I just realized I've been on facebook for 11 years.

I'm now older than Han Solo in a New Hope.

I played my first Bungie game 21 years ago.

At least I'm not as old as Claude or Kermit.

Where will we all be when Destiny is done? I wonder.

By a month.

At least I'm not as old as Claude or Kermit.

None of us will ever be as old as Claude or Kermit.

At least I'm not as old as Claude or Kermit.

None of us will ever be as old as Claude or Kermit.

I guess that's technically true.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/things-that-will-make-you-feel-truly-ancient#.genqXa60Zz

You really feel old when you don't get half the pop culture references from 20 years ago.

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I'm so old...

My Xbox handle has no numbers and is a legible, normal word
I played Pathways into Darkness when it first came out
I recall my games fitting on a single 3.5' disk with room to spare
I played games on a green screen outside of the aged school computer labs
Once my Apple IIe disk drive had an infestation of aphids that got on the 5 1/2 floppy and it ground them up and spewed green goo all over the desk.

I used to frequent arcades when games were 20 cents to play.
I used to keep 20 cents in my Kangaroo shoes (they had pockets!) so as to call home on a pay phone so my parents could pick me up.
I remember when the price of a soda at a vending machine jumped to 40 cents!
At the age of 6 most of my classmates and I would walk several blocks home alone and no one thought this was strange at all.
I ordered the special Haley's Comet Matchbox car when it last came around, chipped off the paint playing with it and repainted it to match KITT from KnightRider.

I'm so old...

My Xbox handle has no numbers and is a legible, normal word
I played Pathways into Darkness when it first came out
I recall my games fitting on a single 3.5' disk with room to spare
I played games on a green screen outside of the aged school computer labs
Once my Apple IIe disk drive had an infestation of aphids that got on the 5 1/2 floppy and it ground them up and spewed green goo all over the desk.

I used to frequent arcades when games were 20 cents to play.
I used to keep 20 cents in my Kangaroo shoes (they had pockets!) so as to call home on a pay phone so my parents could pick me up.
I remember when the price of a soda at a vending machine jumped to 40 cents!
At the age of 6 most of my classmates and I would walk several blocks home alone and no one thought this was strange at all.
I ordered the special Haley's Comet Matchbox car when it last came around, chipped off the paint playing with it and repainted it to match KITT from KnightRider.

When the price of a slice of pizza at the famous Ray's Pizza here in Manhattan, NYC across the street of the elementary school I went (yes, THAT Ray's was our go-to lunch spot) - anyway, when it went up to 75 cents, everyone threw a shit fit.

- M

I'm so old...

My Xbox handle has no numbers and is a legible, normal word
I played Pathways into Darkness when it first came out
I recall my games fitting on a single 3.5' disk with room to spare
I played games on a green screen outside of the aged school computer labs
Once my Apple IIe disk drive had an infestation of aphids that got on the 5 1/2 floppy and it ground them up and spewed green goo all over the desk.

I used to frequent arcades when games were 20 cents to play.
I used to keep 20 cents in my Kangaroo shoes (they had pockets!) so as to call home on a pay phone so my parents could pick me up.
I remember when the price of a soda at a vending machine jumped to 40 cents!
At the age of 6 most of my classmates and I would walk several blocks home alone and no one thought this was strange at all.
I ordered the special Haley's Comet Matchbox car when it last came around, chipped off the paint playing with it and repainted it to match KITT from KnightRider.

I called a hint line!
I cut actual physical film.
I was amazed at the quality of Might Ducks on Laserdisc.
I saw a TOS Star Trek film in a theatre on release.
I memorized all my friend's phone numbers!
I saw a cigarette advertisement with Joe Camel!
I did actual work on a computer with 1MB RAM and a 40MB hard drive.
I got a lego set in a happy meal.
"Please insert the FINAL segment of the archive" had me confused as fuck.
"Cody, I have to make a phone call, get off the internet!"
I remember life before the internet.
Gas was 99¢ a gallon.

