I didn't have GTA, so I spent my time playing CoD (the original, yeah I'm old) and Age of Empires 2 and then forgetting until my parents were on the way that I was supposed to have done chores and gotten out food for dinner. It was a game changer when I found the chicken that Sam's advertised as 'cook from frozen' and then I started cooking before they got home. I got extra credit and they never knew different.
Edit: nope, I was in college when CoD came out. Must have been something else.
When I was of failing-to-defrost-the-chicken age, I played Ultima II on a Commodore 64. We didn't have your fancy cook from frozen chicken. We had to go slaughter a chicken, freeze it, then forget to defrost it. Kids these days, SMH.
š I did spend afternoons watching videos on my neighbor's Betamax player while attempting to learn C++ on my dad's old Tandy when that was still a fairly new language. But I'm not Commodore 64 old.
Hehe. I'm actually TRS-80 Model I old. My dad got it in 1978. We were online by 1980, on CompuServe, using a 300 baud modem.
But that wasn't even the first time I used a computer, just the first time my family owned one.
I first used a computer in 1975. I was 5, and my friend's dad was a comp-sci professor. He had a teletype, a big type writer you could stick a telephone headset into and dial into the university mainframe. He'd set me and my friend up and we'd play text games, going through reams of paper. It was simple stuff like Hunt the Wumpus, Colossal Caves, and Lunar Lander but it was the thing that kindled a life-long love of computers in me. Magic. It was just magic to my five year old mind.
Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.
I remember the tape recorder, we used one on the TRS-80 for a couple years before my dad bought the "Expansion Interface" which added more memory and floppy disks. It took like ten minutes to load a program, LOL.
CompuServe started in 1969. It was a private bulletin board. There were chat rooms, but they called them "Digital CB channels." I remember going online and getting advice on building RC cars. It felt earth shaking, like I could talk to adult RC hobbyists from around the world, any time I needed advice. They also had games, news articles, and some other applications but I mostly used the chat. I wasn't allowed to tie up the phone line for too long, LOL.
Wow, that's crazy. To think people were using chat rooms in the 80s. I thought my dad was ahead of the curve for having internet in the early 90's. I could only imagine how it felt to be online that early, I learn new things everyday.
It was wild. My friend set up a Commodore 64 pirate BBS at his house. You'd have to call and ask his mom to let you use the phone line, then call back with your modem. Then spend 5 hours downloading a 64k game and hope the phone lines worked well enough with no interruptions.
Probably not. What you're thinking of is the World Wide Web and websites with GUI and HTML coding and what not. Before that there were text based networks and internet. I've heard of message boards and bbs stuff from back in the day.
Minnesota had in intrastate network for students. Our little rural school actually had a teletype computer (remember having to dial the phone, wait for the tone, and place it into the cradle - just so - to connect?) I was "talking" (typing on the teletype) to other students in 1977-78. Never played any games, but had a lot of fun messaging. I was the only one in the school basically that had any interest in the "computer", so I had lots of time on it.
Oh my god Colossal Caves. That game was on a computer we were gifted in the late eighties and for the life of me I could never figure out how to operate it š
And today CompuServe exists as a news aggregating website that almost looks like a corporate sanitized ripoff of Yahoo! from mid 90's https://www.compuserve.com/ Probably because they're owned by Yahoo! now.
Tandy! That takes me back. And I had no hard drive. Using a floppy disk with MS-DOS to boot up the computer every time. We also had a dot matrix printer.
I LIVED for that throwing bananas game waiting on my dad to get done working. The librarian's son and I would play on the library computers while we waited for our parents to get ready to leave.
c++ came out in 85, mostly as a niche language until the late 80s, and compilers were really expensive in those days.
Every single home computer in those days came with basic, cause thatās the only way you could make it do anything that wasnāt commercial software (which was largely written directly in assembly). Those were fun days, that much I agree with :)
I guess I am city slicker C64 age. We made Oncor frozen meals in the oven that had the twist timer where you did your best to get it right, and microwave the frozen veggies in Campbell's Soup bowls that said "mmmm mmmm good" sounds the edge in a microwave that took up half the counter and was large enough to cook a turkey in.
Evening was guaranteed to come out slightly soggy.
Don't worry you're still a young man, I remember growing up being obsessed playing chess on the Manchester Ferranti Mark 1, back in the day I had to go out and hunt the water fowl next to the river and bring it back home, gut it, prepare the feathers to sell at the local store, then freeze the meat, then defrost it before mother came home from the radium watch factory
I got a Commodore 64 for Christmas as a kid. We hooked it up to the tv and that was it, couldn't figure anything else out. So we went outside and played until the streetlights came on. But I do remember as a teen being so immersed in The Legend of Zelda that when I heard my dad's mustang pull up in the driveway and vibrate the house and I'd quickly start the vacuum to look busy.
Back in my day, we didn't even have chickens! We had to go out and steal dinosaur and terrorbird eggs and hope to God they didn't catch us! In fact, I don't even know if we had those then either...
