Retro gaming from the 90’s
Gaming in the 90’s – Compliments of InMotionGaming.com
With the next generation of consoles on the horizon, and PC hardware getting faster and cheaper every day, the technology that powers modern gaming is astounding.
Compliments of r/gaming
Despite that, sometimes I long for the days where you could fire up a gigantic tower PC with a “lightning-fast” Pentium processor, spin up a CD-ROM drive so loud it sounded like a jet engine, and squint into a 50lb desk-hogging 15” CRT monitor for hours on end. Yes, I am talking about the good ol’ days of PC gaming in the 1990s.
You know the games I am talking about: classics like Myst and the 7th guest. These games came on about a zillion CD-ROMs, and around every 5-10 minutes you got to stop playing in order to change disks. Some of the games were so revolutionary, they included tiny videos clips embedded in rendered still-shots. The videos were grainy and often resembled moving postage stamps.
PC gaming in the 90s was a complicated, and often a serious, technical undertaking. You had to set up your sound card’s IRQ, DMA, and port settings, confirm and adjust your graphics settings, and update all of your drivers before even playing. Keep in mind, this was in the very early days of the World Wide Web, but at that time dial-up BBS services were more common. The process to configure your rig for a new game often caused the game (and sometimes the entire machine) to freeze or crash multiple times until you got the settings just right. If you had a game pad or joystick, forget about it – you better settle in for the weekend because it would take even longer.
For those of us who are nostalgic enough, there are sites like GOG.com (good old games) where you can re-play your favorite vintage games on your modern PC or Mac hardware. Some titles like the 7th guest and Duke Nukem are even available on your ipad, a concept that seemed like the ultimate science fiction back when they were released.
Here are some of my favorites from that golden era of gaming. Which ones do you miss the most?
Under a Killing Moon was released in 1994 by Access Software and stared the anti-hero, Tex Murphy. Tex was a lazy slob slash private investigator living in a gritty urban wasteland. The story was great and compelling, and I remember some of the story developments even today, nearly 20 years later. The game came on 4 CD-ROMS, and included the then-cutting-edge concept of grainy “full-motion” video which at that time was somewhat rare in PC games. Of course, the degree to which it was really “full-motion” largely depended on the horsepower of your video card.
The 7th Guest was a classic PC horror game that has since become a legend. There is even an Ipad version available, but there is nothing like the original PC version. It was released in 1993 on CD-ROM by Trilobyte, and the game featured the chilling atmosphere of a haunted mansion. The player would explore the spooky setting while solving multiple gruesome puzzles as moved through the storyline. In it’s day, the graphics were pretty amazing and the level of detail in the 3D renderings was uncanny. Also, it was effing scary.
Grim Fandango was released in 1998 by LucasArts, and was a beautifully rendered game with characters inspired by Día de Muertos (Day of the dead). In it, you played a travel agent guiding/saving a woman through a long and dangerous journey into the underworld. The game was a not a financial success, but won a lot of praise and awards from gamers and the gaming press alike.
Duke was a foul-mouthed, filthy pig of an anti-hero who smoked cigars, enjoyed long leaks in urinals that would make a firehose blush, and threw money at pixilated exotic dancers in a dysfunctional version of the future. There wasn’t really a story, but there didn’t have to be. It was all about blood-soaked violence and misogyny and teenage boys ate it up (myself included, guilty as charged).
Myst was a life-changing experience for me when it was released in 1993. It was developed by two brothers who wanted to make a non-violent game that was suitable for their kids to play. Normally that would be a recipe for a snooze-fest, but the brothers succeeded and the game was awesome. It took place in a beautifully rendered 3D fantasy world that included lost islands, mysterious steampunk-ish contraptions and vehicles, and creepy swamps that led to dark caverns. There were lots of “postage stamp” videos (allegedly starring the brothers themselves), and you moved by clicking through the world, one screen shot at a time. Myst set a new standard for interactive puzzle games, and still holds its own today.