Mine's a mix of old and country:
- We had a party line (several households sharing the same phone line).
- I was about to start college when they paved our road.
- Never had cable, but finally got satellite in high school.
- First computer was an Apple II. It was a loaner from a rich couple who owned a farm 5 miles away.
- I watched more TV on a black and white TV than color during my childhood. Much of that TV watching before I was school age was done in a chicken house.
- During most of my childhood we didn't have a street address, just a route and box number.
- Even though we had indoor plumbing, we still had an outhouse out back.
- I learned to drive a tractor before learning to drive a car.
- I got my first Walkman when I was 10 and wore out a Don Williams cassette tape while working on our farm.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DestinyTheGame/comments/3gpwqz/did_we_ever_figure_out_what_the_deal_is_with_the/

Kids these days.

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Mine's a mix of old and country:
- We had a party line (several households sharing the same phone line).
- I was about to start college when they paved our road.
- Never had cable, but finally got satellite in high school.
- First computer was an Apple II. It was a loaner from a rich couple who owned a farm 5 miles away.
- I watched more TV on a black and white TV than color during my childhood. Much of that TV watching before I was school age was done in a chicken house.
- During most of my childhood we didn't have a street address, just a route and box number.
- Even though we had indoor plumbing, we still had an outhouse out back.
- I learned to drive a tractor before learning to drive a car.
- I got my first Walkman when I was 10 and wore out a Don Williams cassette tape while working on our farm.

nice!

-My first cassette tape was "Johnny Horton's Greatest Hits"
-My first concert was Dwight Yoakam, when i was in 1st grade.
-My first computer was a Tandy 1000RL with 768k RAM, a Tandy 16 color monitor, and no hard drive
-I had an old black and white TV that only had 13 channels, until i got an NES, then i got used color tv
-Our living room TV sat on top of an older TV that didn't work, was made out of wood, and was the size of a cabinet
-My first gaming system was a hand-me-down Atari 2600 (that i still have)
-I learned to drive a stick shift while checking cows
-My first bicycle was from Western Auto
-When Super Mario Bros 3 came out, i put it on lay-away for $5, and paid it off by mowing for my grandmother

I'm so old...

My Xbox handle has no numbers and is a legible, normal word
I played Pathways into Darkness when it first came out
I recall my games fitting on a single 3.5' disk with room to spare

Ditto to all of that.

I played games on a green screen outside of the aged school computer labs

I remember when our school got one of the first computer labs in the state, it was full of Apple ][e's, they all had green screens. I spent all the time in there that I could. Oregon Trail, Logo Turtle Graphics & Printshop FTW!

I used to frequent arcades when games were 20 cents to play.
I used to keep 20 cents in my Kangaroo shoes (they had pockets!) so as to call home on a pay phone so my parents could pick me up.
I remember when the price of a soda at a vending machine jumped to 40 cents!
At the age of 6 most of my classmates and I would walk several blocks home alone and no one thought this was strange at all.
I ordered the special Haley's Comet Matchbox car when it last came around, chipped off the paint playing with it and repainted it to match KITT from KnightRider.

Yup to most of this, except I only vividly recall the arcades being a quarter, maybe 20¢.

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What was Lincoln like as a President?

Was it scary dealing with all the dinosaurs and saber tooth tigers and shit?

Did the first car absolutely blow your minds? The first plane?

I played games on a green screen outside of the aged school computer labs

I remember when our school got one of the first computer labs in the state, it was full of Apple ][e's, they all had green screens. I spent all the time in there that I could. Oregon Trail, Logo Turtle Graphics & Printshop FTW!

When I was in Grade 4, if we finished our daily math assignments early, we got to play games like Number Munchers, Oregon trail, and Jenny's Journey on a bunch of Apple IIs lined up on one side of the classroom. It was first-come first-serve, so if you were really fast you got one of the few color monitors.

This was in 2001.

You forgot to ask about the invention of the wheel and the discovery of fire.

