Old Skool

Once upon a time there was a young man who unsuspectingly purchased an Atari 2600 so that he could play Combat, Defender and Adventure. This eventually lead to the purchase of a Commodore 64.

Between having a good friend the next street over who was heavily into pirating and cracking C64 games and another good friend who worked at Babbage’s and was a shoplifting crook I was in gaming heaven. I had more games than I, a 16 year old high school student with no social life, could play. LOAD “*” 8, 1. I still have no idea what the hell that meant but it was the key to wonderland. Ah Pool of Radiance, how I miss the thrill of the first kobold trap wiping out half of my party. Even the frustration of the “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” goddamn babel fish puzzle was something I hope I never forget.

After a couple of years of that, I was off in the Navy where I discovered the Amiga 500.

Hellooo 4096 colors! Man, what a machine, 1 MB of RAM upgraded, woo! It was a leap forward and the games quickly followed suit. My roommate was a Naval electrician and he bought an A1000 and built us a null modem cable for head to head competition. My first real taste of multiplayer gaming.

A few years later a friend of mine showed me something amazing on his new laptop computer: GEnie.

I’d poked around on local BBS’s with my 9600 baud modem but, holy cow, there were people here from California and New York and all over the world. It was amazing! Through GEnie I wound up with my first real serious gaming addiction, GemStone III. It was also my first MUD experience but I was freaking hooked. The computers that GEnie was hosted on were used during the work day by General Electric. For the younger folks here, think about this billing structure and see how crazy it would drive you. GEnie access was $8.95/month, which doesn’t sound bad, but this only bought you 4 HOURS of non-prime time connectivity per month. If you went over the 4 hours, it was an additional $3.00 PER HOUR non prime. If for some reason (like you were totally addicted to a game there) you wanted to connect during prime time (when GE was using their machines) it was TWELVE FUCKING DOLLARS an HOUR between 9am and 6pm. Just take a moment and think about that. I remember distinctly being on a $50/month budget for my online time in GEnie and it was killing me to not be able to play more GS3. A $50 budget gave me just 18 hours of play time a month.

The last two months before I got hired to work in GemStone III I racked up over $1,000 just in GEnie access fees. Thankfully after that I was free flagged. I think it only took me about a year of GM royalties to pay for that but it was worth it. But I think that’s a story for another time.