What's everyone's gaming background?
Posted: February 15th, 2022, 2:51 pm
Hi Gents and Dirty D's,
Was chatting other day about what games we used to play. Been meaning to make a post reminiscing about games of yore.
I was born in '83 and I think my first gaming was the original Nintendo NES, unless you count those shitty single-game handhelds. Wasn't an uber gamer back then or anything. Remember jerking my leg up to try to hit the right jumps in Mario, Duck Hunt, Ninja Turtles, etc. Eventually got a Sega Genesis I'm pretty sure. Then in my junior high school/high school days had Playstation, then an N64 also. Got the N64 for split screen Goldeneye 'cause it was so fun. I used my allowance to buy a ton of Playstation games. All kinds of genres from Need for Speed-type racing games, Metal Gear Solid, and lots of other games I remember being super excited to research and buy and then, often, quickly disappointed once I loaded up the CD. One highlight was Jet Moto (and the sequels.) It was a racing game with these hoverbike things that were a cross between a jetski, snowmobile, and dirt bike, and you could do tricks mid-air and race split screen. There was this glowing purple magnetic grappling hook you could use to help you turn corners really tight.
I also got into computer games in jr. high and high school, mainly because my family relocated to another state for my dad's big promotion and suddenly I didn't have any friends to be my wacky self with, so I became very socially withdrawn. I was enthralled at how fast technology was developing, and I was always researching the new shit coming out, like those cheesy Personal Digital Assistants, new game systems, better graphics, Sound Blasters, and so on. One of my first real love affairs with a game was with Tribes - it was the first fps-z game (named that because you can fly, and hence there's a 3rd "z-axis" you can travel on.) It came out in 1998 when I was in jr high and was way ahead of it's time, with not only jetpack movement (which you could use to gain inertia and "ski" up and down the big, mountainous maps) but also multiple vehicles and multiple classes to play as. You could be a light, nimble armor class, medium armor, or a hulking heavy armor that could take tons of damage and hold a lot of weapons. There were also autonomous turrets that you could repair or destroy, generators to power your turrets and weapons-refill stations, and so on. Engineers could deploy turrets, forcefields, jump pads, sensors (motion or pulse based) and on and on. I think there were multiple modes, but CTF was most popular and my favorite. I remember one map called Broadside, which was this huge valley with two floating bases opposite one another, and you'd have to use a couple jet packs full of energy to reach the other floating base. They had a couple different entrances, with the top entrance having a motion detector defense turret that you could slowly inch toward - staying still until it deactivated before you could move again - and then take out with the right combo of guns and grenades. Then on to the generator room to kill their power, and maybe to the flag, or just fack up their inventory stations and so on. The skill ceiling on Tribes was super high, and a lot of players could do advanced moves the developers had never even intended, from high speed skiing across the whole map, to using mines in combination with your main weapon to launch yourself higher, etc. etc. Also, people were so good with the aim that they could hit someone with the spinfusor (essentially a rocket launcher that shot an explosive blue disc) in mid-air at super far distances -- like these people had an insane ability to lead their targets, like Trench or Cyber with a SMAW but even more, because the person you're shooting at is flying and changing trajectory in flight with bursts of jetpack.
Anyways, I remember playing Tribes a bunch in my mid teens. I'd even have friends over (when I eventually make some at my new school) and one of us would log in on the downstairs computer with the cable modem, and I would play with them on my computer in my room, using Netzero, which was this funny free ISP that let you get a 56k dial up connection in exchange for letting them paste an ad-banner over your screen, even if you were using another program like a game or something. I also played Duke Nukem 3d with that upstairs/downstairs setup. And a couple of not-so-popular Real time strategy games: Total Annihilation (Mecha themed) and Krush Kill n Destroy (weird creature/cyborg themed).
As games got better (read: better graphics but not much else) I dabbled in stuff like Unreal (oooo pretty....boring), Quake 2, 3, Unreal Tournament, and so on. Deus Ex. Max Payne. Mainly seemed like a lot of gimmick features. I wasn't crazy about single player stories but they were okay. Seemed kinda hackneyed. Then along came Half Life, and more importantly, mods.
