A long time ago, before the Internet was really a widely used thing, when we wanted to play video games you got a boatload of quarters, went to the local arcade, and spent hours pumping quarters into large boxes that let you play a game. One game and one game only. Not multiple games like you can do with your Xbox, or PS4, or whatever the cool popular videogame platform is nowadays (Steam?). You played PacMan, or Defender, or Galaga, or Donkey Kong, or ….
My favorite was always Tempest. I liked the game but more importantly, I could play it. It was the game I could play the best. Not that I was an expert at it. I couldn’t plug one quarter in it and play for hours like some of the arcade wizards back then could do. But I could play it longer than any other game in the arcade.
It was a sad day for me when it left the arcades. By then video games were already getting more complex than I could play. No, I had to retire from playing video games at that point.
It was a while later when all the different console gaming systems proliferated and became household items. Now you could buy cartridges that plugged into your gaming console and run diferent games. You could own every game that used to be in the arcades and play them to your heart’s content. In the arcade days you had a joystick and a button to mash to fire whatever weapons were in the game. With consoles, you had controllers wih lots of buttons on them. Pushing different combinations of buttons did different things in the game.
I was at a friend’s house for dinner one night when his daughter asked me to play a video game with her before we ate. I think she was twelve at the time. I figured I couldn’t do that badly against a 12-year-old so I agreed.
We sat down, she turned on the game console and handed me the controller. She put in one of the fightig games that was popular at the time – Mortal Kombat, or Street Fighter, or something like that, I don’t remember which one.
“Are you ready?” she asked.
“Sure, let’s play” I responded.
Then she pressed play on the game and we went at it.
She wiped the floor with me.
Multiple times.
I was busy just mashing the buttons on the controller trying to get my fighter to do something, anything. I happened across whatever combination activated my fighter’s superpower ability and I got a hit on my opponent. Beyond that, I was horrible.
Those were fun days, way back when. Getting thrashed by a 12-year-old, while humiliating, was kind of fun too. I wonder if someone has a retro clone of Tempest that I could play on the PC? Surely oe is out there somewhere on the ‘net.
If you know of a version of Tempest that will run on a PC, my Hordeling, hit reply and let me know.
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