Anybody Still Into These?

I was thinking of starting this by saying “these are the grand-daddy of RPGs”… good thing I did a quick research on computer RPGs and found out that computer RPGs predate these books. Oh well, so much for a dramatic introduction…


Anyway…

I can’t remember if I’ve read all of these… as a matter of fact, I can’t even remember anything about any of the stories! Yup, it’s been THAT long! I’m getting old!

For those of you who are unfamiliar with these, these are sort of “interactive” books which contain stories that have several possible endings. How a story ends depends on the course of action you choose to take (options are provided to you on selected pages).


Just found out on Wikipedia that these types of books are called “gamebooks”. From Wikepedia:

Choose Your Own Adventure is a series of children's gamebooks first published by Bantam Books from 1979-1998 and currently being re-published by Chooseco. Each story is written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character's actions in response to the plot and its outcome. Choose Your Own Adventure was one of the most popular children’s series during the 1980s and 1990s, selling over 250 million copies between 1979 and 1998, and translated into at least 38 languages.

So there.

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Memories of the Digital Past (Part II)

Mid 80s. Enter the Nintendo Game and Watch!

For those of you who have no idea what Game and Watches are, here’s a brief backgrounder from Wikipedia:

“The Game & Watch (G&W) series were handheld electronic games made by Nintendo and created by its game designer Gunpei Yokoi from 1980 to 1991. Most featured a single game that could be played on an LCD screen, in addition to a clock and an alarm. Most titles had a 'GAME A' and a 'GAME B' button. Game B is usually a faster, more difficult version of game A. The game Squish is a notable exception; here game B is very different from game A. Judge is another exception in that game B is a 2 player version of game A, rather than it being noticeably faster or more difficult. The games Climber and Super Mario Bros. do not have a 'GAME B' option.

The units used LR4x/SR4x "button-cell" batteries, the same type used in most laser pointers or watches. There are variations in height for button cell batteries, and the G&W units used the shorter height variety. Specifically, they were packaged with Maxell LR43 batteries.”

For more on this, head on to: Wikipedia.

I think the first G&W that we had was “Manhole”. In that game, you control the guy (or is it a gorilla?) who’s holding the manhole cover. The object of the game is to simply prevent people from falling down the hole. Just like in most, if not all, other G&W games, the “variety” in the game comes in the form of game speed changes as you hit certain scores.


Our next G&W was “Snoopy Tennis”. The game went like this: Good ol’ Charlie Brown (who is standing on the lower left corner of the screen) would start the game by making the first swing at the ball. Snoopy (whom you control) is on the right part on the screen, you then move him up or down the three levels of the tree and try to hit the ball. If you hit the ball and it flies towards the upper left portion of the screen, Lucy would then appear to hit the ball back to Snoopy. You get three misses after which it’s game over.



The game starts out very slow, and (as I have previously mentioned) as you reach certain scores, the game’s speed changes. And, I believe, there were some score levels which, when reached, would initiate the “bonus round” (which only lasts for a few seconds) wherein you get more points for your hits.

It’s an endless game (aren’t they all?) except until you run out of misses. And, if I remember it right, your opponents (Chuck and Lucy) never miss! Nevertheless, I got very much addicted to it and got very good at it that I would have scores beyond the 1000 points mark.

Personally, I only know of five Game & Watch types/variations. But after reading the Wikipedia article, I am very much surprised that there were more! Anyway, the ones known to me are the “standard” ones which came with small screens; the “widescreen” which, obviously had wider screens (along with wider bodies); the “multiscreen” which were very much like the Nintendo DS of today; the “Micro vs System” which were designed for two players, it had two wired game pads which can be hidden inside the clamshell-designed main unit; and the “colored” ones which had a colored LCD attached to the “lid” and had a translucent “backing”, the image displayed on the LCD screen would then be reflected to the user via a mirror of the base of the unit. All G&Ws had no built in backlighting, and for the “colored” variety, you need some light passing through the translucent material to see the display.

The aims of all the games of G&Ws were basically the same, get high scores and try not to “miss”. But, simple as they may be, those small wonders have made a big and strong impression on me and have become an undeniable part of my “digital memories”.

Being a sentimental person as I am, I still have all of the G&Ws we have ever had with some of them still working.

Read "Part I".

Memories of the Digital Past (Part I)

I can still remember (although vaguely) my first personal encounter with computers in which the “encounter” involved personally influencing/manipulating the things I see on the computer screen. As I remember things, I believe it happened some time between 1980 and 1983.

During those years, most likely during Christmas season, my parents would take my brother and I to the shopping center and let us play a round or two of arcade games before going shopping. Unfortunately, I can’t remember any of the titles of the games I had been able to play that time. The only thing I can remember is that I have played on one which had a steering wheel on it and the words “GAME OVER” would appear on the screen within 5 seconds after dropping the coins into the machine… I was still too young at that time to make any sense of what I was supposed to do or not do in the game.

Also happening at around the same time was my first encounter with a portable digital device… the Casio VL-Tone.


Very often, I would just sit in one corner and randomly press on the various keys of the VL-Tone and think I was playing real music. And when I’m not feeling musical, I would just play with its calculator function.

Well, nothing else memorable (in the area of digital devices) happened after that until my first encounter with a home computer which happened at my cousin’s place in Cagayan de Oro in the mid- or late-80s while spending a several-weeks-long summer vacation at his/their place.

I can’t remember with complete certainty what his computer was, but after seeing countless pictures of early personal/home computers, however unsure I still am about it, I strongly believe that it was an Apple II or, more likely, a clone of some sort of it.



It looked very much like the one pictured in this image I found on Google, except that I don’t remember ever seeing the Apple brand anywhere on it (therefore my strong belief that it was indeed a clone). Furthermore, it was colored mint green with brown wooden side panels. And the “monitor” he had attached to it was a small colored television set. He also had a heavy joystick unit attached to it that had two white square buttons right below the directional stick control.

That experience was particularly memorable because it was the only other opportunity I had at that time to play video games aside from the arcades which happened quite rarely.

I can only remember two of the games that I have played on that computer, one was a pinball game and the other was a driving one. Every time I would play the driving game, I always imagined I was D.A.R.Y.L. If you know the movie, you probably remember the scene where D.A.R.Y.L. was playing a video game and he was driving so fast and was not colliding with anything. Well, what I would do was I would drive very slowly which allowed me not to collide into the track’s barriers.

After that, as more and more of my cousins got to own computers, I got more and more opportunities of using one… until my mother bought us one… in 1993, all that had happened prior suddenly became fun and sweet digital memories. But then, I’m getting ahead of myself.

The 80s for me was filled with a lot of fond “digital memories”, and I hope I will be able to write more about it in the coming days.

Read "Part II"