Back when I was a wee tot growing up in Iowa, we got an Apple II computer. God knows how much it cost. Back then, there was one store in town that carried Apples, and they also stocked a few games to play on them. I only knew one other family in town who owned a computer.
With all of the buzz and marketing surrounding the release of Halo 3, I started thinking about those computer games that I played over 25 years ago. The two games I played most were both command-driven mystery / adventure games--Mystery House and the Wizard and the Princess. These were some of the first graphical adventure games in existence. Not very exciting, but hey, it was a step up from Pong!
The Wizard and the Princess never left me, because there was a part of the game that I could never get past. About two screens into the game (because the game was, essentially, a finite collection of set pixillated vignettes) the player encountered a rattlesnake.
I spent more hours than I should have sitting in my basement staring at that rattlesnake screen shot. I could never get past him, and so essentially, the game was over for me. On to Castle Wolfenstein and pinball! (and eventually I dumped all video games in favor of watching MTV 24 hours a day. What can I say, I was an overachiever.)
Getting past the rattlesnake stymied me for over 25 years. When I was playing the game back then, I didn't know anyone else that owned it. I didn't have anyone I could ask online for game tips. I didn't have anything besides the manual and my stunning lack of ingenuity when it came to computer games.
When I googled the Wizard and the Princess last night, I had the answer for how to get past the snake (and for that matter how to win the entire game) in several minutes.
A neat reminder of how much things have equalized since 1982 (as far as computer ownership and usage goes), how much information is online, and how easy it is to connect with others with arcane interests.
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