But moving on, DOSBox is, in small words, a DOS emulator that allows you to play DOS games on a Mac/Linux system. This is something big for me, since a lot of my childhood memories are attached to technology and internet, and how both of them evolved since. Sometimes, if I want to rescue old memories that don't emerge easy, I think of old video games I used to play, or how I used to search for stuff in Altavista instead of Google (by the way, Altavista is still up and running). I get that "Good old days" feeling... yeah I need to post on that one of these days.
I haven't yet downloaded all the games I want to play again, mainly because their names are still fuzzy.
Alley Cat
I was sooo young when I had the chance to play this.
This is a very innocent game where you play a stray cat that just goes around being... a sneaky stray cat.
From this starting scene you could jump on top of those metal barrels and then upward to the wires and into windows. All while avoiding the angry dog you can see in the lower right corner, the nasty cats on the rope threads, and stuff being thrown at you from the windows. I like to notice the writings on the wood fence. "Hi!"? "Love them mousies"? Yeah those cats were badass.
Anyway, entering the windows you find different situations, some of them containing other scenarios too, like the room with a fishbowl that you can dive into and hunt fish while avoiding electric eels.
Some rooms got really surreal. There's a room with a giant slice of cheese that you can enter via the emmental-like holes (and discover that the holes are connected); a room with a living broom that tries to clean your "footsteps" (pawsteps?) as you move, until it finally hits you; or a room probably belonging to some lonely old hag that collects dogs:
Pizza Tycoon
This one is particularly dear to me. I didn't use to play it as much as a friend of mine did, and it was at his house that I first met the game. You basically open a new pizza restaurant and have to deal with a lot of the problems that come with it. It starts off by picking a world capital to settle in, then searching the neighborhood for a spot that's for rent. You even have to call the estate agent (the right one!). Now you have an empty place that needs furnishing, kitchenware, cooking waiting and managing employees (with whom you can negotiate wages) and so on. It won't be long before the Mafia storms through to ask you for protection money... against themselves.
You'll have the chance to set up your menu, cook the most familiar pizzas in the world and get fame for it if you do it right, and eventually even make money from recipes you make up. And believe me, making up new pizzas is very very entertaining. Not to mention, it makes you want to eat pizza. I had too microwave a frozen pizza I had yesterday. I had eaten dinner already so I left two slices that I'm gonna warm up and eat right now because thinking of the game made me hungry for pizza.
The amount of specific variables to setup when and while you play is what amazes me the most. It's incredibly deep. In no time you'll be buying weapons from an underground crime world so you can torch/blow up/etc your competitors in the pizza market!
Not only that, but it's a game with a sharp humor. Every character you speak to will make you smile at the choice of faces the coders did. The first realtor I contacted was an alien. He wasn't the right one, the right one was none less than Mikhail Gorbachev. Not to mention the mafia guy, who had a pizza for a head (with a green pepper that bent in a smile when I took his offer).
I was about to load DOSBox and the game to get a couple of screen shots for you but I noticed that the website I got the game from already did it for me. Check them out.
Screenshots from abandonia.com: http://www.abandonia.com/en/games/105/Pizza%20Tycoon.html
Vídeo from PizzaTycoon.org: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLr5hGuNcTs
ZORK
This game is even more interesting today, where all games have amazing 3d environments created on the go and use very modern digital resources. What every game aims for is to be immersive, that is what the player wants and it explains phenomenons like Grand Theft Auto, a game where your freedom of movement and options is hands down entertaining (I used to spend hours just riding a BMX through town in GTA San Andreas... I know, why not go ride a bike in the real world? Well I can't jump over cars in the real world. Nor hit people for that matter. Not without consequences).
In Zork you can try everything. And that's the most helpful attitude you can have in the game. That and saving frequently. When you start the game you are standing near a house. There is a mailbox near you and you have the options of moving in one of the compass directions (north, south, etc) or interact with objects around you. I bet you are already imagining the place in your head... but here's what's shown to you:
Just imagine the cost of a device that could read the electrical activity in your brain, translate it into pictures and than send them to your computer... not only would that be impossibly expensive, you'd still have to wait for the technology to do it. And you'd probably get a headache. Well Zork is just that, it's the most immersive game I have ever played since everything is just precisely according to my imagination. How can it get better than that?Now just to give you an idea of how the game develops, what you would do in a situation like this is "open mailbox", or if you're careful "inspect mailbox". Even "kick mailbox" if you want. The house is there for your entertainment too, and soon you'll be entering underground mazes filled with magic creatures, beautiful mountain scenes (as beautiful as you want) and killing your head to solve some very demanding puzzles.
There's no map to help you since you're supposed to make one yourself. If you take the path north, the path can turn west or east midway and, wherever you get to, going south won't take you back to the first place. It's sometimes very confusing but you can save the game at any point.
Obviously, if you know the internet, you know someone made maps available including all the details and possible solutions to the puzzles. But when the game was released, that wasn't a possibility, and incredibly detailed handmade personal maps were made in the rooms of thousands of geek boys in the year 1979. Be sure to check out this one that stands out today as a relic: http://almy.us/image/dungeon.jpg
(Alright I definitely want to mention a game called Another World next time I post)
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