Back when I'd played Tribes there were a bunch of mods. I hadn't done any of the fully-fledged ones that changed skins and made it into an RPG or other such stuff, but certain mods tweaked the weapons in one way or another. Mainly I played the Renegades mod which added a bullet-based sniper rifle (instead of energy-based, which sapped your jet pack energy reservoir) and other cool additions. Then there was Ultra Renegades that basically had full auto everything, from sniper rifle to mortar and so on, basically craziness. Anyways, with Half Life of course came Counter-Strike, and as maddening as it was to wait like 10 minutes for the next round after you died, I got super into that game. I was in high school by then, and, now moved back to my home state, had a bunch of friends who played with me, either in person or over the internet. I actually got so into CS/Half Life that I started my own mod fan website for Half Life mods. I taught myself html in high school and got into amateur photoshop stuff, and the theme for my "Flip-Net Mod Resource" was basically tits and ass. Every page, whether it was my friend Andrew (game name "Blue" -- I was still Blink back then) writing about how to shoot out windows under your teammates feet and piss them off, or serious articles by me -- every page was superimposed over a blown up version of this picture:
https://wallhere.com/en/wallpaper/312311
Hahaha. I actually ended up getting annoyed at how all the upstart mods - a lot of which were really unique and creative - were getting drowned out by the surging popularity of Counter Strike around the year 2000. I did this uber serious (for a 17 year old) article where I tabulated all the server data for Half Life game servers, then compared how many were playing Counter Strike versus other popular mods like Day of Defeat or Action Half Life (was like the matrix where you could dive and have akimbo pistols and stuff) versus the upstart mods that were more risky like Nakatomi Plaza (Die Hard) or the Wastelands (fallout style.)
Here's the link to my try-hard serious article, all graphics got cut as it's just a basic Wayback copy:
http://web.archive.org/web/200010181713 ... comm.shtml
Another cool thing Flip-Net did was we took one of the first audio interviews with Gooseman, the creator of the Counter Strike mod, and overlaid it with new audio. For example, where, in the original interview, Goose was asked how many hours he spent coding per day ("Oh 11 or 12 maybe") we replaced the original interviewer's voice with my friend Andrew's, asking Goose how many hours a day he spent masturbating. Foolishly, I hosted the .mp3 file on our own web server, so our site went down for a day or so when we went over bandwidth. We even got mentioned (made fun of, again, but not for our tits and ass) on the biggest CS site, CSNation.net! Everyone has their 15 minutes I guess... lol.
Eventually, Andrew and I split Flip-Net into two sub-sites, with me heading up "Intel" (which had a serious aim) and Andrew/Blue heading up "Misfo" which was purely a trolling/joke site. Somehow, Wayback only backed up Andrew's site *cough*facker* -- so here's that, lol: https://web.archive.org/web/20000904102 ... ndex.shtml Oh yeah, we sort of had a "staff" (non paid of course, and we didn't make any money off the sites) who wrote editorials and did content along with us. It was pretty fun. I remember being so excited for the grand re-opening after I'd done a total site re-design (with the big titty picture of Caprice in a bikini).
For CS, as much as I loved to hate it, I did play the crap out of that game. Not as much as I've played DC now, but a lot. My favorite map was CS_militia, which was an infiltration map where the counter terrs had to storm a house across this rocky "yard" with little cover, and you had multiple entrance points and so on to get to the terrorists.
CS_militia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eL-zB9I08c
From there, I went to college, and sort of forgot Counter strike and gaming for the most part, because my new hobby as a freshman was smoking obscene amounts of pot with my new, close friend group. We did play some Playstation 2 games, but they were fluff games like racing games where you had big crashes, or the NBA Streetz basketball game. My roomate played CS religiously, though, so I was still exposed to that. (Note: I just looked up the racing game we played, that had slow motion crashes, and it was actually called "Burnout" hahaha)
I vaguely remember first starting to play DC after I'd transferred to another school, and then once I dropped out of my second college I played it a bunch while I was grumpily living at my parents' house again. Basically the only fun part of that part of my life. Eventually I moved out, kept playing the game...and then went to go live in the woods for a year at this wilderness school. From like 2005-2013 or so I barely played games at all. Then when I left the wilderness school/commune, moved to Germany with my fiance, and got married I started playing first Tribes (still a few people who play online but they're insanely good but now,) and then loaded DC back up. In Germany I pretty much exclusively played on the Ukranian Maxnet server, then when we moved back to the US in 2018 I switched to you funny facks. The rest is Nas history.
