First post, by Shreddoc
- Rank
- Oldbie
We all harbour many petty delusions. Until recently, one of mine was that I used to be a die-hard DOS gamer in the 90's who among many other things spent endless weeks (or was it months??) gradually beating Tie Fighter while using a mediocre joystick. Vividly recall the graphics, the sound, the music, the immersive gameplay, the Star Wars experience at it's peak. I went so far! One of the coolest retro experiences in the memory banks! So a year ago, I turned my retro focus upon reviving the game on quality hardware in order to bask in that glorious nostalgia again.
Not exactly a difficult task, but I casually took my time poring over minor details like versions and joystick options. Found and obtained a few different joysticks just for fun, despite the fact I barely play any games which use them. Went the whole distance - fully taking them apart, cleaning and servicing, to end up with nice hardware - satisfying in it's own right. Had a couple of leisurely discussions here at Vogons about certain aspects.
Eventually I started getting into the game itself, and it was good, it was great. But me, on the other hand, I wasn't really all that. Despite having much fun, I soon realised that my memories of how I played the game weren't quite accurate. See, we can't be having no damage, son, else that's annoying. Things get shot up all the dang time, namely me. Limited ammunition? Hmm, I don't think so. More things require immediate and spectacular shooting than I'm being assigned missiles for, you know, so either someone ain't doing the maths here or I'm totally a lazy bastard, and either way a box requires ticking and that box is a non-box otherwise known as "the option to never run out of ammo".
So, petty delusion dashed. I did and still do love DOS gaming, spent some pretty important years deep within the system, but I was also - like quite a few of us, I assume - just a teen kid casually blasting his way through dozens of games in a path of least resistance, using things like cheats and trainers as often as not (let us never forget the years of stealing glances through gaming magazines in shops in order to memorise cheat codes, or of phoning up the Sega hotline!). None of this lessens the experience or it's value at all. It doesn't matter. It was simply nice to have a quiet reflection and a laugh about the slight differences which can sometimes grow between memories and realities.
And in this case, the fact that my Tie Fighter foreplay of about 20 hours preparation, somewhat outperformed my actual revisit of the game itself, in which I lasted about a dozen hours before having had my very satisfying albeit slightly disillusioning fill.
Not that I would have it any other way!