Mine's a mix of old and country:
- We had a party line (several households sharing the same phone line).
- I was about to start college when they paved our road.
- Never had cable, but finally got satellite in high school.
- First computer was an Apple II. It was a loaner from a rich couple who owned a farm 5 miles away.
- I watched more TV on a black and white TV than color during my childhood. Much of that TV watching before I was school age was done in a chicken house.
- During most of my childhood we didn't have a street address, just a route and box number.
- Even though we had indoor plumbing, we still had an outhouse out back.
- I learned to drive a tractor before learning to drive a car.
- I got my first Walkman when I was 10 and wore out a Don Williams cassette tape while working on our farm.

nice!

-My first cassette tape was "Johnny Horton's Greatest Hits"
-My first concert was Dwight Yoakam, when i was in 1st grade.
-My first computer was a Tandy 1000RL with 768k RAM, a Tandy 16 color monitor, and no hard drive
-I had an old black and white TV that only had 13 channels, until i got an NES, then i got used color tv
-Our living room TV sat on top of an older TV that didn't work, was made out of wood, and was the size of a cabinet
-My first gaming system was a hand-me-down Atari 2600 (that i still have)
-I learned to drive a stick shift while checking cows
-My first bicycle was from Western Auto
-When Super Mario Bros 3 came out, i put it on lay-away for $5, and paid it off by mowing for my grandmother

-my first computer was a Tandy with a 286 processor that was way outdated when I got it in High School. Loved that Tandy Tank.
-My first console was the NES, but my most unique gaming experience was playing on the Phillips CD-i from '91.
-Western Auto... we still have one in Natchez, MS and I love that place. It is where I bought my latest Bike :)
-I remember choosing a good portable CD player by the size of the buffer.
-I also remember how we all had cassette player adapters in our cars so we could play cd's from our portable players.
-Dad had a combo 8 track player/record player in the living room as a kid.

-I had an old black and white TV that only had 13 channels, until i got an NES, then i got used color tv

My B&W TV had a UHF dial on it, good thing, all the good cartoons were on channel 20.

-Our living room TV sat on top of an older TV that didn't work, was made out of wood, and was the size of a cabinet

That big-as-a-cabinet wood TV was our color TV, I remember watching the original COSMOS with Carl Sagan on Sunday nights.

Oooh, yeah. I bet discovering fire was real big. Definitely would have gone viral if the internet was around then.

Luckily we have all these folks here to tell us about it.

The fact that you're nearly 3/4 of a year older than me really softens the blow with each big birthday. ;)

what is it like to grow up depending on technology and having not even the faintest idea how it works? :P

What was Lincoln like as a President?

Was it scary dealing with all the dinosaurs and saber tooth tigers and shit?

Did the first car absolutely blow your minds? The first plane?

your grandkids will be asking if the first iPhone blew your mind. "you mean you had to actually touch the screen!?"

What was Lincoln like as a President?

Was it scary dealing with all the dinosaurs and saber tooth tigers and shit?

Did the first car absolutely blow your minds? The first plane?

your grandkids will be asking if the first iPhone blew your mind. "you mean you had to actually touch the screen!?"

Uncle Mig, what was Youtube like back when you were a kid?

what is it like to grow up depending on technology and having not even the faintest idea how it works? :P

My kitchen cabinet door fell off its hinges last week and I was beyond proud of myself for figuring out how to put it back on.

;p

For the record, while certainly not old, I remember a time before the internet. We had 28k internet when I was in middle school.

I got my first cell phone at 16, around the time that Motorola flip phone was the one to have (which I didn't get; Nokia brick for me).

Sits next to me at work. He has this 3 ring binder in his cube that has pictures of his old groups and projects. He helped design a part of the F-16 Falcon, for example. He likes to say there are older binders back home that are made of clay tablets and written in cuneiform. Also, Dinosaurs didn't have feathers, he just dressed them that way to make them less scary, the pyramids were easy to build with the right cross functional team and lots of alcohol, and he has a library card from Alexandria.

No way.

Highway 61...

Oooh, yeah. I bet discovering fire was real big. Definitely would have gone viral if the internet was around then.

hahaha, good one. no internet, you crack me up lil buddy.