Or wait...no it's actually not. I forgot I started playing a new game, PUBG Mobile, on my phone once I got a newish-iphone model. Basically it's one of those newfangled battle royale games where you parachute onto a battlefield with like 100 other people, and it's a fight to be the last alive (or last four man team alive.) It's super addictive, partially because you have to scavenge and kit out all the weapons you have (you land with nothing but fists) and of course the randomization of what you will land near is one of the most addictive parts of any gambling game. This one is so addictive I've managed to delete and re-install it from my phone about 20 times, and lately have been just forcing myself not to play it because it just becomes a time suck and is too convenient because I can play it anywhere. Also, I got these plastic trigger things that attach to my phone and make it pretty intuitive to play it without having to claw my phone awkwardly. Plus, yeah...the developer who makes it is constantly adding in all these gimmicks that you can earn with player points, or pay for with real money, (even for like new outfits for your ingame character, WTF???) and it's just basically a really transparent gambing app for young people...and the voice chat is usually filled with apathetic assholes. This game basically motivated me to NOT upgrade my computer to the point where I could play COD Warzone or other new games, because I get the distinct picture that mainstream FPS gaming has become a pretty not-welcoming place to be unless you're hyper competitive and an asshole. It also seems that the next generation has gotten extremely dumbed down by being exposed to this constant hyper consumerism...to the point that I've got young kids (like 10 year olds and teens) making fun of me on voice chat because I haven't collected a bunch of extra stuff for my in game character to wear.
Nonetheless, overall I preferred games that had a mix of strategy and fast paced action, like racing games or CTF-oriented FPSes.
EDIT: I also admit I at one point owned a Virtual Boy. And no, Bang, that's not what it sounds like.
Jet Moto:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-xous047rQ
Tribes Broadside:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1WH4V7e4Qs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbbsG1SPfg8
Total Annihilation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WdYAV-11Fs
KKND:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq0Oh0otQ0A
Burnout:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KWwHLldrP0
PUBG Mobile:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1uAsmovqc0
Die Hard Trilogy (this was great on playstation! just remembered:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKBpkVggl04
Was chatting other day about what games we used to play. Been meaning to make a post reminiscing about games of yore.
I was born in '83 and I think my first gaming was the original Nintendo NES, unless you count those shitty single-game handhelds. Wasn't an uber gamer back then or anything. Remember jerking my leg up to try to hit the right jumps in Mario, Duck Hunt, Ninja Turtles, etc. Eventually got a Sega Genesis I'm pretty sure. Then in my junior high school/high school days had Playstation, then an N64 also. Got the N64 for split screen Goldeneye 'cause it was so fun. I used my allowance to buy a ton of Playstation games. All kinds of genres from Need for Speed-type racing games, Metal Gear Solid, and lots of other games I remember being super excited to research and buy and then, often, quickly disappointed once I loaded up the CD. One highlight was Jet Moto (and the sequels.) It was a racing game with these hoverbike things that were a cross between a jetski, snowmobile, and dirt bike, and you could do tricks mid-air and race split screen. There was this glowing purple magnetic grappling hook you could use to help you turn corners really tight.
I also got into computer games in jr. high and high school, mainly because my family relocated to another state for my dad's big promotion and suddenly I didn't have any friends to be my wacky self with, so I became very socially withdrawn. I was enthralled at how fast technology was developing, and I was always researching the new shit coming out, like those cheesy Personal Digital Assistants, new game systems, better graphics, Sound Blasters, and so on. One of my first real love affairs with a game was with Tribes - it was the first fps-z game (named that because you can fly, and hence there's a 3rd "z-axis" you can travel on.) It came out in 1998 when I was in jr high and was way ahead of it's time, with not only jetpack movement (which you could use to gain inertia and "ski" up and down the big, mountainous maps) but also multiple vehicles and multiple classes to play as. You could be a light, nimble armor class, medium armor, or a hulking heavy armor that could take tons of damage and hold a lot of weapons. There were also autonomous turrets that you could repair or destroy, generators to power your turrets and weapons-refill stations, and so on. Engineers could deploy turrets, forcefields, jump pads, sensors (motion or pulse based) and on and on. I think there were multiple modes, but CTF was most popular and my favorite. I remember one map called Broadside, which was this huge valley with two floating bases opposite one another, and you'd have to use a couple jet packs full of energy to reach the other floating base. They had a couple different entrances, with the top entrance having a motion detector defense turret that you could slowly inch toward - staying still until it deactivated before you could move again - and then take out with the right combo of guns and grenades. Then on to the generator room to kill their power, and maybe to the flag, or just fack up their inventory stations and so on. The skill ceiling on Tribes was super high, and a lot of players could do advanced moves the developers had never even intended, from high speed skiing across the whole map, to using mines in combination with your main weapon to launch yourself higher, etc. etc. Also, people were so good with the aim that they could hit someone with the spinfusor (essentially a rocket launcher that shot an explosive blue disc) in mid-air at super far distances -- like these people had an insane ability to lead their targets, like Trench or Cyber with a SMAW but even more, because the person you're shooting at is flying and changing trajectory in flight with bursts of jetpack.
