Oh dear, is it my turn to froth away about the most formative games of my past? All aboard for a magical mystery tour down my winding memory lane, then. I’ll tell you this much: I’m definitely no Jim Rossignol.
UFO: Enemy Unknown
(Or X-COM: UFO Defense if you’re a colonial).
A couple of years ago, I woke up in a cold sweat, with a man’s name on my lips. I didn’t know what I’d been dreaming about (though I was pretty sure it wasn’t sexy), but the name troubled me: “Anatoly Kolotov.”
Hmm. Russian-sounding? I didn’t know any Russian guys. I recognised it, and was quite sure it had been dragged up from the very pit of my memory, but I just couldn’t place it. For weeks, I muttered it to myself, and asked everyone I knew if it meant anything to them. No dice. Google was no help either.
It was some random, otherwise unassociated mention of X-COM that caused the stereotypical punch to the gut/ head rush joy-pain of nostalgia. Of course – now I remembered Anatoly Kolotov. It was a name I hadn’t heard in almost two decades, but one which, it seemed, would never leave me. Anatoly Kolotov was my highest-ranking, most effective soldier in the original X-COM – the lynchpin of Earth’s defence against alien invaders. If I researched or found new armour or some new incredi-gun, Anatoly was always first to try it out. His kill-count was phenomenal. He wasn’t unstoppable – that was never the X-COM way – but he was always the most fearsome guy on the battlefield. He’d been with me since the very start of the game, and was still with me even as we were gearing up for the climactic assault on Cydonia.
One day, Anatoly Kolotov died. I don’t remember how, but I remember the shock. I remember feeling absolutely hopeless – how could I possibly save the world without Anatoly’s help? Something in my brain still has unconscious total recall, I suspect – that’s why I woke up shouting ‘Anatoly Kolotov’ in distress.
I do know I reloaded a savegame. It was not yet Anatoly Kolotov’s time to die, I reasoned. Nonetheless, the trauma of losing a character that felt so thoroughly mine, one I’d nurtured and developed rather than simply witnessed trot through a game’s scripts, was formative. This wasn’t Manic Miner losing a life or having to restart the level in Wolfenstein. This was someone I’d personally invested in, ripped brutally away from me.
Of course, ‘Anatoly Kolotov’ was just a randomly-generated name, and assigned randomly-generated stats that happened to make him a better survivor than his colleagues. There was nothing in any way Me about him. Yet he was an affecting enough presence to make X-COM a startling wake-up call to me – a realisation that game characters could be much more than colourful sprites and catchy soundbites. Mario? Sonic? Lara? Freeman? Nobodies. Anatoly Kolotov is my hero.
Scorched Earth
This turn-based artillery game – think proto-Worms – was my entrée into the world of multiplayer gaming. Not the namby-pamby two-man, splitscreen multiplayer of the Nintendo and Sega set, but a whole pile of people each out for themselves, rabidly determined to wipe out everyone else with a powerful cocktail of guile, brutality and wind-compensation. Temporary alliances were formed to take out particularly dangerous players, then broken the second they were dispatched. This was my Quake III, my Unreal Tournament, my Counter-Strike.
In truth, it was hotseat-based rather than LAN, but my particular experience of it was much more analogous to the remote multiplay we enjoy today. It was the game of choice in my earliest years of secondary school – age 12 or 13, at a guess – smuggled-in copies on floppy discs, played in the school computer room over lunchbreaks and, stealithy, during tedious computing and maths lessons. 30-odd boys would form into 8 or 9 man groups, then bomb the hell out of each other’s uni-coloured tanks. We’d often play multiple games simultaneously, so while your opponents took their turn on one PC, you’d run over to another game to take your turn in that one. As we returned to class, we’d chatter excitedly about what exactly what we’d done, how close the fight had been, and what we’d try next time.
I wasn’t a popular kid at school, which I’m sure surprises precisely no-one. That didn’t matter when I was playing Scorched Earth. The cool kids, the bullies, the nerds and the dunces were all united a few times a week by the common desire to destroy each other. The lion lay down with the lamb, and the thuggish rugby player with the nebbish bookwork. As long as you played the game competently, you were welcome, whether or not you got your ears boxed yesterday. Games are, it’s true, often about violence and hedonism and distraction and all manner of similarly frowned-upon factors, but increasingly, they’re also about community. That’s not a new thing. Scorched Earth gave me a temporary sense of belonging in an environment that otherwise spurned me. Yeah, it probably made me into even more of a geek than I already was, but hell – here I am.
