Retrogaming, part 2

We returned from an afternoon walk alongside a beautiful creek in the Dutch province capital of Overijssel, Zwolle. Immediately, we booted up the PC and opened a Sierra folder, writing sierra on the dos prompt. Immediately we heard the tra la la la la la la la la la la la laaa opening tune and a guy in a suit tries to catch a doll. And now, because of the “kinkiness” of the game, we´re being asked to “lie about our age” and answer 5 questions correctly.

My niece checked the sierra handbook. “Just hit Alt-X to avoid the questions…”

Thanks to the German emulator, I played Space Invaders, Digger and Conquest (sort of variations of Dig Dug and Joust) and when my dad bought himself a 486 PC, the old PC, still working fine, was placed in the alley between the livingroom and bathroom.

My new “routine” to borrow the Sega Megadrive or the Super Nintendo with a friend on a Friday or Saturday evening began somewhere in early 1992. I was 14 years old, my friend was 1 and we both had some dough earned from delivering newpapers, but yet we were too young to appear in the pub and ask for booze.

One night at my place, just having arrived at Sonic´s marble world trying to cross a path through lava, my mommy comes back into the living room and asks me to go to sleep. Gaming always made time fly. So we went to bed and got up only a few hours later and continued where we left off.

Meanwhile at school, there were 5 Commodore 64 machines with 1 diskdrive for the “alumni” to be used in large breaks or when you suddenly had an “inbetween hour” due to illness of a teacher.  Then you´d go to the principals office:

“Hello mr. Principal, would you please give me the disks and joysticks for the commodore?”
“Ofcourse Robin, go right ahead and when you´re ready you just bring them back here”

Since all C64s were connected to the same diskdrive, your fellow students would have to play either the same game or a different game from the same floppy. You needed to be able to type LOAD “nameofthegame”,8,1 very quickly in order to be the first to play. I particularly remember a very cool tennis game and Bazooka Bill…

With my “console-borrowing friend” I played many MicroSoccer games on my pc (although it was to be used by my brothers as well, but they didn´t care that much for gaming, until my youngest brother discovered the Retaliator game some years later). 

One of the most popular football clubs in the UK and worldwide, Manchester United, came up with a soccer game, created by Krisalis software, more or less similar to European Club Soccer. My dad had been so sweet to buy a VGA graphics card and monitor so finally I was playing in full colour. On my London excursion week having a small budget, nevertheless I felt the need, or desire, to play Taito´s Euro Football Champ on the ferry and flipped in a quid and then another quid.

When I turned 16 I graduated from secondary and I chose to study Commerce at a “college” where they 

provided spanish classes. ´93-94 was a turning point and I spent less time on gaming, it was more a period of learning new stuff and discovering music, especially grunge.

Most arcades in the Netherlands were divided into 2 parts. Adults came there to play fruit machines, and younger people only had access to the pinball / arcade area.

In May and June 1996, when I was temporarily living in Salamanca, I found an arcade on the Avda. Mirat, an important avenue in the northern part of the city and played tennis there, the 25 peseta coins value was . 20 years ago Spain was so cheap, and yet Salamanca is a place where many tourists and students go to.

2 years later, 1998, was a strange year. I gave up my study and started searching for a job. I ended up in a rock bar and played pinball there. The rest of the year I had three temporary jobs until February ´99.

Internet was not that magnificent yet, my dad would let me spend a little hour every evening on mIRC through a modem dialup connection.  Me and my brothers played a cruel but popular game in 1998 called Carmageddon…

End of part 2, part 3 will start in the 21st century.