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Feb. 19th, 2004 04:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI've been oddly nostalgic about the old Ultima games lately. I spent hours and hours on Ultima 4 when I was in elementary school. Thoughts of coming home to reenter the lands of Britannia filled my brain all through the day. It was one of my major obsessions. I have wonderful memories of other games in the series too, mainly of watching my mother play them. I remember how astounded I was at Ultima 5, the first game I'd ever seen with a real day/night cycle. It was incredible to me. And Ultima 7, with beautiful, detailed graphics of a sort I'd never seen before! It took up an entire 7 megabytes to install! That was nearly half of our full height, 5ΒΌ" hard drive.
I know Ultima 4 like the back of my hand from spending so many hours and days on it growing up. I've played the others too, the earlier ones and the later ones, but 5 and 7 will always feel like my mother's games to me. I can't sit down in front of them without thinking of her, as though they are her territory. When my mother got them, she didn't let me use them much because she wanted to finish the game first. They acquired an air of sophistication, complexity, magic, for me, in part because of that I think. I would sit and watch her adventure through Brittania quite literally every chance I had, and I know that I often made a nuisance of myself, though at the time I could never have understood how. I loved watching her travel around, talk to people, make notes in her notebook. I picked up my mapping and notebook habit from her, watching her play many different role playing games through my childhood. It was because of her that I filled close to a hundred pages of a 5 subject note book for both Ultima 4 and 5, writing down every single thing any one said in the game because it might be of importance. I guess I was a little obsessive, but it really doesn't bug me. I still obsess about things like that from time to time, and it feels so good to be immersed in something like that. What ever happened to games that requre you to excersise some actual brain power and take notes?
My parents brought one of my old machines, a 486DX/66 I think, so I can run some of my old DOS games like that. I was thinking about playing with Ultima 7 a bit this morning at work and of course that lead to all my memories of her sharing the game with me which nearly led me to tears. *deep breath* I'm such a puppy... It got me to thinking about how much I want to see these games enjoyed, how much I would love to sit down with someone and play through one of them. I have so much of the knowledge from them in my head at an almost instinctual level, and the thought of never really putting most of it to use again saddens me. In some way, I feel as though the each of the different Britannias in the different Ultima games are real places, with their own spark of life, and they are just waiting for someone to explore and appreciate them. I think maybe they even felt more real than some parts of my real life; the parts I didn't like. Mainly dealing with other people at school. I don't want games like this to go away. I want to keep playing them once in a while, I want to share them with someone. Someone like me...
*sigh* Does anyone want to come over and do some serious nostalgic retro RPGing with me?
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wooisme and I are going to stop by her mother's house tonight to look at her computer. It's having intermittant freezes and crashes and when I was there last it sounded like there was a fan in it that badly needs replacing, so it should be a quick confirmation of my diagnosis of heat failure. Did I just say 'quick' about a computer repair? Bad omen, that... Other than that, I'm taking ebay pictures tonight and will post some vintage board games and stuff. Life continues, and it's continuing, in general, pretty well right now... Just wish I had a serial mouse to use with the aforementioned dinosaur computer. I think all of mine are in wisconsin and, needless to say, the machine does not have a PS/2 port, let alone USB. Doesn't anyone make serial mice anymore?
I know Ultima 4 like the back of my hand from spending so many hours and days on it growing up. I've played the others too, the earlier ones and the later ones, but 5 and 7 will always feel like my mother's games to me. I can't sit down in front of them without thinking of her, as though they are her territory. When my mother got them, she didn't let me use them much because she wanted to finish the game first. They acquired an air of sophistication, complexity, magic, for me, in part because of that I think. I would sit and watch her adventure through Brittania quite literally every chance I had, and I know that I often made a nuisance of myself, though at the time I could never have understood how. I loved watching her travel around, talk to people, make notes in her notebook. I picked up my mapping and notebook habit from her, watching her play many different role playing games through my childhood. It was because of her that I filled close to a hundred pages of a 5 subject note book for both Ultima 4 and 5, writing down every single thing any one said in the game because it might be of importance. I guess I was a little obsessive, but it really doesn't bug me. I still obsess about things like that from time to time, and it feels so good to be immersed in something like that. What ever happened to games that requre you to excersise some actual brain power and take notes?
My parents brought one of my old machines, a 486DX/66 I think, so I can run some of my old DOS games like that. I was thinking about playing with Ultima 7 a bit this morning at work and of course that lead to all my memories of her sharing the game with me which nearly led me to tears. *deep breath* I'm such a puppy... It got me to thinking about how much I want to see these games enjoyed, how much I would love to sit down with someone and play through one of them. I have so much of the knowledge from them in my head at an almost instinctual level, and the thought of never really putting most of it to use again saddens me. In some way, I feel as though the each of the different Britannias in the different Ultima games are real places, with their own spark of life, and they are just waiting for someone to explore and appreciate them. I think maybe they even felt more real than some parts of my real life; the parts I didn't like. Mainly dealing with other people at school. I don't want games like this to go away. I want to keep playing them once in a while, I want to share them with someone. Someone like me...
*sigh* Does anyone want to come over and do some serious nostalgic retro RPGing with me?
wooisme and I are going to stop by her mother's house tonight to look at her computer. It's having intermittant freezes and crashes and when I was there last it sounded like there was a fan in it that badly needs replacing, so it should be a quick confirmation of my diagnosis of heat failure. Did I just say 'quick' about a computer repair? Bad omen, that... Other than that, I'm taking ebay pictures tonight and will post some vintage board games and stuff. Life continues, and it's continuing, in general, pretty well right now... Just wish I had a serial mouse to use with the aforementioned dinosaur computer. I think all of mine are in wisconsin and, needless to say, the machine does not have a PS/2 port, let alone USB. Doesn't anyone make serial mice anymore?