The weapons were the main draw, of course. They seemed amazingly destructive – daisy cutter bombs and MIRVs ripping apart the landscape with fatal sunsets. A cursory glance at screenshots of Scorched Earth now reveals just how much work my imagination was doing back then, extrapolating primary colours and crude circles into breathtaking future-war.
Scorched Earth taught me strategy, it taught me tension, it taught me vengeance, it taught me cooperation and it taught me smacktalk. Hell, it probably even taught me a little bit of maths.
Legends of Valour
I haven’t thought about Legends of Valour for nearly 20 years. When I was coming up with my shortlist for this piece, I knew something was missing. I knew it was an RPG, I knew it featured buildings, and… well, that was it. Its name, its story, its setting, its developers – everything important was lost to me. I only had a couple of blurred, static images that flickered across my conciousness whenever I thought of it. I needed, somehow, to take a screenshot of my own memory and show it to someone.
I found its name only yesterday, whilst doggedly typing every variation of “90s PC RPG” I could think of into Google. I found a few frighteningly comprehensive lists, but scrolled right past Legends of Valour. The name alone failed to ring any bells. It wasn’t until I found one that included box shots that it hit.
I adored that box. Lavish, embossed, varnished, massive – it seemed as thought it should contain so much more than a mere game. The box was the reason I bought it – second-hand, I believe. I knew nothing about it otherwise, hadn’t even heard of it. I just craved that damn box.
Looks crass as anything now, but I still feel pangs of desire for it. Fortunately, the game itself came up trumps, at least to my ingenue’s mind. I’ve since discovered that it suffered a bit of a critical kicking from some quarters – especially its PC version – but for me it was a profound eye-opener. I’ve a feeling I had played a few RPGs previously, but I don’t believe any left much of a mark – tellingly, the entire Ultima/Ultima Underworld series passed me by. This was certainly the first one I really lost myself to, being set as it was within one (seemingly) huge city, to be explored at my leisure. Legends of Valour is, essentially, the reason I’ve spent the last fortnight replaying Morrowind for dozens of hours – my first encounter with the incredible freedom of open-world roleplaying. What, you mean I don’t have to go there? I can go over here instead? Or here, or here, or here? I’d had some experience of similar with text adventures, but for a 3D world to do it seemed inconceivable.
Imagine the contempt an RPG would suffer today if it was entirely based in just one city. But Legends of Valour made a virtue out of it, squeezing as much visual diversity it could from the town of Mitteldorf’s many districts. Guards here, bandits there, bloody werewolves here… Beneath it all, one giant, bewildering sewer/dungeon. Only a navigational genius wouldn’t get frighteningly, exhiliratingly lost. Yeah, the town planner should have been fired, but it meant endless adventures, endless exploration, endless confusion – and the sheer delight of somehow finding your way home again afterwards. As I wandered, I could converse with anyone, collecting random quests – indeed, fighting was something of rarity here. This was a town to live in, not one in which you’d paint the streets red with blood. Just as well, as the combat was a terrible mess of frantic clicking.
Then there’s the map. Oh man, the map. The Box contained a vast, fold-out poster, but this was not mere decoration. In fact, it’s perhaps the least decorative poster ever made. A simple, top-down map of the city’s layout, its only immediate purpose was to demonstrate where the city’s various districts were in relation to each other. On the left, a list of specific building names – but it didn’t reveal where any of those buildings were. That was my job.
Whenever I stumbled across a hitherto unvisited building, I reach for my pencil, found the structure’s name from the list, then diligently marked its reference number on the map itself. That map was mine – my own evolving cartographical creation, and a personal record of my adventures to date. You’d think shops and taverns would want to be found, but no matter – this was sublime roleplaying. I was my character, keeping and referring to my own notes. I can’t believe I don’t own that map anymore. My delight at finding a PDF copy is tragically immense.
Most of all though, I remember being arrested for vagrancy. Legends of Valour doesn’t have the Elder Scrolls games’ mollycoddled take on survival – food, drink and sleep were absolute necessities. Of course, sleeping in an inn was expensive, so an amateur adventurer such as I would find a darkened corner, curl up cautiously and hope for the best. The guards usually caught me. Bastard, hobo-bullying guards.
The more I read about it now, the more tragically clear it is that Legends of Valour was a massively flawed game. Such critical judgements are scarcely important when discussing formative games. It doesn’t matter now whether it did it with aplomb or not – Legends of Valour taught me the value of making my own decisions, unhooking myself from story and living in the game rather than simply playing it – traits now common to a great many of the games I most enjoy. Stalker, Morrowind, King’s Bounty, even World of Warcraft back when that ‘World’ still meant something: Legends of Valour was my first step to all of ‘em.
Dune II: Battle For Arrakis
History class, circa 1993. Mr [?] clocks that I’m not paying attention. Again. Of course, the rugby kids are making all kinds of noise at the back, but Mr [?] is ferociously proud of the school rugby team, so they get away with it. Scruffy, spotty, speccy little Alec Meer, though – he must not be allowed to while away the lesson by doodling in his exercise book.
Mr [?] walks over to me without my noticing. Grabs my book from my hands, leaving a biro trail down its length as it’s ripped rudely from underneath my pen. Holds it up in front of the entire class. “What’s this, Meer?” “N-n-n-nothing, sir.” “It looks like an aeroplane. Or a bird. Tell me what it is.” “Mmmnithommr.” “What?” “It’s an ornithopter, sir.” “A WHAT?”
Nervously, pathetically explaining what Dune 2 was to 30 sneering teenagers and a short, stern man with a hideous combover didn’t do me many social favours. It also didn’t stop me from compulsively playing Dune 2, the sterling grandfather of real-time strategy. I adored army-building, the steady climb up the tech tree, the vanquishing of rival Houses with my vast army, and the semi-cheat that made a Harvester’s spice load increase by 1% if you clicked on it. More than that, I adored the visual design. Looking at it now, I can barely tell half the units apart, but back then it was a realisation that there was far more to games than high-technology. Its crude sprites told a tale and painted a scene impeccably. When I wasn’t drawing Dune 2 units, I was playing Dune 2. When I wasn’t playing Dune 2, I was talking about Dune 2 – telling tall, exaggerated tales about improbable victories.
A small group of us built all manner of myths around the game, denied an internet to fact-check any of them. Cheats that didn’t exist, secret units that were the stuff of pure fantasy… There was even, one of us claimed, a rare version with a fourth playable House. They were yellow, and their vehicles could cut soldiers’ legs off, leaving them screaming and bleeding on the battlefield, at least until a Harvester ran over them. Oh, how we wanted that version. We knew it didn’t exist, but by God we believed in it anyway.
Dune 2, I suspect, was what made me a PC gamer specifically. It also left a subjective tumour in my brain which means I will never, ever enjoy any RTS as much as I did Dune 2 in 1993. I try, I really do, but it’s no good. This was the first game I ever fell really, truly head over heels for. You never quite get over your first love.
My second-ever published game review (and the first of any decent size) was Emperor: Battle For Dune, in 2001. Funny old world.
Gobliins 2
My father wasn’t terribly happy about how long I spent playing games (even though it was entirely his fault, his having provided the household with a ZX Spectrum and a BBC Micro a few years previous to the arrival of the 486 SX on which I played the five games listed here). Hearing his 13-year-old son shout “FUCK OFF” at the monitor whilst playing Syndicate probably didn’t help.
Gobliins 2, though, was the game that we could both enjoy, and both appreciate the other for enjoying. The puzzles were smart enough to convince him there was worth to them, and absurd enough to make me laugh. This was co-operative gaming: me at the physical controls, him at the mental ones. He seemed to grasp this French point’n'click adventure’s skewed logic better than I did, but would hint at his supposed solutions rather than outright say them – nudging me towards working them out for myself.
What did Gobliins 2 teach me? I guess that, like most of the others here, it developed my preference for a well-crafted world over precise mechanics. I’m fearful to revisit its pratfall-based gags now, but I suspect its tale of idiots somehow blundering through danger had some effect on my generally irreverent approach to my own gaming adventures. In hindsight, it also taught me that games can be a force for much more than mere hedonism. Like playing Scorched Earth with those Bigger Boys, it brought me closer to someone I (at the time) had a fairly fractured relationship with.
More than that, it was spinning a tale to the two of us, one we both participated in and directed. Television, movies, books – these kept people apart, alone, even when enjoyed in company. Games can bring people together – the shared wonder of pressing buttons to make a tiny world change in front of our eyes.
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I have exactly the same problem with Dune 2. I want to love RTSs and I… kind of do. But mostly I’m subconsciously comparing the way they make me feel to the way Dune 2 made me feel, and so they all feel lacking in some undefinable way that they can never surmount.
