I had to look beyond the playground to find friends who enjoyed and understood video games. Perhaps since the NES had no academic value, or because everyone else in my class had a NES and it was therefore commonplace, my enthusiasm for it had the opposite effect of my Apple II: it made me dramatically unpopular. When my family got a Nintendo Entertainment System in 1988, I fell wholly in love with its fantasy worlds. I was one of only three kids in my grade school class who had a home computer, and I was envied for how much easier the computer made my homework.īut my main use for the Apple II was computer games. At first we used it only for business and educational purposes: looking up stock prices and online encyclopedia entries. Did that take me back - back to an age where I lived wildly outside my means.Īs early as 1986, my dad showed me how to use the Apple Personal Modem on our Apple IIe to connect to what he called "the New York computer" (CompuServe was in Columbus, Ohio). The game processed one command every 10 seconds, which equates to 1⅔ cents per command. However, CompuServe cost $6 per hour for 300 baud or $12 per hour for 1200 baud access rates. The game was available on CompuServe for no additional charge. What I found most striking about its history was the section " Price to play": As an alumnus of that online service, I was aware of this game but had never played it myself. I was researching the history of MUDs and MMORPGs when a comment on Jimmy Maher’s blog led me to the Wikipedia page for Island of Kesmai, a CompuServe MUD.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |