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My history of gaming part 1

Blogs > zatic
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zatic
Profile Blog Joined September 2007
Zurich15325 Posts
Last Edited: 2009-05-08 18:46:06
May 05 2009 16:05 GMT
#1
This will be an account of how I got into gaming, Starcraft, progaming, and eventually TL. I am afraid this will also be a longer piece as it goes back to Adam and Eve when people didn't have internet (or computers for that matter). Plus it will be about PC gaming in general, but that is hopefully interesting anyway for you guys.

So anyway, how did I get into PC gaming? I don't remember exactly what got me interested in PC gaming before I had a PC myself. I remember though that in like 4th grade it was THE incredibly forbidden and bad ass thing to go to one of my classmate's and watch Terminator 2 or (ghasp!) watch his brother play Wolfenstein 3D. Google screenshots of this milestone of a game - it was the state of the art back then.

[image loading]

Hitler had two miniguns and looked pissed as hell

I started playing myself taking turns with my best friend on his dad's 386 - a grotesquely huge 33Mhz monster machine. We mostly played Commander Keen (<3) and other jump 'n' run games, or split screen Tanks. As good kids we were of course limited to 1 hour daily, after that his dad would take away the monitor cable or disable the machine in some other way, which of course only got us to learn how to set up computers ourselves.

[image loading]

The original Commander Keen

At some point my friend go his own 486 machine - a beastly 66Mhz PC with Turbo button. This was when we started playing "real" multiplayer games. Windows 95 had just come out which made networking somewhat possible. My friend got a modem and we hooked up his computer to his dad's by calling his dad's modem number on the inhouse phone system. Thus we were able to play C&C, and later Warcraft2 against each other! We were both totally into RTS, until, well, Duke3D hit. Duke Nukem 3D was the first game I experienced something like competitive gaming with. It must have been 1996 when we discovered there was an actual competitive Duke3D league out there, the DDL (Deutsche Duke Liga, German Duke League). It was a challenge ladder run by a dude called Nostromo. The league was organized in AOL chat rooms and you would challenge another player - meaning you had to call them by modem (and pay for the long distance call...) for the game. If you won, you traded places on the ladder.
There was also a server in Munich where you could call in (long distance...) to simulate a LAN - actually play with more than 2 people in the game!
My friend got totally addicted. He played 8 player Duke3D on Stadium or Hollywood (Duke3D had just great, great maps, what a legendary game) "in" Munich all the time. However after his parents got the 450+ bucks phone bill for just one month, they pulled the plug on online gaming for the time being.

[image loading]

Duke 3D Atomic Edition - what an insane game!

We had to look at alternatives. I got my own PC (a ridiculously fast Pentium 200Mhz!) and we tried to set up LANs. Now, settings up a LAN back then was something completely different from today. Getting more than 2 PC hooked up over LAN with Windows 95 meant basically to randomly reinstall network drivers and scream at your PC for 1-2 days, followed by 1-2 days of actual gaming. Network equipment was fucking expensive too. A network adapter was ~120 bucks, a switch several hundreds. So we had to use Token ring networks, which is a story for itself; Let's just say whenever 1 Win95 PC crashed (happened a lot), it took down the entire network. Still, we managed to get LANs going, still playing Duke3D and Shadow Warrior (<3) and C&C and Red Alert (Btw, funny how Westwood was considered the holy grail of RTS back then).
At one point we even had a network cable running across the street from my friend's place to his neighbor, but it got damaged one stormy night I think.

[image loading]

The legendary RTS

By 1997 most of Germany was on ISDN (digital telephone line) so you could say bye-bye to those horrible modems and join the new age of fast, affordable internet. I started playing a lot of Jedi Knight, which was an incredible game at that time and a hell lot of fun to play online too. There was also rumors about two upcoming games, Half-Life and Unreal, both promised to change the FPS world.

Still, at one point all those did not matter anymore. Starcraft hit the shelves. It was love on first sight. We all forgot that there was even a genre FPS - everyone played Starcraft. We set up 8 people LANs just to play insanely long 8 player FFA NR games or run micro tournaments. It was absolutely beautiful. I devoured everything there was to know about Starcraft, sat over unit size and damage type statistics, figured out the most stupid strategies and cursed how imba Zerg was. We played all those stupid Blizzard standard maps and we were still mostly clueless about competitive Starcraft (Which can be attributed to the fact that not a single one of us actually bought the game - pirating was the thing to do).