Was it scary dealing with all the dinosaurs and saber tooth tigers and shit?

Claude took care of the dinosaurs, we paid them no mind.

Ha... I'm 4 months younger than my wife. So for 4 months every year, I get to be the biggest jerk on the planet by teasing her about being in to younger men, asking how her memory has been lately, etc.

Of course, she's quick to remind me that she looks a decade younger than I do, so I guess she's the real winner.

... actually, doesn't that still make me the winner? :D

Ha... I'm 4 months younger than my wife. So for 4 months every year, I get to be the biggest jerk on the planet by teasing her about being in to younger men, asking how her memory has been lately, etc.

Heh, my wife is 3 months older than me. Lots of fun :).

Of course, she's quick to remind me that she looks a decade younger than I do, so I guess she's the real winner.
... actually, doesn't that still make me the winner? :D

Most definitely.

- we elementary school kids would scramble for the chance to yell PIX! PIX! PIX! into the phone. Points if you know what I'm talking about.

- the Radio Shack (Realistic) version of this device made me the most popular kid in high school:

I'll play.

I cried when #1 song "I Want to Hold Your Hand" played on the radio. (So I'm told.)
I spent a lot of time with my grandmother growing up. (She lived with us.) She was born in 1889.
My first favorite show was called "The Banana Splits Adventure Hour." Also dug H.R. Pufnstuf.
I watched us land on the moon the first time (at school no less--everyone alive on the planet did, if they could sit up and had access to TV).
I remember being amazed by Pong at the local Kmart.
My first "video game" after Pong was Mattel Electronic Football.
My favorite arcade games had vector graphics, like Red Baron and Tempest
The gaming fad at my high school was backgammon. I'm serious. People brought sets to school (until they were banned).
I remember us not having a microwave oven or a coffee maker. (My parents drank instant coffee.)
From the age of about 10 on, I went wherever I wanted when school was out as long as I was home by dark.
Nixon was the first president I remember, and I was mad about Watergate mainly because the news coverage interrupted some of my favorite shows.
I learned to type on an IBM selectric writing a letter to CBS because they cancelled the truly awful Planet of the Apes TV series.
I watched Evel Knievel (not) jump over the Snake River canyon live on closed Circuit TV.
When my dad and I were picking out my first stereo at age 11 the salesman tried to tell me that cassettes were the future. I laughed at him. There were SO MANY MORE EIGHT-TRACKS in the stores.
When I started my first job at a record store, there were albums, and about half and half cassettes and eight tracks. John Lennon was still alive.
Let's just say I lost my innocence in more ways than one the day the space shuttle Challenger blew up.
My first computer was a Macintosh 512K. I remember how excited I was when I finally got a second floppy drive and no longer had to swap disks.
I was a Bungie fan before I could play Bungie games. (I had a Mac Classic until Marathon came out, and that game is why I bought a Power Mac.) Before I lived vicariously through reviews in MacWorld and such.

- My first computer was (iirc) a Commodore Pet with no disc drive or hard drive, such that every time you turned it on you had to write the program that you wanted it to run. In BASIC. There was a magazine we got delivered every month that contained programs for you to retype. I spent all day writing hangman (which only had 3 words built into it) and then the power went out for 2 seconds and I lost it and had to start over.

- Our TV came in a box that had COLOR written on it with each letter in a different color, I assume in case you didn't know what the heck the word "color" meant.

- We had duck and cover drills in elementary school in case the Russians bombed us.

- My mom took me to a Dukakis rally.

- I saw the Challenger explode, live on TV. :(

- No one knew baseball players did steroids.

- Everyone loved Bill Cosby.

- Mike Tyson was going to be the next champ, we just knew it!

- We read 1984 and thought "Ha, look how the people in the past had baseless worries about the future."

- I had complete sets of Garbage Pail Kids series 1 and 2.

- Tom Cruise was younger than the romantic female lead in his latest movie, which also had this hilarious scene where he danced around in his underwear.

