Blasts From the Past...
Yes, yes, I know. I've made vague promises about posting more, and I haven't. Well, sue me. My muses haven't been speaking. But now, they've spoken! (Or, actually, something moderately amusing and gaming related has happened, and I have a minute to write about it.)
This past Friday, dmorg ranthorn and I went to the Pittsburgh CyberConxion. It's a new local LAN gaming center, and it's going to be the site of my upcoming *cough cough* birthday party. We started off playing some of the newer games they had, but somehow, we ended up settling on Deathmatch Classic, in Half-Life. This is the most absurd thing. It's all of the original deathmatch maps from Quake 1, circa 1996, re-done in Half-Life, circa 2000 or so. And you know what? I think I had the most fun I've had playing games with friends in a long long time. It was all of the old maps that we knew so well from our Quake 1 ClanRing days. It was a complete blast.
The retro-gaming goodness doesn't end. Today, ivanovaaeryn and I spent the afternoon moving things back into our newly remodeled gameroom. Part of the effort for me was hooking up some of my older game systems again, and "checking them out." Well, one of the systems I hooked up was my Sega CD. I ended up spending a good 20 minutes or so cleaning contacts between the system components before I could get it to work, but I finally got it to load up Heart of the Alien. Heart of the Alien was a semi-rare sequel to an old classic Out of this World. Now, the thing that surprised me was that the game actually included the original Out of this World as part of the package. I had completely forgotten about that.
So, why the hell did I get so excited about finding this old game? Well, for one thing, the game was pretty influential in its time, using a very unique cinematic style to tell a really cool story. There was no real dialog...in English. The only spoken voices you ever heard in the game were from some very strange alien characters. It was so unique that some of the phrases from it stuck in my head, and became something of an inside joke with ranthorn. I forced ivanovaaeryn to sit there and watch me play through the game until I got to the following life changing dialog.
Anesta! Anesta! WACHENGA!
But let's not forget the best line of the whole game.
My tuba!
I'm sorry Ranthorn. It'll be stuck in your head for days. I know it.
This past Friday, dmorg ranthorn and I went to the Pittsburgh CyberConxion. It's a new local LAN gaming center, and it's going to be the site of my upcoming *cough cough* birthday party. We started off playing some of the newer games they had, but somehow, we ended up settling on Deathmatch Classic, in Half-Life. This is the most absurd thing. It's all of the original deathmatch maps from Quake 1, circa 1996, re-done in Half-Life, circa 2000 or so. And you know what? I think I had the most fun I've had playing games with friends in a long long time. It was all of the old maps that we knew so well from our Quake 1 ClanRing days. It was a complete blast.
The retro-gaming goodness doesn't end. Today, ivanovaaeryn and I spent the afternoon moving things back into our newly remodeled gameroom. Part of the effort for me was hooking up some of my older game systems again, and "checking them out." Well, one of the systems I hooked up was my Sega CD. I ended up spending a good 20 minutes or so cleaning contacts between the system components before I could get it to work, but I finally got it to load up Heart of the Alien. Heart of the Alien was a semi-rare sequel to an old classic Out of this World. Now, the thing that surprised me was that the game actually included the original Out of this World as part of the package. I had completely forgotten about that.
So, why the hell did I get so excited about finding this old game? Well, for one thing, the game was pretty influential in its time, using a very unique cinematic style to tell a really cool story. There was no real dialog...in English. The only spoken voices you ever heard in the game were from some very strange alien characters. It was so unique that some of the phrases from it stuck in my head, and became something of an inside joke with ranthorn. I forced ivanovaaeryn to sit there and watch me play through the game until I got to the following life changing dialog.
Anesta! Anesta! WACHENGA!
But let's not forget the best line of the whole game.
My tuba!
I'm sorry Ranthorn. It'll be stuck in your head for days. I know it.