[image loading]

May the force be with you

I marveled over the screenshots from the Brood War beta (Valkyries with napalm bombs!!!) and when Brood War was released everyone played even more SC. Eventually a few of us started playing 2vs2 on B.net, and quickly the skill gap got enormous as others lost interest. Still, it was the RTS of the time, and the game to play on LAN, everything else was completely forgotten (Red Alert, lol).

There was a period of Quake and later Quake 2, but I can't really figure out when we started to play and stop playing them. For some reason the Quake series wasn't well received among the circle of people I used to play with - maybe that was because everyone started each game with single player before trying multi player, and the Quake series, while visually spectacular, were nothing compared to the story telling and fun of the likes of Duke3D, Jedi Knight, or Shadow Warrior.

[image loading]

In 1998, these graphics were truly Unreal

The two mentioned games, Unreal and later Half-Life were released in 1998 and indeed they were both amazing. I don’t think I'll ever forget the feeling of playing Unreal the first time, especially walking out of the crashed spaceship and suddenly seeing this huuuuuuuuuuuge environment, of a scale PC games haven't had shown before. Still, Unreal was unplayable online or in LAN (most buggy network code ever?) up until UT and for some reason Half Life DM got boring pretty quickly - plus the never released TF2 was what we were all waiting for haha. So in multi player and on LANs Starcraft was still what I played most.

Until 1999, when a friend told me about this new mod for Half Life, called Counter-Strike.

To be continued.

Part 2: http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=92762

****
ModeratorI know Teamliquid is known as a massive building
FirstBorn
Profile Blog Joined March 2007
Romania3955 Posts
May 05 2009 16:11 GMT
#2
Great story thus far, this part ended just when I was starting to get into.

I remember when I was playing games on 386's/ 486's. Old times, but good times.
SonuvBob: Yes, the majority of TL is college-aged, and thus clearly stupid.
s.a.y
Profile Blog Joined October 2007
Croatia3840 Posts
May 05 2009 16:21 GMT
#3
yeah, i remember playing SC on neighbours 50mhz machine that had an Turbo button (changing it for 33 mhz to 50mhz)

i got hooked on Unreal also, on my powah 333mhz machine, and the passion did spread on Unreal Tournament, was in love for some 6-7 years.
I am not good with quotes
KOFgokuon
Profile Blog Joined August 2004
United States14893 Posts
May 05 2009 16:22 GMT
#4
oh man, CS was so dangerous
Zoler
Profile Blog Joined June 2008
Sweden6339 Posts
May 05 2009 16:25 GMT
#5
Awesome story!

I looooove these nostalgia stories

On May 06 2009 01:22 KOFgokuon wrote:
oh man, CS was so dangerous


I've experienced it as well.. but for me, the really dangerous enemy was World of Warcraft.
Lim Yo Hwan forever!
kawoq
Profile Joined November 2005
Guatemala357 Posts
May 05 2009 16:51 GMT
#6
Reminds myself... though I didnt get a computer until I got to university... not to mention internet came alot later...maybe I will write about that sometime ... I enjoy your story I will look for the next part...
"It is not a shameful thing to be unable to reach the goal. It's becoming afraid and running away, even before considering the fact that the road is long and rough, that is truly cowardly." by - Lim Yo Hwan aka SlayerS_Boxer from "Crazy as me"
TonyL2
Profile Blog Joined August 2007
England1953 Posts
May 05 2009 16:53 GMT
#7
Great story so far, looking forward to the next installment

I remember like 10 years ago with my first 2nd hand Windows 95 PC, me and my brother just played Street Fighter 2 on it. How addictive that was, and of course playing some C&C
omninmo
Profile Blog Joined April 2008
2349 Posts
Last Edited: 2009-05-05 17:03:22
May 05 2009 16:57 GMT
#8
I played Warcraft: Orcs v Humans. Duke3D was my first FPS. Diablo or Warcraft 2 was the first game I played "online" along with the westwood rts and age of empires... I played SC and remember when BW came out but none of my friends were interested in getting better and playing on battlenet so I played GoldenEye instead with them... Fast forward many years through Diablo 2 lanfests and then another few years to my 40 hours/week-neglect-friends-for-WoW two year phase in chinese net cafes...

