Thread: Nostalgy

  1. #1
    (?<!re)tired Mario F.'s Avatar
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    Nostalgy

    ... it attacks me sometimes.

    I miss my first ever PC. An 8086 processor, Amstrad PC 1512. Mine came with a 20MB I couldn't ever fill, instead of the usual 2 5.25'' floopy drives (yes. it was normal to sell computers back then without an hardrive). A CGA graphics display and 512 Kb of RAM. DOS 3.2 and no windows. Windows 1.0 had only been released the year before. It shipped with Gem. I had so much fun with it. Here I learned DBase programming, explored different DOS versions to exhaustion and many other things that made me fall in love with computers and programming ever since.

    I miss MSDOS 5.0. Perhaps the best OS ever produced by Microsoft. I had heaps of fun with QBASIC. I used to buy every PCPlus and PCPro magazines and drool with their floppy disks full of DOS tools and toys. Back in the days when you could cream a 1.4Mb floppy disk with +20 programs. I do miss windows 3.11 too, which I had istalled on top of DOS 5.0. But I miss this MSDOS version the most. I always liked prompts more.

    I miss Lemmings. I miss the craze. they were cute, hippy-like, made fun noises, and they reduced the world's GDP.

    I miss my CitizenSwift 240x printer. I could print A3 sheets in landscape. a 24 pin dot matrix printer. It lasted me for years! It had RAM cartridges. Can't remember what mine was. It was a cool, fast, silent printer.

    I miss Baldur's Gate. I really do. I miss a game like that. And I miss Doom and I especially miss the Eye of the Beholder trilogy. These 5 games threw me apart. But also the Pool of Radiance RPGs types. Boy! I still play them under MSDOS... but I miss how I used to feel back then.

    And I miss my first job ever. In Alcatel-Portugal making backups of the mainframe IBM ES9000 and learning COBOL. I don't miss COBOL, but I miss the mainframe. And I miss when an year later the first IBM AS400 arrived. 3 in all. I loved them as much as I liked to create scripts for a single VAX/VMS minicomputer they had there.

    And I miss... the short lived craze of the NeXT Pizza and Cube. And the amazing UI that NeXT/STEP was. I actually put my hands on a few at my university.
    Originally Posted by brewbuck:
    Reimplementing a large system in another language to get a 25% performance boost is nonsense. It would be cheaper to just get a computer which is 25% faster.

  2. #2
    Ethernal Noob
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    I miss that safari paint program that was on the old apple IIs. I also miss where in the world is Carmen San-Diego. Also the game with the big gorilla that you throw banana bombs at.

    But I'm lying, I don't really miss them. Good riddance.

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    Lurking whiteflags's Avatar
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    Back when men where men and Windows 3.11 was common, I had The Coolest Game in the Universe, and I miss it a lot. It was called Megarace. It remains the only racing game I really liked and was moderately good at.
    Gameplay was interesting:
    There were only 14 tracks in Megarace, but with the exception of the first one, they weren't very normal. One stage I really liked was underwater and you drove through these clear pipes.
    To win Megarace, you had two ways to come in first. Beat the other cars or blow them up with missiles!
    The prizes were also the best part. You win this great race and all you win is "a cozy, romantic dinner BY YOURSELF," or a broken Rolex, zebra seat covers, maybe some other stuff too.

    Well, the way I describe it, it sounds lame I guess but it seems to be a cult classic. I still talk about it today to some people and nobody remembers.

  4. #4
    pwns nooblars
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    Old Win 3.1 game that was one of my favorites was "Stars!" I forget who made it, and I haven't been able to find it since, it was a strategy game... I thought it was the ........ when I was like 10.

  5. #5
    Mayor of Awesometown Govtcheez's Avatar
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    > I especially miss the Eye of the Beholder trilogy.

    I had the first two of these. They were awesome.

  6. #6
    Confused Magos's Avatar
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    I recall a very old skiing game. If you kept skiing after passing the finish line you'd eventually be eaten by a troll (!). Can't remember the name though.

    EDIT: It's Ski Free
    Last edited by Magos; 06-22-2006 at 04:04 PM.
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  7. #7
    Registered User axon's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Magos
    I recall a very old skiing game. If you kept skiing after passing the finish line you'd eventually be eaten by a troll (!). Can't remember the name though.

    haha, I rememebr that as well - was it called "free ski" ? or was free ski one of three different courses you chose going down :dunno:

    some entropy with that sink? entropysink.com

    there are two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness. - franz kafka

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    Moderately Rabid Decrypt's Avatar
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    Ski Free was awesome! I have it on a hand-me-down laptop I've got around here somewhere...I think it was an abominable snowman that ate you.

    I miss the first book on programming I ever read. I have no idea what it was called, it was a little tan hardcover with blue foil writing. It was full of Apple BASIC programs with little descriptions. I checked it out of the elementary school library, and entered them into my mom's Apple IIc+. I had no idea what the lines meant at the time, so debugging was impossible. I think I only got one of them to work. :sniff: :sniff: I wonder what happened to that old computer...
    There is a difference between tedious and difficult.

  9. #9
    Devil's Advocate SlyMaelstrom's Avatar
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    Geez... even I remember that Skiing game. Now I feel old.
    Sent from my iPadŽ

  10. #10
    The Right Honourable psychopath's Avatar
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    I think Ski Free was on my first computer I ever had. Pentium 100Mhz, 32MB RAM, 1GB HDD, 1MB VGA card.

    Yeah, I guess i'm not as old school as the rest of you guys. I mean, really; whats this "IBM" you speak of? ;p
    M.Eng Computer Engineering Candidate
    B.Sc Computer Science

    Robotics and graphics enthusiast.

  11. #11
    Registered User VirtualAce's Avatar
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    Megarace was cool. Good graphics for it's time and great speed as well. Audio was a bit wanting, but for the most part a great game.

    I miss things like dynamic campaigns in games, replayability, gameplay depth, etc, etc. Older games, though so much simpler, still seem to be so much fun. Perhaps it's because they couldn't fool you into buying it by just using eye candy and had to really make a game worth playing.

  12. #12
    Registered User axon's Avatar
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    yah, I remember megarace as well - it came with my first pentium 66mghz - it was a packard bell with win 3.11 for workgroups

    some entropy with that sink? entropysink.com

    there are two cardinal sins from which all others spring: Impatience and Laziness. - franz kafka

  13. #13
    Ethernal Noob
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    is that the same skiing game where the big dog came to you and poured liquor in your mouth if you fell down too many times.

    Also who remembers that game where you start off in a circus and then end up in the world of those freaky haired trolls.

  14. #14
    Cat without Hat CornedBee's Avatar
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    Ah, Ski Free. I once found a trick to make you go faster, fast enough to escape even the snowman. Unless you made a mistake. The best I managed was escaping it for about 8 seconds - then a second and a third came and caught me
    All the buzzt!
    CornedBee

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