- Tupac was alive.

- Rambo helped the Taliban.

- No one in Predator was a governor yet.

So many more. Lordy.

I console myself with the fact that I'm 7 years younger than my wife.

She gets pretty pissed when we talk about how old we both were in the 80s. :D

My first computer was a Macintosh 512K. I remember how excited I was when I finally got a second floppy drive and no longer had to swap disks.

The Mac 512k was the first computer my family got. I remember popping in the "guided tour" disk and listening to the tape cassette that went along with it... https://youtu.be/1pwammW5syw?t=1m11s I loved "Mousing Around". geeze.

I console myself with the fact that I'm 7 years younger than my wife.

She gets pretty pissed when we talk about how old we both were in the 80s. :D

6 years younger than my wife. I live for the moments when she reminisces about things from the '70s just so I can point out how I had not yet been conceived.

- The first computer I remember using was either an IBM or Compaq Portable Personal Computer. I THINK it was the IBM. My dad had brought it home from work and given it to us after it had been replaced. It's about the size of a desktop computer now with a tiny green screen and a keyboard that clipped on the top/front.

- Eventually we got a Macintosh Classic, which is where I learned to love computers.

- My first console was a Sega Master System with Wonder Boy in Monster Land (so good!) and After Burner.

- First experience with the "Internet" was actually connecting to Prodigy and playing really bad 8-bit games.

- I got in trouble for leaving AOL on overnight to download the Warcraft demo.

- I learned my first "programming" in HyperCard.

- Ambrosia made the best Shareware games.

- Mac OS 9 was a piece of crap even at the time.

- I remember thinking Zip drives were amazing.

- I remember being mad when Microsoft discontinued Internet Explorer for Mac (some sites didn't work in Netscape).

My first computer was a Macintosh 512K. I remember how excited I was when I finally got a second floppy drive and no longer had to swap disks.

The Mac 512k was the first computer my family got. I remember popping in the "guided tour" disk and listening to the tape cassette that went along with it... https://youtu.be/1pwammW5syw?t=1m11s I loved "Mousing Around". geeze.

Yep, no hard drive, but it was a life-changer for me. For perspective, I'd gotten a typewriter about a year before to type papers on (for college!), but I'd discovered WordStar in the computer lab at school, and convinced my dad I HAD to have a computer. (I actually bought it used from the richest kid I knew, and my dad helped out.)

- I learned my first "programming" in HyperCard

Ooo, we'll have to compare notes on this one!

- I learned my first "programming" in HyperCard

Ooo, we'll have to compare notes on this one!

I remember playing for hours with the TrainSet stack, which I thought was amazing.

I console myself with the fact that I'm 7 years younger than my wife.

She gets pretty pissed when we talk about how old we both were in the 80s. :D

6 years younger than my wife. I live for the moments when she reminisces about things from the '70s just so I can point out how I had not yet been conceived.

I'm 5 years older than my wife. Whenever I bring up something from the early 80's she just gives me a blank stare.

Yup. Born there. Currently still on 61 in st. Francisville an hour south. You know Natchez?

The gaming fad at my high school was backgammon. I'm serious. People brought sets to school (until they were banned).

Nothing in this thread made anyone sound old to me except this. What the fuck, Kermit. What the FUCK.

(That said, my high school had monthly Euchre tournaments and people played before, during, and after school.)

My best friend's father grew up in Fayette. We would go down to the family farm occasionally.

My HS has a Cribbage fad. SO…

Heh, I used to do this to my wife who's got me beat by about a month and a half.

Apparently, it stopped being funny when she started getting grey hair and I didn't :p

-Disciple

The last time I was in Natchez, Red and I were sitting under the Mississippi River bridge late at night, covered in mud, and eating Taco Bell.

The gaming fad at my high school was backgammon. I'm serious. People brought sets to school (until they were banned).

Nothing in this thread made anyone sound old to me except this. What the fuck, Kermit. What the FUCK.

(That said, my high school had monthly Euchre tournaments and people played before, during, and after school.)