Yeah, there are interface features not in Dune 2 or Command & Conquer 1 that make both those games unplayable for me now. Bit of a shame that, the way some elements of game design have progressed, whilst others seem to have atrophied.
I only played Dune 2 on the console (not sure what console it was, it was at my friend’s house). I do remember fond memories of x-com though I never was very good at it.
Did Sierra/Dynamix they release the Quest for Glory series in the UK?
Those games launched my obsession with PC gaming as well as for world folklore and really stupid (pun-laced) humor. Music was memorable, still find myself humming the Meep’s song or Erana’s Peace and wondering where the hell it came from.
I never owned and only barely played Dune II, but it made quite the impression on my young brain with the sandworms eating your units and the harvesters that could run over people and such.
A strange memory of Dune 2: discovering I could change the language of the voice barks. That was fun.
Most of my X-COM soldiers got the names of my friends, so I could be even more upset when they got killed.
Ah, Scorched Earth. Very good pick. I’d completely forgotten about it until I read this.
I was with you until Goblins, what an awful game that was. I came around a bit when I realised it was more of an experience shared with a parent than just a memory of a great game.
Still, I’ve always hated adventure type games unless they reached the very heights of what that genre could offer, like say Grim Fandango.
Baal: The Zoo was in the SE corner of the city.
I played it to death too, and also played it as a City-Based Elite.
KG
I took JA1 (JA2 even more so) over any of the Xcom games, I suspect just because I encountered them first. I continue to search for the next great turn based tactical squad combat game, Silent Storm was somehow disappointing although I enjoyed Fallout Tactics.
I agree about Dune II though, that game had me totally hooked. I remember telling my parents I didn’t want to go on holiday one summer because it couldn’t possibly be as much fun as the game was.
I never played Scorched Earth, but my favourite artillery game was a clone called ‘destruct’ hidden inside the old shareware game Tyrian. Spent more time playing that than Tyrian itself.
Just brilliant Alec. I’m sure my copy of Legends of Valour is in my parents loft; will have to investigate. Although I hope you all realise that these write-ups officially mean you’re all old ;)
I suspect we’re very much aware of our decrepitude.
KG
Interesting reading someones completely different journey through videogames
Good choices, and I wish I could remember what my scorched-earth style game was – I’m sure there was one, before Worms – but the real question is why this article is illustrated by a Colin Murray Sim.
Can Alec Meer really be…
“The interface is a little frustrating in this day and age”
That’s a killer for Dune 2 for me. I played C&C first, and got totally spoilt by group-select. Even if it took a couple of failed demo missions for the Cannon Fodder neurons to grok the economy part too. Ahem.
I’m just thankful that Sys Shock’s interface is just good enough to still be playable in this world of WASD.
X-COM is the greatest game ever made. I doubt it will ever be beaten and many many people have tried to better it.
I’ve played it again and again… and each time something new happens, new heroes are made and new stories come forth. The graphics are simple enough to give you an idea but they make your own imagination take over and add in bits, better gfx would take this away making the game somebody else’s and not your own.
It can never be bettered.
Ah, X-COM. The game that taught me that going in through the door will get you killed. Always, always whip out that rocket launcher and go through the wall instead.
The day I discovered that you could do the same thing with UFOs if you used the demo charges… very few games have given me such a feeling of unadulterated joy.
As for re-loading, I would do it whenever anyone died. The FUCK I was going to let one of MY guys die. TFTD nearly killed me.
Keeping the X-COM flame alive: http://www.ufopaedia.org
I can’t believe you guys played these games as KIDS. I didn’t see a 386 until I was in university.
Also, http://www.xcomufo.com/
XcomUtil forum: http://www.xcomufo.com/forums/index.php?showforum=79
There is NO reason to play Xcom without XcomUtil. None.
@Torgen: What does it do? Looking at the xcomutil website, it seems more like an editor/trainer if you want to screw around and basically make your own game:
So, assuming I don’t want to cheat, create new aircraft types or modify the stats of weapons, enemies or anything else, what does it do for me?
@jalf
You are allowed at the startup to choose which options to use or not. IMO, the most important is replacing the default Worst. Base. Layout. Ever. with something more defensible. Another good item is that it at least attempts to keep your troopers equipped the way you want them. Also, it slightly tweaks the abysmal starting tanks so that they are a but more survivable.
