PC gaming is for the REAL dorks though, right? PC gamers like to “frag”, “spawn” and many other things that hopefully enjoy the pleasures of being called a “faggot” by a 12yr old from Levenshulme, pretend they are in WARS despite their only combat experiences involving a couple of episodes of Sharpe and something or other about ROME.
However, I am now going to have to change my ways – a fact which may or may not be related to my recent acquisition of a laptop HEM HEM! And of course I’m concerned about great graphics, up to date gameplay and getting involved with this massive crowd of online dorksfascinating gamers – and that’s why I’ve just ordered the box set of Kings Quest from eBay!
For those not in the know, the last time I played a Kings Quest game would have been on my dad’s computer in 1989. I played Kings Quest 4: The Perils of Rosella where you played a Princess teleported to another world to find a magical FRUIT well poo ur. At age 8, I don’t really remember getting that far, but being absolutely fascinated by this huge world enfolding before me. Wikipedia also tells me that this game was the first one to feature a female protagonist and it was released in… 1988. I wonder if getting to play one of my first ever videogames (featuring a human character that is, although to be honest with you I generally thought the Centipede was a girl) as a female might have had an impact in my continued interest in games through the years. I attempted a little of From Barbie to Mortal Kombat: Gender and Computer Games a while ago, which talked about ‘games for girls’, focusing on titles such as Barbie: Fashion Designer which thankfully I’d never even heard of (despite outselling Doom and Quake which are far higher profile in videogames world!), but with my innocent straightforward experience of playing a strong female lead – who wasn’t glamourous, objectified and centred on outfit changes and a high speed stat/low attack – perhaps that’s why I was far less likely to write games off, unlike the majority of my friends who couldn’t find any interest in them…
Anyway! Perhaps now I am at the ripe old age of 25 I can finally complete Kings Quest IV! I also remember a Snoopy game which involved a bouncing ball you had to kick through the town. Nothing else happened. It had to bounce over a puddle or something, and then I abandoned it in favour of, I don’t know, going outside and playing like I was supposed to. Needless to say, I haven’t bothered to track that one down on eBay.
Actually, speaking of Centipede, wasn’t that one of the first “games for girls”? I’ve read it was even designed to use the trackball because the trackball was thought to look like a breast, instead of the more phallic joystick.
Looking it up on Wikipedia, I see that Centipede is actually considered to be the first arcade game designed by a woman. No info on the trackball symbology, though.
The immersive fun of Sierra games was always tempered by the frequent ‘oh dear you have walked too far to the left and died’ frustraton. That said, I have a (presumably) abandonware copy of The Colonel’s Bequest on this here pooter that I might even finish one of these days. I WILL HAVE MY REVENGE on all text adventures once I’ve learned to use Inform properly.
B-b-but surely girls would much rather grasp a phallus that rub a breast to play a game?
Unless there is a suggestion that ll centipede players are lesbians? And thus all male gamers are gay!
I think the suggestion might be that all male gamers are w4nkers Pete.
And to be fair statistically speaking they won’t be far off.
I totally died halfway through Kings Quest VI, wherein the protagonist was An Boy. I am a million percent sure of this. It wasn’t as good as Monkey Island. Or Simon the Sorceror. Or this other one I played all the time, where there was a wizard, and a barkeeper you had to trade a potion with in order to defeat a witch… Oh actually I think I’m getting mixed up with Simon the Sorceror again. It was on the Amiga, at any rate. KQ VI wasn’t though – I had to play that on a shoddy old laptop with no power supply apart from a big long battery stick that kept overheating.
Nintendogs is well better innit.
Rob, that game sounds GREAT! Do you want a swapsie for a Kings Quest or two? HOORAY I am totally in the 20th century. Ahrmm.
I ph34r this “centipede = winky, trackball = booby” conversation is in danger of turning into C4’s (not)forthcoming Top 100 80s videogames. What WERE they thinking when they designed that trackball they must have been on DRUGS or PR0N or BOTH!
FACT: I have never played Monkey Island.
ANOTHER FACT: I would certainly like to!
Rob, I meant to say last time you brought up Inform (on Food-SD i think) that if you wanted to collaborate on something i’d be up for it! I could do with entirely abandoning my never to be completed sci fi nonsense game of dullness and doing something entirely different – and a lot smaller would be nice too.
This would be a very good idea once I get beyond “There is a cat in the room. If you try to leave the room, the cat eats you.”
One of the things I always wanted to try but never had a collaborator to help was the Inform technique of coming up with a problem (like “There is a cat in the room. If you try to leave the room, the cat eats you”) and then just sitting around coming up with wildly different approaches to solving the problem.
My favourite when we did this on the old IF groups for “a cat is stuck up a tree” was “go back in time and cut down/kill the tree before it grows too big”. since then i have seen a variation on this in 2 games (Day of the Tentacle, and Curses)