Heh, there was kind of a backgammon craze in the 1970s. I think my high school caught the tail end of that.

This list was full of stream of consciousness stuff I haven't thought about in years.

How do I not remember this? What were we doing?

By a month.

It's ok, I was one when Bungie was founded, and now I'm typing this message from my workstation here.

How do I not remember this? What were we doing?

We were discussing the intelligence of standing thigh deep in mud in the middle of a river bed during a flash flood. We were also trying to determine just how much rust we were going to have to clean off our guns.

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- Ambrosia made the best Shareware games.

I was in a choir class in college with the guy who one day was wearing a maelstrom shirt. Apparently he won the maelstrom high score tournament a few years before that. We had a few good conversations about ambrosia.

Also I miss chiral. =)

Ah yes, when we went to the swamp. That was pretty trippy watching a dry creek bed turn into a rushing river in about 30 seconds. I still think we'd have been fine to wade in it.

I was thinking back to our college days. I don't remember if we ever went to natchez back then.

My best friend's father grew up in Fayette. We would go down to the family farm occasionally.

I never spent much time north of Natchez so I'm not familiar with Fayette. Roxie, Bude, that area of Franklin county, and much of Wilkinson county south of Natchez were areas I frequented due to my enjoyment of all things Homochitto forest. Have you been to lake Okissa? That place is nice and great for bass fishing.

I'm assuming you live in MS? Hit me up if you are one Xbone.

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Homochitto forest. Have you been to lake Okissa? That place is nice and great for bass fishing.

I went to Homochitto once when I was very young. Never went to that lake.

I'm assuming you live in MS? Hit me up if you are one Xbone.

I grew up there! I recently moved to Seattle to be closer to the hipsters :)

Also I'm on PS4.

My parents had a backgammon set that my mom said was one of the first things they bought together just after high school, which puts it in the mid seventies. Your story checks out.

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Where will we all be when Destiny is done? I wonder.

I'll be dead. Liver cancer, kiddos.

#onlythegooddieyoung

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Not a single one of those had any effect on me. Maybe Bean.

And hope they wouldn't break, since buying another pen was almost as expensive as buying another tape.

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Where will we all be when Destiny is done? I wonder.

I'll be dead. Liver cancer, kiddos.

what?

What was Lincoln like as a President?

Was it scary dealing with all the dinosaurs and saber tooth tigers and shit?

Did the first car absolutely blow your minds? The first plane?

I'm not as old as these guys here. My claim to antiquity comes from growing up in the dirt-poor half of the state and living behind everyone else in terms of technological development.
We were on 28.8 dailup for sooo long...

Oh, and I also talked to one of the NASA engineers that had been in the control room during the first moon landing. I wish I'd got his name.

But my grandfather... born 1887, died sometime in the seventies. His father was a sheriff back when Yakima was first being settled. My grandfather grew up before cars were in vogue. He would've been a man by the time the Wright brothers took flight. By the time he died, we'd landed men on the moon and we lived under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation delivered by ballistic missiles. World War One, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, nylon stockings, WWII, he lived through it all. The radio was invented, became the popular medium, and was eclipsed by TV when he died. Desegregation of the armed forces, and then schools, and then nationwide would have taken place when he was looking forward to retirement, and it pissed him off.

By all accounts, he was an asshole (And by all accounts, it's hereditary) but I would have loved to talk to him.

Now, back to working on my time machine.

I mean, banana is forever... right...?

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I mean, banana is forever... right...?

Ever hear of the Gros Michel?

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When I was 7, my dad bought a Magnavox Odyssey from our local appliance store, and we hooked it up to the black and white TV in my parents' bedroom. (It was the only TV in the house.)

I only got to play when they were home, but not sleeping or busy. That worked out to Saturday afternoons, mostly.

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Several of us may not be "young" anymore, however our years have earned us unique complexity and respectability, not unlike a properly aged whiskey.

some things get finer (better) with age

..at least that is one of the things I try to tell myself when I cry every year on my birthday

:)

- My first console was a Sega Master System with Wonder Boy in Monster Land (so good!) and After Burner.

