "Until writing was invented, Man lived in acoustic space, boundless, directionless, horizonless, in the dark of the mind, in a world of emotion......"

Substitute 'writing' with 'graphics', 'acoustic' with 'textual' and you´ll end up with a fair description of the nature of the brave new worlds of the imagination the computer revolution brought. These early games lacked graphics and were thus entirely text based, using texts and language to interface with the player. It provided the player with a description of the area he was in, such as the famous "opening scene" of the first of these games to become a success, "Zork";

West of House
You are standing in an open field west of
a white house, with a boarded front door.
There is a small mailbox here.

The player communicated with the game by writing what he wanted to do, in this case it might have been; "Go North", or "Look stream", which would have generated different responses. The games´ parser, or voboculary, was strictly limited. In this case, around 60 words, often resulting in frustration for the player, as he was unable to communicate to the game what he wanted to do. Indeed, many games used this limitation to create problems, sometimes requiring an exact phrasing to allow the player to accomplish a certain task. The games´ abillity to understand complete sentences were often, at least in the beginning, purposely limited in order to save valuble space, so shortening of command sentences were often encuraged, as in the above example. "Look stream" would work, wheras a "Look at the stream", wouldn´t be understood since it contained words not found in the program´s parser. The most common words to be purposely left out was words like "The, At," and similar. As computers grew faster and became capable of handling more information, so did the games grow, and while the early text-based adventures might occasionally show an ASCII * image, a few games who were entirely graphical had appeared. The very first of these were SpaceWar.
SpaceWar was first created in the spring of 1962, at Stanford University. It was programmed on a PDP-1 mainframe by Steve Russel, then a student there. SpaceWar was a revolution in many ways when it first appered; it featured animated sprites and was designed purely for the fun of it. The object of the game was simple, and one that has been perennially popular ever since; blow your opponent to chunky bits while preventing him from doing the same to you. You had two spaceships circling around a central sun, and those two spaceships were subject to gravity from the sun, and they could also, and this was the important bit, fire photon torpedoes at one another. The torpedoes were proximity-fused and could be used to blow up incoming enemy torpedoes. The ship was controlled by means of four buttons; rotate clockwise, anti-clockwise, rocket thrust and fire. And that was basically it.

For readers interested in further, in-depth reading about the history of computer games I recommend J.C Hertz exellent Joystick Nation as a good place to start. That woman is not only very intelligent, but beautiful as well. (Not that that has anything to do with anything. Just my opinion, you understand.)

* An ASCII image is an image made entirely out of text. A smiley :) could be called a very simple ASCII image.

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