A Little Bit of Gaming History.

What happens when Exhaustion, Heat, and Gaming Grumpiness collide?

You find something old to play.

I played some Guild Wars this weekend because it was Winter’s Day in July. I also played some SWTOR this weekend. But both were kind of boring me. I was sleepy, cranky, uncomfortable, and channeling the outside heat. My AC was working itself to death attempting to drop the temperature from 76 degrees to 72 degrees inside. The external heat was so overwhelming that it was overwhelming my AC.

I realized that I was tired of running around killing things. Zeus: Master of Olympus was sitting there. City Building sounded more fun. City building with objectives and not just random city building like Sims City Social, or whatever it is called, the name escapes me right now.

As the names Impressions Games and Sierra Entertainment play by, I realize how much I miss Sierra and Impression games. I liked an awful lot of their games. I have Pharaoh and Cleopatra. I think I have one of the Caesar games as well. I never got the expansion for it, Poseidon: Master of Atlantis. I don’t actually remember seeing that anywhere.

I think that Pharaoh seemed a little more flexible and easier to control various administrative details. If you were short workers, you could allocate focus. Zeus tells me I can if I’m looking at the staffing for a particular building, but when I try to find the interface that lets me do so, I can’t find any way to control or change it. All I seem to control is wage and tax rates.

On the other hand, I like the ease of the military screen for Zeus better. There is also an interesting cheat code that allows you to go in and tell the tower archers to shoot cows instead of arrows. Some of the wandering citizenry have names such as Brad Pitt, Denzel Washington, Hugh Hefner. I’ve not clicked on those citizens so have yet to find them.

I am struggling with the current mission. I had two of the 4 objectives already completed when the mission started. I had to wait for the monster to show up before I summon the hero. Of course, I had all the supplies and didn’t have to wait on that, but it also took a while for the hero to actually how up, find the monster, and kill her.

This left me with one objective that is proving hard to meet. I have to have 11 trade partners and I have all 11 routes and piers/posts built. But two of them are not trading ATM. One is the one that lost contact w/ the world after the Maenads are first discovered. I thought that by defeating and killing the Maenad would cause them to open up again. Nope. And I don’t know why the other one isn’t trading. That city is on good terms with me. So I’m a bit bored just letting the city run until they change their minds. There doesn’t seem to be anything I can do to get them actively trading again. I searched. I can send gifts to the second city but I can’t interact at all with the first city.

It loses some of its value as a gaming alternative, for when I’m not in the mood for online games, if I can do nothing but sit and watch it run and wait for those cities to resume trading.

Impression Games I’ve Played:

Zeus, Master of Olympus,
Pharaoh,
Cleopatra, Queen of the Nile,
Caesar, but not sure which installment,
Lords of Magic, (which I didn’t really like very much)

Sierra Entertainment:

I liked Sierra a lot, in part, because one of the founders was Roberta Williams. The industry has very few women in it and very few successful women. She was a big name even in the early days of computer gaming. The name, Sierra, also speaks to the very beginning of pc gaming and gaming systems as it was started in 1979.

I had all eight of the King’s Quest games and both Shiver’s games. I think I also played Leisure Suit Larry. There were a few games that were advertised inside the games I got that I wanted but never saw in the shops. Space Quest, Phantasmagoria, and Homeworld might have been some I wanted.

It is now defunct, 2008. Through a series of sales over time, it ended up under Activision Blizzard. The same Blizzard we know and love for WoW and various types of ___’Craft games, Diablo, and other stuff. In fact, a list of dist of defunct gaming companies that were purchases and closed by Blizzard makes for an interesting read. 7 Studios, Activision, Bizarre Creations (Raising Hell Productions), RedOctane, Shaba Games, Sierra Entertainment, Underground Development, and Vivendi games.

I know many people who are much more into hard core gaming than I am. They think I’m a bit of a poser calling myself a gamer girl if I refuse to spend an entire month finding the solution to a puzzle by going through each and every variable or spending all my play time over the course of a week trying to get one datacron.

I, on the other hand, see the people who don’t know what a MUD is and who have no idea who these landmark gaming companies are and look confused when you tell them your first computer/game platform was a Vic 20 as the posers. I guess it is all a difference of perception and what you value.

I value fun and land mark games and systems. I don’t have a blind devotion to solving all puzzles myself and once the puzzle becomes a source of agrivation and frustration, I will see if someone has posted the solution. I am also devoted to the PC as platform and don’t want to buy other expensive game boxes when I have a perfectly good PC to run it on. Now it is hard to find games made for pc and other platforms. I remember when that was the NORM!

Other people value the skills and won’t accept anything short of solving it themselves. I have also noticed that these people are more likely to have multiple game systems and are always looking for the newest, latest, greatest of toys.

Sure, it is an over generalization, but one with a certain amount of truth to it.