Oh man! I had After Burner on NES, a game that helped me get into Fighter Simulators! (Even though it was just an arcade flyer :P)

- Ambrosia made the best Shareware games.

They sure did. I played hundreds of hours of Escape Velocity. Conquered the entire galaxy, heh.

For the record, while certainly not old, I remember a time before the internet. We had 28k internet when I was in middle school.

I got my first cell phone at 16, around the time that Motorola flip phone was the one to have (which I didn't get; Nokia brick for me).

Jeebus. I got my first cell phone at 29. It was one of these.

Several of us may not be "young" anymore, however our years have earned us unique complexity and respectability, not unlike a properly aged whiskey.

some things get finer (better) with age

..at least that is one of the things I try to tell myself when I cry every year on my birthday

:)

My mom still complains about her cataract surgery. She says the world was much softer (and less harsh) than it is now. :)

For the record, while certainly not old, I remember a time before the internet. We had 28k internet when I was in middle school.

I got my first cell phone at 16, around the time that Motorola flip phone was the one to have (which I didn't get; Nokia brick for me).

Jeebus. I got my first cell phone at 29. It was one of these.

Whose number is that, Abraham Lincoln's?

For the record, while certainly not old, I remember a time before the internet. We had 28k internet when I was in middle school.

I got my first cell phone at 16, around the time that Motorola flip phone was the one to have (which I didn't get; Nokia brick for me).

Jeebus. I got my first cell phone at 29. It was one of these.

Whose number is that, Abraham Lincoln's?

Heh - I love how the display doesn't even bother with area codes. :) (That's not mine - I just googled for the phone I had.)

- My first console was a Sega Master System with Wonder Boy in Monster Land (so good!) and After Burner.

Oh man! I had After Burner on NES, a game that helped me get into Fighter Simulators! (Even though it was just an arcade flyer :P)

- Ambrosia made the best Shareware games.

They sure did. I played hundreds of hours of Escape Velocity. Conquered the entire galaxy, heh.

Escape Velocity is still pretty amazing even now. Fantastic games!

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They sure did. I played hundreds of hours of Escape Velocity. Conquered the entire galaxy, heh.

I literally conquered every system and every planet except Earth. It was the only one I didn't control. And believe me, I tried, for like 2 hours. Earth's defense fleet was just so massive I got bored and gave up. Actually I think I ran out of Torpedoes.

There are lots of similar games out there, but for some reason I haven't really found one that I like as much. I'm surprised there isn't an iOS version for the iPad or something.

It's not necessarily the same type of game but it satisfies the same itch, I think.

Was that you could "beat" the game very easily. The very first time I loaded it up, I stumbled into the Velos quest-line within about 3 hours of starting the game. Another hour or so later and I now have the most powerful, indestructible ship in the galaxy that doesn't need to buy fuel or armaments... :(

It totally stripped away the sense of progression and empowerment. A sense that the first Escape Velocity provided with the steady upgrade to slightly more powerful ships with greater cargo capacity.

A couple years ago I thought I might have been too harsh on Nova, so I downloaded it again and gave it another go. Within two hours not only had I been exposed to the Velos quest-line (It seems to be nigh unavoidable!), but I also found a 2-jump trade route in the safest corner of space that offered near infinite profits! One hour of running the route (with ZERO trouble from pirates or anything else) and I had the largest Freighter in the game with a fleet of other freighters, making millions of credits every land-fall...

Nova just didn't have the staying power that the original Escape Velocity (and to an extent, EV: Overdrive) had. Thing I loved about Escape Velocity was that there wasn't any hand holding. They put you in the shittiest ship in the galaxy with no weapons and like 20 tons of cargo space and expected you to make a life of it. I died so many times (manual escape pods FTW!) and had to start over, it was great! EV never told you where you shouldn't go in the galaxy. If a place was frequented by pirates, you'd either find out by flying there and getting blown out of the sky, or you'd have somebody in a bar ask you to fly some cargo there... For a crazy high payout.