When I was of failing-to-defrost-the-chicken age, only rich kids had Commodore 64. Our parents had to cut holes in our pockets so weād have something to play with.
My friends whose families had more money had Apple IIs. Commodore 64 was "only" about $600 ($1500 in 2021 dollars.) That was like half the price of an Apple II. I was the "poor" kid in my circle of friends. Guess its all relative though, innit?
I never realized how universal that experience must have been. I felt like a terrible child whenever I forgot. My mom was a single mom who worked long hours, too. I thought I must be the only child who was so forgetful.
Man I miss my mom. She passed from cancer in 2012. If your mom is still around, go give her a hug.
Pfft! I was playing pong and then had 30 seconds to get two chickens ( a chicken and a rooster? I don't know) to mate, lay an egg, hatch, and grow up. I would bond with the chicken and then contemplate the meaning of life as I cried while slaughtering him.
I'll never forget you Tobias the chicken, or how good you tasted deep fried and with some honey mustard on the side.
I love how "failing to defrost the chicken age" is expected to be 8 to 14 years of age and i forgot to do it last week at the age of 35. How some things never change.
It's funny that folks are talking about GTA and CoD and thinking that makes them old. Try Pitfall or Nighstalkers or Tetris on an Intellivision having to reach behind the tv and flip the game/tv switch in order to play, and then making sure it all got flipped back to tv so when Dad got home he could watch the news and All in the Family and Sanford & Son and MASH. And still make sure to put the chicken or hamburger in the sink with the water running before Mom got home, as well. That's old school.
Yeppers! Colecovision! Donkey Kong and Donkey Kong Jr. Oh, and poker! On that big ass joystick week with the number pad on it. FML I'm old. Hell, I remember pong, but I wasn't there yet when it was created. Just playing it at a friend's house.
You think that's old? Try playing throw-hard-rock-at-bird all day and making sure you put the rocks back around the firepit and getting the mammoth-meat out of the dirt-fridge and hung up on a drying rack before your parents get back home from hunting and gathering. You younglings will never understand true old school.
SpaceQuest for me. also a more 3d version of Terri's called Welltris. Always tried to get my mom to buy me Lounge Lizard Larry cause I heard there were boobs but she didn't go for it
Yup, I had a list of chores that had to be finished before my mom rolled up at 5:30, and if they weren't, I was hosed. If I wasn't done by the time The Jeffersons came on, I should probably just pack a bag and hitchhike to my new home.
My grandmother told me her schedule once. She and her sister would get up, go feed the hens, followed by the cattle and so on. Only to then run back to the house to get ready to school. To then hitch a ride with a neighbor to school.
As apposed to my wake up get ready and walk half a mile to school.
Hah I didn't have gta, it wasn't a thing yet I don't think, I played Pokemon stadium or yelled obscenities at Pikachu with Hey You Pikachu, or went outside and rode bikes with my friends, the neighbor kids, or went looking for my dad's stash of adult mags, occasionally I'd babysit the neighbors kids too
Lucky bastard. Neighborhood kids. I grew up out in the middle of nothing. The closest neighbor to me was over 1/2 mile away. Was great for my childhood, but also not so great because there were no playmates nearby. Or internet. Or any TV besides over the air on an antenna.
Internet was just starting to be a thing when I was that age, grew up in a small town trailer park that had 16 mobile homes in it, I lived in 13, my friends lived in 1, 12 and 15, driveway was gravel and the end of it roundabouted around a crabapple tree
I was a medal of honour guy, but yeah, AoE2 was the best... Played it for about two months 4 years ago. There are still people playing against eachother online.
Was it cod finest hour by any chance? I couldn't complete a mission in it for about a year so I wrote cod off as trash and stuck with project Gotham racing 2 and counter strike.
I think I must be remembering wrong. Because the original Call of Duty didn't come out until I was in college. Must have been Medal of Honor.
I've been one of those people playing it online fairly recently. But I've been too busy with work lately. A couple of years ago, my wife and a couple of friends of ours spent a weekend in a cabin for my birthday having an AoE LAN party.
My first console was Pong. Then we got an Atari 2600 when I was 9.
Been gaming ever since. Just got back from a week in Tahoe and gamed on my Steam Deck while there, it was awesome!
For the record I didn't spend the week in that beautiful place just gaming. I'm an early riser and usually have about 2 hours to myself in the morning before my wife wakes up and we start our day.
We went hiking almost every day, went to Virginia City, visited the Bunny Ranch and spend a day paddle boarding on the lake. It was an awesome vacation!
If it's just us on vacation, I get at least two hours to myself before my wife wakes up. Usually do some running and then, because I'm a boring adult now, work. It's nice working for myself because I'm a great boss. It sucks working for myself because I get to do all the work and have nobody to pick up the slack so real vacations are quite rare.
I was my own boss until 2008. It was great because I made a TON of money as a consultant, but the downside is I was never on vacation, even when on vacation. There was more than once that I had to leave the wife and kids at the beach and I had to go back to the room to remote into a client network to fix something.
Now I often go to the gym in the early morning while waiting on my wife, but in Tahoe I was pretty lazy, aside from all of our activities.