Anyways, I remember playing Tribes a bunch in my mid teens. I'd even have friends over (when I eventually make some at my new school) and one of us would log in on the downstairs computer with the cable modem, and I would play with them on my computer in my room, using Netzero, which was this funny free ISP that let you get a 56k dial up connection in exchange for letting them paste an ad-banner over your screen, even if you were using another program like a game or something. I also played Duke Nukem 3d with that upstairs/downstairs setup. And a couple of not-so-popular Real time strategy games: Total Annihilation (Mecha themed) and Krush Kill n Destroy (weird creature/cyborg themed).
As games got better (read: better graphics but not much else) I dabbled in stuff like Unreal (oooo pretty....boring), Quake 2, 3, Unreal Tournament, and so on. Deus Ex. Max Payne. Mainly seemed like a lot of gimmick features. I wasn't crazy about single player stories but they were okay. Seemed kinda hackneyed. Then along came Half Life, and more importantly, mods.
Back when I'd played Tribes there were a bunch of mods. I hadn't done any of the fully-fledged ones that changed skins and made it into an RPG or other such stuff, but certain mods tweaked the weapons in one way or another. Mainly I played the Renegades mod which added a bullet-based sniper rifle (instead of energy-based, which sapped your jet pack energy reservoir) and other cool additions. Then there was Ultra Renegades that basically had full auto everything, from sniper rifle to mortar and so on, basically craziness. Anyways, with Half Life of course came Counter-Strike, and as maddening as it was to wait like 10 minutes for the next round after you died, I got super into that game. I was in high school by then, and, now moved back to my home state, had a bunch of friends who played with me, either in person or over the internet. I actually got so into CS/Half Life that I started my own mod fan website for Half Life mods. I taught myself html in high school and got into amateur photoshop stuff, and the theme for my "Flip-Net Mod Resource" was basically tits and ass. Every page, whether it was my friend Andrew (game name "Blue" -- I was still Blink back then) writing about how to shoot out windows under your teammates feet and piss them off, or serious articles by me -- every page was superimposed over a blown up version of this picture:
https://wallhere.com/en/wallpaper/312311
Hahaha. I actually ended up getting annoyed at how all the upstart mods - a lot of which were really unique and creative - were getting drowned out by the surging popularity of Counter Strike around the year 2000. I did this uber serious (for a 17 year old) article where I tabulated all the server data for Half Life game servers, then compared how many were playing Counter Strike versus other popular mods like Day of Defeat or Action Half Life (was like the matrix where you could dive and have akimbo pistols and stuff) versus the upstart mods that were more risky like Nakatomi Plaza (Die Hard) or the Wastelands (fallout style.)
Here's the link to my try-hard serious article, all graphics got cut as it's just a basic Wayback copy:
http://web.archive.org/web/200010181713 ... comm.shtml
Another cool thing Flip-Net did was we took one of the first audio interviews with Gooseman, the creator of the Counter Strike mod, and overlaid it with new audio. For example, where, in the original interview, Goose was asked how many hours he spent coding per day ("Oh 11 or 12 maybe") we replaced the original interviewer's voice with my friend Andrew's, asking Goose how many hours a day he spent masturbating. Foolishly, I hosted the .mp3 file on our own web server, so our site went down for a day or so when we went over bandwidth. We even got mentioned (made fun of, again, but not for our tits and ass) on the biggest CS site, CSNation.net! Everyone has their 15 minutes I guess... lol.