None of that seemed to transfer over to Nova, for me at least. Plus the combat was immensely unsatisfying in Nova. Weapons were either ultimately decimating, or did nothing at all to enemies. If you weren't destroying everything in your path, then you had to run from every engagement in order to survive. There was no middle ground it seemed. I personally chalk this up to a newer game-engine that wasn't developed by Ambrosia. I played hundreds of hours of Escape Velocity and hundreds of hours Overdrive. But Nova only held my attention for 10, maybe 20 hours. Wasn't my cup of tea. :/

I literally conquered every system and every planet except Earth. It was the only one I didn't control. And believe me, I tried, for like 2 hours. Earth's defense fleet was just so massive I got bored and gave up. Actually I think I ran out of Torpedoes.

Tell me about it! I said the "entire galaxy" for ease of language. But the truth is I got every planet save Earth as well. I showed up in my Confederate Cruiser, with my fleet of 6 other Confed Cruisers, launched my 30 fighters and battled for hours and hours and hours and never could finish them all off. Part of me wonders if Ambrosia didn't simply program Earth to be unconquerable?

Nova wasn't harder then the OG but it had 5 or 6 stories that explored the universe, all reaching a similar but not identical endgame. Some were harder than others; I considered that velos one the easy mode of the game.

You had to enjoy reading to dig the story, but hell, I'm here because Marathon is my jam.

I can understand that. I probably didn't play enough of it to get the full gamut of storytelling that Nova had to offer. I guess I just got frustrated with how quickly I was going from nothing to everything. Also, as I mentioned that Velos story-line was frustratingly prevalent. Difficult to avoid.

Did you ever use any plugins for any version of EV? The original had one called the Empire Trilogy. Completely reworked the universe and plot of the original game. In my opinion it had MUCH better story-telling than vanilla EV. Really well-done plugin.

I did love that first EV. Great game in its own right.

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I sometimes wish you could choose to do more "meta" things as you got further into the game. Like run a trading company or become the leader of a small empire. I don't know how you would do that without ruining the game though.

I was lucky enough to have an old re-written Ambrosia demo disk. Someone had decided to include a bucket load of fan-made plugins that added countless hours of replayabilty to an already imminently re-playable game. There was even a plug-in writer wizard included. Tried my own hand at making plug-ins. Made the sprites in the Apple paint equivalent and wrote terrible terrible prose for my mission scenes. It was royally awful. :P

I remember when they were developing Nova. I was super excited, I had high hopes of an Escape Velocity MMO with all manner of job-differences. Sadly it wasn't to be.

You know what?! There needs to be a new Escape Velocity! Somebody needs to kickstart that posthaste!

I remember when they were developing Nova. I was super excited, I had high hopes of an Escape Velocity MMO with all manner of job-differences. Sadly it wasn't to be.

You know what?! There needs to be a new Escape Velocity! Somebody needs to kickstart that posthaste!

Privateer 2 was a similar game if I recall. You played it from inside your cockpit so it was 3D. Think EV meets Tie Fighter.

Yeah, Privateer and Freelancer were pretty good. Assuming that Star Citizen doesn't turn out to be vaporware I think it'll scratch that itch pretty well. But I'd love a simpler top-down space trader game. The market seems ripe for such a game I would think.

When I was 7, my dad bought a Magnavox Odyssey from our local appliance store, and we hooked it up to the black and white TV in my parents' bedroom. (It was the only TV in the house.)

I only got to play when they were home, but not sleeping or busy. That worked out to Saturday afternoons, mostly.

If we ever get fully moved in, I'm going to have fire this one up.

We had one growing up (I honestly can't remember if it was the same one, or if a completely different one somehow made its way back to me), but I don't think we ever got it to work. I do remember taping the plastic sheets to the TV and pretending it worked, though :p

It was probably just missing some random A/V cable, but by the time I was old enough to try and figure it out we had already picked up an Atari 2600 and I forgot all about the Odyssey.

-Disciple

Duke Nukem Forever came out 4 years ago.