by Vinnk - 10.22.06
When I was a kid there were two places that I would play video games, on my NES and on an Apple II computer. I loved them both. I would get all my Nintendo news from Nintendo Power and for computer games I would read Nibble, Video and Computer Entertainment and Computer Gaming World. The latter has just recently retired the name “Computer Gaming World” and is now being published as Games for Windows: The Official Magazine. Around the time of the name change, as a service to the fans, Ziff Davis made available an archive with 100 of the 268 issues of CGW for free in PDF format. If you, like me have been playing video games since the early days, these issues are a trip down memory lane. For all of you too young to have ever loaded a game off of a cassette tape, you may view this as an anthropological study of how primitive gamers once thrived. And since many of these old games are now freeware you might find a few gems that even you young whippersnappers can appreciate.
source: Kotaku
What’s a cassette tape?
Reid - 10.22.06 10:10 pm
“What’s a cassette tape?”
You kids with your fancy-smancy CD rams. In my day we had cassettes and maybe a 5 1/4 floppy if we were lucky. And to get to the software store we had to walk 5 miles, in the snow, uphill. And we were grateful for it. Kids today…
Vinnk - 10.22.06 10:19 pm
Anyone got a torrent of the lot?
asfge - 10.22.06 10:24 pm
I got 4 or 5 issues of CGW a couple years back when some other magazine I was subscribed to went belly up, and then another one when an unscrupulous EB clerk subscribed me to it and EGM without actually asking me (”Dude, they’re free, you can just call to cancel in a couple months.”)
Reading through it pretty much summed up for me why I don’t do PC gaming anymore. When I was buying PC games, I bought stuff like Thexder, Turrican, Wipeout, the Dragon’s Lair ports, Myst/Riven/etc., Pong (yeah, really, Pong) and Duke Nukem 3D. I could post a complete list because I still have all the boxes…. up until a year or two ago I would regularly try to get them working using Wine or Cedega under Linux.
Nowadays, the closest things to games I would want to play are the ones now derisively referred to as “casual gaming”, like Bookworm and Penguins, or at best “retro”, like when I fire up Commander Keen in Dosbox. (Yeah, I know the Sims sometimes breaks into the top 10, but that’s still less of a game than I’m interested in playing.) The meat and potatoes of PC gaming is war simulation, FPS and MMO. Games that you either play like 20 hours a week, or not at all because you won’t have a chance.
At least I won’t be tempted to fill my remaining issues of a dead magazine with one that has “Windows” and “Official” in the title. But either way, I guess I’m doomed to nostalgia for the rest of my gaming life, unless the Wii completely dominates the market.
raindog - 10.22.06 10:40 pm
This magazine used to have this HORRIBLE guy on the last page giving his “final word” on gaming. They always went “What’s the deal with…?”
He had one that was “What’s the deal with video games?” If you want to read something extremely close minded to the point of hilarity, check that one out. Not only does he go after games, but his writing implies that he also thinks polygons are of little importance to gaming in general. It’s just bizarre.
It was around 96, 96. The N64 was still pretty new, as he mentions Mario 64 directly. Maybe someone can dig through all of those.
Tony - 10.23.06 12:08 am
I meant “96, 97″ in that.
Tony - 10.23.06 12:09 am
Raindog, I’m in a similar situation. All the modern PC games are just too excessive in time consumption for me, so I stick mainly to nostalgia and a few casual games on my Linux system, and some DS gaming here and there. Of course I never did any PC gaming pre-1997, because that was the year my family got a PC running Windows, and even then I still didn’t really get into much gaming on PC’s until 2004, when my family got another, MUCH higher end PC capable of decent 3D gaming. And it wouldn’t be until this year that I would finally break away from that wretched OS, Windows, and start using the right stuff, Linux, and I hope to get a Mac in the future and run both OSX and Linux. But if any of you are using Windows, I do not advise switching to Linux or OSX, until you fully know what you’re diving into. You can still get plenty of gaming, but at a cost to most of the Windows-exclusive games.
Luckybum - 10.23.06 1:25 am
Yeah, if gaming is highest on your priority list (or even in like the top 3) you pretty much have to stick with Windows still, because while a lot of current games will play under Wine or Cedega, very rarely are they 0-day.
And I say that as someone who hasn’t run Windows on any of my machines in like 5 or 6 years.
raindog - 10.23.06 2:54 am
jonny
jonny - 10.31.06 2:00 am