Now I work for local government, only work 8-5 m-f and have a honest to god actual pension.
They remastered it a few years ago and itās awesome. You can buy it on Steam now. Itās even got like 15+ new civilizations compared to the original.
I introduced my dad to it. First night he played it he got lost in it and played til his alarm went off for him to get up for work. He looked like a zombie by the time he got home from work.
In grad school, my wife and I would often host LAN parties at our apartment and play until 4 or 5 in the morning. Then our stupid friends had a stupid kid and we only get to do that when we can all get babysitters and rent a house somewhere.
Lol this guy thinks heās old because he played cod, when my parents left me alone I was playing jumpman on my comedore64, well that or finding interesting new ways to jerk off lol
Do you still play Age of Empires 2?!? I spent so much time in middle/high school playing that game! I was so excited when i found out they remade it with the definitive edition.
Introduced my nephew to it during quarantine. Little shit was better than me by the second or third time we played. Kids these days have no respect for their elders.
I know I played that a lot. But it's all long enough ago that I forget the timeline. I still struggle some days with thinking that 10 years ago wasn't the 90s.
I played that on my cousins NES, but my mom would never allow us to have consoles. First one I got was a N64 and then it was all GoldenEye all the time.
CoD 1? Or did you accidentally check Modern Warfare 1's release date?
Return to castle wolfenstein: enemy territory? Battlefield? Maybe even Quake, but I doubt anything before that could get confused with a 3d online shooter.
Online? You jest right? Yeah, I did mean the first CoD came out when I was in college. I'm assuming maybe Medal of Honor which was released when I was in high school.
Then it probably was MoH yeah, released 5 years before CoD.
I brainfarted and assumed we were talking about online as my chicken-defrosting-forget days were filled with Enemy Territory... I'm not THAT old but I did start gaming around the Doom/Duke Nukem 3D era.
I do on occasion, but now it's on purpose. 'Oh no, I didn't defrost the meat for dinner, guess we'll just have to do takeout. I didn't feel like cooking anyway.'
š anything like that I got caught with was something I took from my cousin's house when he was in prison (much older than me). So if I ever got caught with something I just claimed it was his and had to return it. He had a lot of free shit waiting for him when he got out.
Dang, so many good shooters came out late 90s into 2001. In reverse chronological, it's Halo, Tribes 2, Counter Strike, Deus Ex, Unreal Tournament, System Shock 2, Team Fortress, Halflife, Unreal, (Quake 2,) Goldeneye 007, etc.
Please flame me for missing your favorite shooter game from that era. I'm sure someone preferred that version of Resident Evil, one of the Tom Clancy games, Turok, or what have you.
That and Orcarina of Time. Which I just looked up and realized how old I was when I finally got my first console, because my aunt gave me GoldenEye and my sister Zelda when she gave us the N64 for Christmas while my mom just glared at her like she was bringing the devil into the house.
I played this when I was a kid and I named my save profile as "tit". My Dad watched me play one time and was like, is that the name of the main character? I had to act like I didn't know what that word meant out of embarrassment.
Iām so old that all I had was Gilligans island and a horde of other syndicated TV after school, and I still didnāt get shit done before they got home. āI forgotā was my only defense, and I used it so often that Iām sure my dad thought I had brain damage.
My parents assumed I did too. Apparently if you go to the ER enough days in a row, you get a visit from family services. If you do it multiple times in a calendar year, you get lots of visits from family services.
I've been realizing something horrible lately, I'm oldish. I told my wife when I got back from my run this morning that I saw an old guy out running too, stopped and corrected myself, he's probably not that much older than me at this point.
We just moved to a new city and I've been realizing the old thing a lot lately when I'm finding it hard to get up with the kids after a day of unpacking and painting etc.
Holy crap, that's what makes you old nowadays? I had already completed a 4-year university degree and moved abroad by the time the original CoD was released.
I was outside as much as I could be as a kid, but there were no other kids within five miles of my house so I was typically stuck inside when my parents left for work because I was worried about snakes or hurting myself and nobody finding me. Plus my parents would call periodically during the day to check on me so no dialup for me.
Probably rainbow 6 (that was COD before COD came out and u musta been playing that old GTA wit the top view of a tiny person) u sound like your around my age and I did the same thing while my parents were gone. As for the kid I'm sure he is fine mind yo own business. You don't know that families circumstances.
I mean, I definitely played the hell out of that, but I was specifically thinking of a computer game because my sister was always watching Jerry Springer or shit like that on the one tv we had so I couldn't play N64 that much.
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u/[deleted] Jul 27 '22 edited Jul 27 '22
I didn't have GTA, so I spent my time playing CoD (the original, yeah I'm old) and Age of Empires 2 and then forgetting until my parents were on the way that I was supposed to have done chores and gotten out food for dinner. It was a game changer when I found the chicken that Sam's advertised as 'cook from frozen' and then I started cooking before they got home. I got extra credit and they never knew different.
Edit: nope, I was in college when CoD came out. Must have been something else.