Eventually, Andrew and I split Flip-Net into two sub-sites, with me heading up "Intel" (which had a serious aim) and Andrew/Blue heading up "Misfo" which was purely a trolling/joke site. Somehow, Wayback only backed up Andrew's site *cough*facker* -- so here's that, lol: https://web.archive.org/web/20000904102 ... ndex.shtml Oh yeah, we sort of had a "staff" (non paid of course, and we didn't make any money off the sites) who wrote editorials and did content along with us. It was pretty fun. I remember being so excited for the grand re-opening after I'd done a total site re-design (with the big titty picture of Caprice in a bikini).
For CS, as much as I loved to hate it, I did play the crap out of that game. Not as much as I've played DC now, but a lot. My favorite map was CS_militia, which was an infiltration map where the counter terrs had to storm a house across this rocky "yard" with little cover, and you had multiple entrance points and so on to get to the terrorists.
CS_militia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eL-zB9I08c
From there, I went to college, and sort of forgot Counter strike and gaming for the most part, because my new hobby as a freshman was smoking obscene amounts of pot with my new, close friend group. We did play some Playstation 2 games, but they were fluff games like racing games where you had big crashes, or the NBA Streetz basketball game. My roomate played CS religiously, though, so I was still exposed to that. (Note: I just looked up the racing game we played, that had slow motion crashes, and it was actually called "Burnout" hahaha)
I vaguely remember first starting to play DC after I'd transferred to another school, and then once I dropped out of my second college I played it a bunch while I was grumpily living at my parents' house again. Basically the only fun part of that part of my life. Eventually I moved out, kept playing the game...and then went to go live in the woods for a year at this wilderness school. From like 2005-2013 or so I barely played games at all. Then when I left the wilderness school/commune, moved to Germany with my fiance, and got married I started playing first Tribes (still a few people who play online but they're insanely good but now,) and then loaded DC back up. In Germany I pretty much exclusively played on the Ukranian Maxnet server, then when we moved back to the US in 2018 I switched to you funny facks. The rest is Nas history.
Or wait...no it's actually not. I forgot I started playing a new game, PUBG Mobile, on my phone once I got a newish-iphone model. Basically it's one of those newfangled battle royale games where you parachute onto a battlefield with like 100 other people, and it's a fight to be the last alive (or last four man team alive.) It's super addictive, partially because you have to scavenge and kit out all the weapons you have (you land with nothing but fists) and of course the randomization of what you will land near is one of the most addictive parts of any gambling game. This one is so addictive I've managed to delete and re-install it from my phone about 20 times, and lately have been just forcing myself not to play it because it just becomes a time suck and is too convenient because I can play it anywhere. Also, I got these plastic trigger things that attach to my phone and make it pretty intuitive to play it without having to claw my phone awkwardly. Plus, yeah...the developer who makes it is constantly adding in all these gimmicks that you can earn with player points, or pay for with real money, (even for like new outfits for your ingame character, WTF???) and it's just basically a really transparent gambing app for young people...and the voice chat is usually filled with apathetic assholes. This game basically motivated me to NOT upgrade my computer to the point where I could play COD Warzone or other new games, because I get the distinct picture that mainstream FPS gaming has become a pretty not-welcoming place to be unless you're hyper competitive and an asshole. It also seems that the next generation has gotten extremely dumbed down by being exposed to this constant hyper consumerism...to the point that I've got young kids (like 10 year olds and teens) making fun of me on voice chat because I haven't collected a bunch of extra stuff for my in game character to wear.
Nonetheless, overall I preferred games that had a mix of strategy and fast paced action, like racing games or CTF-oriented FPSes.
EDIT: I also admit I at one point owned a Virtual Boy. And no, Bang, that's not what it sounds like.
Jet Moto:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-xous047rQ
Tribes Broadside:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1WH4V7e4Qs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbbsG1SPfg8
Total Annihilation:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WdYAV-11Fs
KKND:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dq0Oh0otQ0A
Burnout:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5KWwHLldrP0
PUBG Mobile:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1uAsmovqc0
Die Hard Trilogy (this was great on playstation! just remembered:)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKBpkVggl04