I loved watching the evolution of gaming.
Going back to the really early 70's...old Coleco systems..playing "pong", "combat", etc.
And then in high school, as Atari came out, and I was taking computer programming classes in high school..BASIC...on those early big Apple II's...we had some cool simple games. Nothing hugely addicting for me...yet.
I got out of computers for a while in college, even while taking other programming classes, Fortran/Watfive. Some of those early games just didn't catch my attention much, or I was too busy with a tonna other fun stuff to notice. However, console games like the first Nintendos and Segas were fun to a degree...in college we'd have a lot of hangout groups that played some games on those.
But in the Windows 3 days...a buddy of mine had an old Packard Bell and we'd hang out playing Aces over Europe on that, and Castle Wolf, and Doom, then Duke Nukem 3D. Graphics were starting to get decent at this point, and I was getting into first person shooter types now.
Windows 95 came out, and I bought my first home computer..a Micron Millenium. Got into Duke myself, but then Quake 1 came out. And I got hooked...BIG TIME. Online gaming FPS games really took off with Quake 1. The first true 3D gaming engine, and playing with buddies...so you're all playing together. And then I joined a clan, called YeOldeMelankees (our theme was from the classic movie A Clockwork Orange). My original online nickname came from my college days...Stonecat (at first was StonedCat..shaddup!) To be in that clan everyone had to put "YeOlde" in front of their name. Hence..how my current online nickname came to be. Many an overnight was spent playing Quake 1.
And then the "GL" mod came out, GLQuake, and those expensive (at that time) 3Dfx Voodoo1 cards. This was when I started getting into upgrading the hardware on computers, as graphic cards started getting fancy, sound cards, high performance dial up modems, adding more memory, etc. THIS is when I knew I wanted to get into computers as a career! I blame Quake for my career choice!!!
Quake II came out..and the first nVidia cards...the TNT. I started getting big time involved in the online gaming community...became friends with the owners of a high performance dial up ISP called CyberZone. The owners had their own Q2 server we played on. Back then there was a cheating bot for Q2 called the "Z-Bot". There was a buncha guys that played on this server that used the Z-Bot..and I'd go to war with them. I was quite handy at Q2 and I'd battle it out with these guys that used Z-Bots and the whole packed server got to know us. This ISP was located about 1x hour from my house, and many players that were on this server used this ISP because of its performance, thus they lived sorta close. So one day the "leader" of that group..we decided to meet in real life, and to meet at some bar. We've been great friends since then.
We went on to form a "clan"...called Zombie Battalion. Notice the letters Z B Yup..named after the Z Bot.
The game Unreal Tournament came out..and we really took off. I started building game servers that we'd host at this ISPs data center. The clan got really large and involved in ladder tournaments. Our server even climbed into the NG Stats "top 20 in the world" list and remained there for a few years.
Other games came out, various Call of Duty games, Quake III, Return of Castle Wolf, and the one that hooked me the most..Battlefield 1942 and all its variants like Desert Combat, and Vietnam, and Forgotten Hope. By THIS time the clan started breaking up a bit, or splintering. Tis a problem when a group gets too big for too long I guess. I stopped hanging out, by this point...started working where I am now. We happend to have our office located inside a data center. I started building Battlefield servers and hosting them there..for my other buddies at Speedguide.Net. That went on for around 5 years..until Battlefield 2 came out and EA kinda stopped allowing home built gaming servers, they wanted to resell that service themselves. That's when I kinda "retired" from that part time hobby/semi job.
Memorable games for me...
Duke Nukem 3D, sorta got 3D looking even though it was really more 2 1/2 D. But its satirical humor hidden throughout the game made it so much fun to play.
Quake 1...the first true 3D game, What you saw, you could get on top of, under, behind, whatever. Also when the GL Quake mod was released, combined with a 3Dfx graphics card...it was jaw dropping graphics! Online play was a blast!
Half Life....while graphics were decent, a little better than Quake 2, what made Half Life great was it was the first FPS type game the introduced good AI (artificial intelligence). The opponents in single player could do things like "react" based on your moves. Multi player had some fun elements to it.. One of the first online games to have environments get affected by players...you could spray paint "tag" your logo in places for others to see.
Unreal..the first one. While multi player wasn't really that good, it was a revolutionary game as far as graphics, utilizing a new technology Intel released called MMX. And outdoor environments were HUGE! On that first level, when you first went outside..walked to the edge of the cliff and look into that huge canyon with cliffs on both sides...awesome experience.
Unreal Tournament...re-defined multiplayer gaming. Biggest part of my gaming was spent here.
Battlefield 1942 (and variants)...expanded online gaming even more, ability to go into different vehicles, etc. So much fun! Second biggest game of my life.
Far Cry...that graphics engine was sumptuous! I played it just to "see" things...the game itself didn't real hook me for playability or fun.
A few years ago I enjoyed reliving Quake 3 when Quake Arena came out and got popular. I used to play DM17 "longest yard" a lot.
