Video Games Nostalgia

I phoned an old school mate of mine who recently went back to university for his post-graduate studies to find out how school was. He answered “it is not as cool as when we used to play Warlords Battlecry”. We both laughed in reminiscence of our final year as undergraduate students.

We had found a place off-campus this time for the final lap of our studies with the intention of really boosting our grades. The final 2 semesters would see us write our final year projects in addition to the final year courses. We had set up the place with our computers and printers ready for the challenges ahead. Well, those were the intentions but my laptop which I liked to refer to as the game station was loaded with many games as usual but the one that was most popular that year was Warlords Battlecry. I was so captivated by this game that I always found time between working on my final year project, attending classes and studies to play it and soon, as with my other games, attracted interest of my colleagues. At first they thought it was a dumb game as with all my other games but as I continued to advance in the game and my Hero kept getting stronger and more powerful, encountering all sorts of baddies they generally came around and started playing as well. Whenever we had anytime to spare it was battlecry time and pretty much that was the game we played most through out that year. There were other games like Pharaoh and Max Payne but Warlords Battlecry stood out amongst all of them, may be because of the various characters involved.

I had just brought my laptop to school for the first time and I had some games on it as usual; but there was one game that eluded me - Half-life. I just could not lay my hands on it but I realized how great it was from all the reviews and ads I see on TV and stuff. One evening after writing my last mid-semester test in a grueling week of tests, I got to the hostel really exhausted but then a friend of mine handed me the half-life CD. He promised to get it for me but then kept away from me till he was sure I was through with all tests to avoid any distraction which was really a neat thing to do. The end of the tests meant a one week mid-semester break and I wasted no time getting down to work; or more appropriately to play. I installed the game and vowed to finish playing the whole thing within the one week. I played day in day out and as I mentioned earlier other colleagues thought I was playing some dumb game and would say things “what the heck is half-life...” and “you are wasting your time”. But I kept at it because I knew I had a schedule to keep. Later they started coming around to watch me play and before long they became interested in the game as well. It was so cool when Gordon Freeman blasted that thing Nihilanth and the game ended after the “G-Man” offered him a job. Coolest game I ever played?

As a kid I never had any console games so I usually played games at friends place. But it all changed at about 1993/94 when we got our first PC. It had an Intel 486 processor with a speed of 66 MHz. That's right 66 MHz and that is when you press the Turbo button. Without Turbo you were left with 33 MHz. Believe me in those days it was quite fast because it could handle virtually any game of the era, kind of like what the people felt about their horses before cars were invented; the fastest stallion could only go may be 50 mph but it was fast enough to meet their requirements. The computer had a Windows 3.1 operating system which was later upgraded to Windows 3.11 using a bunch of diskettes. All cool games were in DOS then and I would spend the entire day and night playing games like Syndicate and UFO: Enemy Unknown, probably that was how I developed the near addiction to games on PC. Over the years I played games like Prince of Persia, Duke3D, Quake, Doom, Castle Wolfenstein, Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Half-life, Age of Empires, They Hunger, Max Payne, Halo, Far cry, Grand Theft Auto, Warlords Battlecry and many, many more. Unfortunately, nowadays I do not have as much zeal to play games nor can I even find the time. I only watch reviews and ads for all these new cool games but no time to play them. Oh well…..

And by the way our final year was superb because we had our best grades ever. You can see why he said post-graduate studies were not as cool as the days of Warlords battlecry.