Last month, we took a delightful romp down memory lane to revisit some classic phrases from gaming’s past. It was noted by some that the list was decidedly console-centric, and this raised the ire of PC fans who felt besmirched. Fearing we would be Control + Alt + Deleted, we have assembled a follow-up for those who prefer to set the joysticks aside, smashing their keyboard with fervor.
What follows is an adventure more epic than Castle of the Winds, more informative than Encarta, and worth all of Leonard Maltin’s stars on Cinemania. And written entirely on a Macbook, just to make it that little bit more irreverent.
Brøderbund Software
You may be familiar with games like Prince of Persia and Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing, but the actual originator of these titles has been largely lost in the annals of time. It was all thanks to the humble Brøderbund, a company started by a pair of siblings back in 1980. Nowadays, it’s merely the edutainment branch of a larger parent company, but there was a significant period of time where Brøderbund was a premier PC software developer in America.
By today’s standards, the games are archaic, even grating, but back in the early 90s? It was the answer to every child’s impulse to randomly click every single thing they could find. The Playroom was like a David Lynch spinoff, with one-eyed aliens, perverse mice peering through the window, and an enormous tapestry on the wall that shrieked ‘yes’ and ‘no’ at you with the slightest provocation. It was followed up by a host of similar click-frenzies, including the Treehouse, a game that taught us the importance of picking MORE money.
One of their greatest successes came in 1985 when they first posited the question, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Hours were spent scouring every corner of the planet in order to finally apprehend the titular villain, and our lives were most certainly richer for it. One can only wonder how the ACME Detective Agency was able to afford the seemingly endless number of flights from country to country, there was likely something shady going on there.
McZee
What is McZee, exactly? It depends on who you ask. To some, McZee is a lifestyle choice – one of most fanciful jest, where frivolity and freedom are at a hallmark. To others, McZee is a curse, a hex upon society that plagues your thoughts at every turn. To most, however, McZee is simply the annoying purple dude who appeared in a few Microsoft games.
Premiering in 1993’s Creative Writer and Fine Artist titles, McZee led children through the land of Imaginopolis, hoping to assist them with all of their prose and painting endeavours. He had an uncanny ability to change costumes within a flash, hopefully not while we were still in the room. He would enter his renaissance (known to some as the McZee Era) in 1995 with the addictive 3D Movie Maker, fleshing the character out with revolutionary FMV, and even a voice provided by Michael Shapiro, better known as G-Man of Half-Life fame.
3D Movie Maker gave you not only the opportunity to create robust films, but also to explore a theatre, collecting lost pages of the talent CV’s along the way. Of course, McZee hounded you no matter where you went, armed with more puns than Splash the Manatee. Remember that guy? He used to be a boyatee, but then he grew up.
MS-DOS Games
Too innumerable to keep track of them all, MS-DOS games enthralled kids of any age with enjoyable, simplistic challenges, though approximately 0% of the population bothered to pay for the full versions. Blasting enemies as Jazz Jackrabbit, demonstrating our position on the food chain in Animal Quest, even tearing our hair out in frustration from the Lion King, there was no shortage of things to see and do.
One of the more popular offerings was the reasonable Mario Kart clone, Wacky Wheels, wherein a collection of zoo animals climbed into vehicles and assaulted each other with weapons. What kind of zoo holds a tiger, a camel, a panda and a great white shark? Obviously one with very loose morals. In two-player mode, competitors could press the number keys to taunt their rival with a sneering devil, which was almost as much fun as the actual racing itself.
Even lucrative series like Command & Conquer and Doom saw their beginnings on the DOS format, featuring graphics that were eye-popping for their time. Ironically, in modern Doom titles, most of the eye popping actually occurs when you shatter the orbital socket of a hapless alien. It’s still fun, just a bit more icky.
SkiFree
In gaming, there is no sheer terror that quite measures up to the Abominable Snow Monster from SkiFree. Pyramid Head? Alma Wade? That spooky piano in Mario 64? Forget about it, they all flee in fear of the yeti.
In SkiFree, you play the role of an unnamed skier who has been sentenced to an endless downhill purgatory. There is no finish line at the bottom of the mountain; you must simply dodge obstacles for all eternity, at least until this loathsome grey beast sets his sights on you. He will pursue you relentlessly, and once he has captured his prey, you’ll be gobbled up whole. The sickening grin on his face as he picks the flesh from his teeth will be burnt into your memory, for it represents our own fears of mortality.
There are some who say that it is possible to flee from the Abominable Snow Monster long enough for it to grow weary and give up on the chase, but what of your fate then? Is it really better to be forever condemned to downhill skiing? …This game is just upsetting, no matter how you spin it.
Text-based adventures
Truly one for the oldies out there, text-based games were a magical advent that allowed us to finally live out our Dungeon & Dragons aspirations in the digital realm. The earliest of these dated back to the late 60s, a time when computers were more of a cumbersome novelty than anything else. For perspective, this was back when fondue sets were considered a greater staple of the household. Fondue sets, guys.
With only the descriptions of what you saw before you, it was left to the player’s imagination to visualize the world, much like reading a choose your own adventure book. Decisions ranged from which direction to progress, to how you were going to fend off the legions of nasties all itching to dig their claws into you. Those who chose wisely reaped the rewards, while the rest of us were most likely eaten by a grue.
As time went on and visual graphics became a necessity, strictly text-based games fell to the wayside. After all, reading about the horrors of the dark may be engaging and all, but encountering the tyrannosaurus rex for the first time in 3D Monster Maze? Absolutely harrowing.
