{"id":1108,"date":"2019-08-17T15:19:23","date_gmt":"2019-08-17T13:19:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/harsmann.com\/blog\/?p=1108"},"modified":"2020-06-28T11:01:26","modified_gmt":"2020-06-28T09:01:26","slug":"thoughts-of-games-my-brief-history-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harsmann.com\/site\/2019\/08\/thoughts-of-games-my-brief-history-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts of Games – My Brief History #1"},"content":{"rendered":"

I just made my first game Steam<\/a> purchase purchase in 2019. For mid-August that is quite unusual, because ever since joining Steam in 2012 (Skyrim<\/a> was first), I have accumulated games at a steady pace, in particular during the various sales events up to a point close to the GAMBLE state (i.e., Games AMassed Beyond Life Expectancy). Now it seems that I have stopped buying. Partly, I am sure, because I realized that spending money on games I will never play is sort of silly, and whatever game I am interested in, it will always come on sale again, and buying one game that I play at full price is a better deal than buying 4 games at 50% of that I won’t play. However, to fair to myself, I have<\/em> been aware of this fact for a while, but maybe I just couldn’t stop just kept collecting stuff, like all the Beamdog<\/a> remakes of Infinity engine<\/a> games (which I probably won’t play anyway, but I already own them on CD\/DVD and played through them and AD&D 2nd Edition<\/a> hasn’t aged that well, but I still bought them once more). But partly also – I believe – because now I am actually playing something specific, instead of thinking about all the games that I might play if only I had\/took the time to do it. And that is great!<\/p>\n

And there is always another Steam\/GOG\/Epic\/Ubi\/Origin\/Humble Store sale coming…<\/p>\n

And whatever I do, there will never be a complete collection of remastered infinity engine games, because the Icewind Dale II source code seems to be lost forever<\/a>…<\/p>\n

Now, speaking of games, why not share my story of gaming?<\/p>\n

My brief history of gaming #1 – It began with the C64<\/h2>\n

Well, it actually began with the few arcade machines that stood around the town where I grew up. One in the hallway of the sports center had games like Scramble<\/a>, Bomb Jack<\/a> and Buzzard<\/a>; from the grillbar I remember Ladybug, Xevious<\/a>, Xain’d Sleena<\/a>, Silk Worm<\/a> and Flying Shark<\/a>. All very exiting and very expensive for a pre-teen (sadly, I never excelled in any of those games). After seeing a friend’s Commodore 64 I quickly calculated what an excellent return I would have on that investment and started saving up (Sunday newspapers..). In March 1986 I got the machine and Press[ed] Play on Tape for the first time. I had the C64 until 1990.<\/p>\n

I learned BASIC<\/a> (yes : ) programming on the C64 and briefly saw the desktop future in GEOS<\/a>, but it was mostly playing games and sharing that excitement with friends that I did. It was a great time and it is fun to think back on the friends and the games we used to play and which, it turns out, formed me as a gamer.<\/p>\n

The RPGs<\/h4>\n