Lunch time. I am blogging about Doom instead.
@mforester was writing about Heretic and other old first person shooter games, and I remembered that this laptop has Freedoom and some games installed. I remembered playing Doom on a 286 in Bangkok, somewhere around 1990. But that is clearly impossible. Wikipedia says Doom launched in 1993 and I must have been back in Switzerland by that time. So perhaps I was playing Doom on a later computer I bought as a 15 year old… Tempus fugit!
Anyway, I hooked up the home office monitor to the laptop, attached a mouse, plugged in my headphones, and started playing. I love how the sound effects really do give you a hint as to what’s coming at just the exact right moment that you can turn around and you *know* what’s coming, or you learn what’s coming. I love those little touches like that corridor where you get a key card and then the lights go out. Those moments – in the first first Doom!
It’s also disconcerting to notice that it takes me fiften minutes for a level where “par” is one minute and a half. And I discover 0% of all the secrets. Wow. I guess this is what made people come back and compete back in the days.
I’m playing at the default difficulty level. I remember back in the days some people would try to play at extreme difficulty levels, or limit themselves to knuckles. No weapons! Wow.
I don’t think I’ve ever played anything else. No Heretic, maybe a tiny bit of Quake, no Doom 2 or 3.
And then @jaranta posts a link to this essay on war games and war:
“Yeah. Not more than one out of every four infantrymen deployed to WWII ever fired his weapon. Not with the enemy in his sights. Not even when in danger.”
“What about you?”
“I went through the training the Army invented to help soldiers overcome their inhibitions. Called reflexive fire training. Just like in The Pit, that qual-course at the beginning of the game. WWII guys trained on bull’s-eyes. We trained on moving targets, shaped like humans. …” – Call of Duty: Gaming and Reality in Modern Warfare
Call of Duty: Gaming and Reality in Modern Warfare
I remember how crazy it seemed when I learned that the U.S. army had made a first person shooter.
#Games
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I played Doom 2 and Hexen (which I recommend over Heretic, that I played later when it was “retro” in a way).
It is quite interesting that people remembering the first time they saw Doom is kind of like “where were you when [important event] happened?”. In my case was in a trip to Alicante, the largest city in the region, to get a quote for a PC (exciting), and there was a PC playing the demo. I can’t remember the year, that was some time before I could afford buying a new PC, and that was already a Pentium 100MHz.
I didn’t understand what I saw, to be honest. One of my cousins had a 386 I think, can’t be completely sure but it had a “turbo” button, and Wolfenstein 3D was already jaw-dropping.
I have “Woof! Doom” compiled from source and, sometimes, I play a bit for the old memories.
– jjm 2022-08-08 16:01 UTC
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Thanks for the recommendation. I decided to try some Morrowind instead of trying to finish Doom 1. I am extremely unable to fight anything but Nix Hounds or Diseased Rats, apparently.
– Alex 2022-08-08 20:46 UTC
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Now playing King of Dragon Pass for the first time.
– Alex 2022-08-09 06:43 UTC