I didnt get into competitive SC or proscene until SC2 was released (yes, i admit this) and was like, oh yea.. starcraft why havent I been playing this.. so i promptly stopped playing on a fairly high level of DotA and leapt into the depths of BW noobdom. oh if only I have played BW on battlenet back then.
Danzepol
Profile Blog Joined May 2007
United States211 Posts
May 05 2009 17:26 GMT
#9
awesome write up, i'm a bit surprised diablo has no mention in your history..


although i guess that wasn't as fun without bnet...you pirates.
in a fox with a box
zatic
Profile Blog Joined September 2007
Zurich15325 Posts
Last Edited: 2009-05-05 17:31:42
May 05 2009 17:30 GMT
#10
I actually skipped a lot of games I only played in single player. Though I never got what's so great about Diablo so that would not have been in there anyway. Actually I don't think I ever played Diablo after the initial try out at a friend's again.

Oh yeah regarding pirates: We eventually all bought the games we wanted to play online, just on the LANs most of the stuff was pirated.
ModeratorI know Teamliquid is known as a massive building
Equinox_kr
Profile Blog Joined December 2006
United States7395 Posts
May 05 2009 17:32 GMT
#11
Hehe eagerly awaiting the next part.

Warcraft 2 was the first game that got me into RTS, there was a ... college student (I think?) who made money by repairing computers and setting shit up. He gave me Warcraft 2 and he told me not to play too much. Sadly I was unable to listen to him LOL

Also worked at Baskin Robbins, he gave me a free cone.
^-^
Xeofreestyler
Profile Blog Joined June 2005
Belgium6768 Posts
May 05 2009 17:34 GMT
#12
i thank the universe for zatic
<3
Graphics
LosingID8
Profile Blog Joined December 2006
CA10826 Posts
May 05 2009 18:48 GMT
#13
hehe can't wait for the next part!
ModeratorResident K-POP Elitist
ShadowDrgn
Profile Blog Joined July 2007
United States2497 Posts
May 05 2009 19:17 GMT
#14
On May 06 2009 01:21 s.a.y wrote:
yeah, i remember playing SC on neighbours 50mhz machine that had an Turbo button (changing it for 33 mhz to 50mhz)


Oh man. I beat the SC campaign on a 486 overclocked to 80Mhz, and it was slooooooow. The game took a few minutes just to load! Playing on a 50Mhz machine must have been real torture.
Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that’s the end of you.
FuDDx *
Profile Blog Joined October 2002
United States5008 Posts
May 05 2009 20:16 GMT
#15
Love reading others experinces thank you for sharing sir look forward to future posts.
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Balloon-Man-FuDD/237447769616965?ref=hl
Carnivorous Sheep
Profile Blog Joined November 2008
Baa?21242 Posts
May 05 2009 20:55 GMT
#16
On May 06 2009 01:05 zatic wrote:
Until 1999, when a friend told me about this new mod for Half Life, called Counter-Strike.



O SHI-!

Haha, nice read, looking forward to next part!
TranslatorBaa!
REDBLUEGREEN
Profile Blog Joined June 2008
Germany1903 Posts
May 05 2009 21:17 GMT
#17
On May 06 2009 01:05 zatic wrote:
and for some reason Half Life DM got boring pretty quickly


I still play it on every single LAN. HL and Q3 best multiplayer FPS ever -.-
Malongo
Profile Blog Joined November 2005
Chile3472 Posts
May 06 2009 04:06 GMT
#18
I just realized that im older than zatic. (: I remember the bomber rush in CCred alert. Some lol moments:
- The turbo button. never has done shit.
- Commander keen. Never played a payed episode.
- Command and conquer using telephone/modem : if you were called by someone you lost the connection and the call (LOOL)
- Duke Nukem: there was a parental mode because there was a lot of blood and some stripers showing boobs in the game.

Help me! im still improving my English. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. M. G.
SonuvBob
Profile Blog Joined October 2006
Aiur21549 Posts
May 07 2009 03:34 GMT
#19
Whoooo wants some Wang?!

I had so much fun with SW, made custom maps and everything.
Administrator
XinRan
Profile Blog Joined August 2008
United States530 Posts
May 07 2009 05:40 GMT
#20
That was a good read! Don't you ever feel like part of your life is gone after you stopped playing Counterstike? After all, you invested so much time into it.
"To be fair, Kal played like absolute garbage. His noted inconsistency and bad record versus Jaedong high fived into a cacophony of suck." - TwoToneTerran
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