Although you can’t tell at a first glance, many veteran Xcom players use XcomUtil to make the game HARDER. Most people though use it to correct some things that were left half-done when the original devs were forced to ship the game by Microprose.
Go through the readme page and it will explain all the options to you one at a time.
So it lets you remember soldier’s equipment layout? That’s handy.
The reason I asked is that I’m not really interested in anything that changes the game itself. I don’t need new base layouts or tougher starting tanks. What I want to see are features that improve the interface (for example by remembering equipment layout, or perhaps by adding the “reserve TU’s for kneeling” button that TFTD had), but don’t change anything in the actual gameplay.
At the very least, install it to remember the soldier’s equipment and to fix the difficulty bug (This is a must, otherwise the game will be in Very Easy regardless of the difficulty you choose).
I guess the rest of the changes (Whether they make the game easier by making the rookies come out of the troop transport first, or harder by making the economy more balanced so you won’t be able to make a huge profit out of Laser Cannons) are for experienced players who have already finished the vanilla game. You don’t have to use those if you don’t want to.
Your transport will be able to carry weapons and your fighters will be able to carry troops, though. You can’t change that. But that’s not a problem, since nobody’s forcing you to equip them with weapons or troops.
More info at http://www.ufopaedia.org/index.php?title=XcomUtil
There’s no need to change the initial base. Simply sell one of the interceptors, dismantle its hangar, build another one at the north and build another living quarters. Then you dismantle the old ones and you’re good to go before the aliens even begin to think of attacking your base.
But, for the love of god, don’t keep the original base layout unless you’re playing at Very Easy.
@JellyfishGreen
All these games also appeared on the Amiga which is probably why a lot of people played them as kids.
“FUCK OFF SYNDICATE!” And then quickly turning off the monitor when my parents came in to find me busily doing revision and not cursing some mysterious cartel at all. Monitor switching off was never particularly confidence inspiring solution though. I lived in perpetual fear of my parents realising that the monitor being black didn’t mean that there wasn’t anything there. I remember a few, painful, progress erasing reflexive reboots too…
Kids have it too easy these days with all their alt-tabbing!
Also, the first time I got base invaded in XCOM exploded my world (I certainly did not read the manual, so did not see it comming). I was completely amazed that I was getting to run about in my poorly constructed base, getting massacred by aliens, seeing it *from the inside*. Its hard to express.
I really wanted to tell someone — anyone, but I quickly realised that the adults in my home couldn’t possibly comprehend the awesomeness of what was happening – I doubted that they’d even be able to parse the graphics. My younger brother would understand in a few years, but at this point he didn’t even have a PC!
Anyway it was a great, and rare moment when a game truly exceeded my expectations.
Legends of Valour was garbage even back in the day. Only decent thing was the graphics where it did a few neat tricks.
EyeMessiah: When I picked up XCOM off Steam, I had the same experience. On a laptop. In the middle of class. Oops.
… the professor almost threw me out of the lecture.
Aye, I used to be delighted upon a base invasion in X-COM. “I get to see my own stuff!”
I didn’t get one in my first playthrough, and paranoia meant game 2’s Muton invasion was a shooting gallery. I love the flying suit combined with the lifts.
XCom and Dune 2 left have left a warm place in my heart.
Has anyone tried Super Dune 2? Its a hack/mod for Dune 2 <a href="http://www.cdosabandonware.com/std_games_details.php?gameid=1143" here.
It changes the playable sides to sard, fremen and mercs. Might be fun for kicks.
oh for shame!
Yeah what’s funny is that there actually IS a special version of Dune II, mentioned above, with a yellow camp among other things.
Dune II, I think it’s the first game I played, and probably turned me into the nerd I am today.
The…. the yellow house exists? [My world collapses].
Oh! Oh! Scorched earth! I’ve been moved to comment (uninformatively) by pretty much all of the articles in this series, marvellous stuff.
I specialised in playing the psychological game – stocking up on dirtballs and seeing how many rounds of being buried it would take my mates to actually become apoplectic.
Good times.
Wow, Gobliins. That’s probably the only adventure/puzzle game I actually made progress in. Haven’t even thought of it in AGES … it actually had some halfway decent sound effects, I think? It’s probably better I don’t try to track down an emulated copy and let it live on in nostalgia.
This looks like an interesting game. It’s probably worth playing after playing World of Warcraft endlessly. I wonder if other games like the ones you’ve featured in your article is still being played by many.
Can we please smush the brains of the above spammer?