Passthru
07-07-2002, 08:54 PM
###I got this from another site i visit so its not my own,this is for you youngsters out there:)
Tales From The Analog Age
" Now you youngsters just sit down here by my chair by the fire, and I'll tell you a story of the Golden Age of Gaming. It was a time before silicon chips and using the dang phone lines to play games. Nosiree, there was no Internet for us, we had to actually SEE each other or use the U.S. Postal Servce.
"What the game companies did back then see... was to take these big things called trees and turn 'em into this stuff called paper. Then they took a few more of them trees and turned those into pencils(sorta like your newfangled laser-pointers, but they leave a mark). Now the paper, it was like your monitors of today, but with a really low refresh rate. You had to actually move to another page for more information. Our backspace button was this thing on the end of the pencil called an eraser and...."
"Sounds like a lotta work gramps...."
"Now just be quiet and listen, or don't you want to hear my story?"
"Well.... to tell the truth Gramps..."
"Hush! Now as I was saying... To play a game in my day, all the players would actually have to MEET at someone's house. That's right, as strange as it sounds, we actually knew the people we played with in the real world. We would all gather 'round this big thing called a table. It looked a lot like a computer desk, but was flat all the way across, with no shelves on it. We would get the game down from the bookshelf... that's sorta like your CD holders, but layin' on its side and bigger; and get all the pieces out of the box. These pieces were little bits of cardboard with teeny tiny words and numbers printed on 'em, that told us what each piece was. They were put on what you whippersnappers would call a map but we called a board, cause it had to be real stiff to hold all the little pieces when you flung the whole mess accross the room when you lost..
"Now the best games came from this old company by the name of Avalon Hill. We liked those games 'cause they had the most pieces to lose and were the hardest to play. We would all set up our pieces and get out our paper and pencils to keep track of what we did. Each person would then take this thing called a turn. That is where one person got to do what he wanted and then the next person in line would get his turn. It kept things a lot easier to keep track of I can tell 'ya. We would arrange our pieces just so, use a piece of string to check line-of-sight on the board, and see who could get the tallest pile of little cardboard pieces stacked up on one hex. Then we would use what you kids would call an Analog Random Number Generator.... we called 'em dice.
"These dice would let us know if we did anything, and how good or bad we did at it. Then we would use our pencils and write all these things down on the paper. Then we would take a few little pieces of cardboard off the board and move a few more around a bit. After all the dice-rolling and writing and moving was done for a turn for everyone, we would be about done for the day. We would carefully set upside-down boxes on the board to shield the little tiny pieces from wayward drafts, then run off to the kitchen for a snack and a drink. We couldn't eat or drink near the game as the little pieces tended to swell up like croutons when they got wet.
"We would come back in to look over the board one more time and notice that the cat had decided the board look like a fine place to practice running in place across slick sufaces. Once we had suitably diciplined the cat(you don't want to know), we would set about putting all our little pieces back in place. This would be a fine way to kill an entire Saturday. One game, including cat-related delays, could take up to a whole month to play."
"A MONTH!! Wow gramps.... we play a completely different game every month!"
"Boy, that wasn't nothin' at all compared to playing games by mail. You crybabies whine if your 'ping' gets over 200 milliseconds. With play by mail, and a three day each way turn around... I played with a ping of 518,400,000! I tell you what... you play with a 520 million ping... you're somebody then. One game of chess could take months.
"So next time you get your panties in a bunch over some piddlin' Internet twaddle... just remember what it could have been like if you were born a few years earlier. Now let me tell you about the time I walked 10 miles barefoot uphill in the snow to get to that ......"
"Sorry Gramps .. I hear Mom callin' us to go do our chores... we wouldn't want to miss that. thanks for the great story!" (whispered to sister- "What an antique... and can you believe that ridiculous story about paper and pencils hahahaha")
Tales From The Analog Age
" Now you youngsters just sit down here by my chair by the fire, and I'll tell you a story of the Golden Age of Gaming. It was a time before silicon chips and using the dang phone lines to play games. Nosiree, there was no Internet for us, we had to actually SEE each other or use the U.S. Postal Servce.
"What the game companies did back then see... was to take these big things called trees and turn 'em into this stuff called paper. Then they took a few more of them trees and turned those into pencils(sorta like your newfangled laser-pointers, but they leave a mark). Now the paper, it was like your monitors of today, but with a really low refresh rate. You had to actually move to another page for more information. Our backspace button was this thing on the end of the pencil called an eraser and...."
"Sounds like a lotta work gramps...."
"Now just be quiet and listen, or don't you want to hear my story?"
"Well.... to tell the truth Gramps..."
"Hush! Now as I was saying... To play a game in my day, all the players would actually have to MEET at someone's house. That's right, as strange as it sounds, we actually knew the people we played with in the real world. We would all gather 'round this big thing called a table. It looked a lot like a computer desk, but was flat all the way across, with no shelves on it. We would get the game down from the bookshelf... that's sorta like your CD holders, but layin' on its side and bigger; and get all the pieces out of the box. These pieces were little bits of cardboard with teeny tiny words and numbers printed on 'em, that told us what each piece was. They were put on what you whippersnappers would call a map but we called a board, cause it had to be real stiff to hold all the little pieces when you flung the whole mess accross the room when you lost..
"Now the best games came from this old company by the name of Avalon Hill. We liked those games 'cause they had the most pieces to lose and were the hardest to play. We would all set up our pieces and get out our paper and pencils to keep track of what we did. Each person would then take this thing called a turn. That is where one person got to do what he wanted and then the next person in line would get his turn. It kept things a lot easier to keep track of I can tell 'ya. We would arrange our pieces just so, use a piece of string to check line-of-sight on the board, and see who could get the tallest pile of little cardboard pieces stacked up on one hex. Then we would use what you kids would call an Analog Random Number Generator.... we called 'em dice.
"These dice would let us know if we did anything, and how good or bad we did at it. Then we would use our pencils and write all these things down on the paper. Then we would take a few little pieces of cardboard off the board and move a few more around a bit. After all the dice-rolling and writing and moving was done for a turn for everyone, we would be about done for the day. We would carefully set upside-down boxes on the board to shield the little tiny pieces from wayward drafts, then run off to the kitchen for a snack and a drink. We couldn't eat or drink near the game as the little pieces tended to swell up like croutons when they got wet.
"We would come back in to look over the board one more time and notice that the cat had decided the board look like a fine place to practice running in place across slick sufaces. Once we had suitably diciplined the cat(you don't want to know), we would set about putting all our little pieces back in place. This would be a fine way to kill an entire Saturday. One game, including cat-related delays, could take up to a whole month to play."
"A MONTH!! Wow gramps.... we play a completely different game every month!"
"Boy, that wasn't nothin' at all compared to playing games by mail. You crybabies whine if your 'ping' gets over 200 milliseconds. With play by mail, and a three day each way turn around... I played with a ping of 518,400,000! I tell you what... you play with a 520 million ping... you're somebody then. One game of chess could take months.
"So next time you get your panties in a bunch over some piddlin' Internet twaddle... just remember what it could have been like if you were born a few years earlier. Now let me tell you about the time I walked 10 miles barefoot uphill in the snow to get to that ......"
"Sorry Gramps .. I hear Mom callin' us to go do our chores... we wouldn't want to miss that. thanks for the great story!" (whispered to sister- "What an antique... and can you believe that ridiculous story about paper and pencils hahahaha")