Brickles:
This image is of a newer version of the game, but you get the idea. Ball, paddle, bricks.
I rocked at Brickles. There was a little paddle that you controlled with the mouse and you had to make sure the ball didn’t touch the ground. The ground was like hot lava. Plus you had to get all 100 bricks that the ball would bounce up and capture so you could move up a level. And the ball’s trajectory depended on where it hit the paddle. If you barely made it and hit the corner, the ball flew away at like a 20 degree angle and went bouncing off of everything at lightspeed and it was horrifying to try and catch it. And every time you passed a level the ball got faster and faster until you thought you were going to have an aneurysm trying to follow it. Anyway I got the highest score of my life once when I was like 10, but then my parents said I had to go take a shower and pack my stuff to go to the beach. So I paused the game (instead of saving it!! Gah!!!), intending to come back to it and dominate after I got ready. But no – when I got back the computer was turned off. I nearly had a heart attack. I’m not sure if I cried, but it’s possible. I will never come close to that score ever again in my life.
Spacestation Pheta:
Spacestation Pheta was a timed game where you moved a spaceman guy around what was presumably a spacestation and you had to climb up to the exit gate before the time was up. You used spacebar to jump and the arrow keys to move (I think). It was mostly entertaining because of the way he said, “Jump!” with his weird monotone computer man voice every time he jumped up onto a platform. And the way he disintegrated when he died. I mean if he touched the ground, he like melted with a little swooshy sound. He shriveled up almost instantly! God it was satisfying. So most of the time I would try to find the best places to kill him. I’d build up like 30 lives and get to the later levels and then destroy him 30 times in a row. If you’d heard the noise, you’d do it too. Leaping off a tall platform was best, because he would cry, “Ahhhhhhhhhh…” and the volume faded out until he squished. One time I tried to kill him by leaping into this huge cauldron thing that I found on one of the last levels, but it rocketed him back up to the next platform! With an, “Ahhhhhhhhhh…KAPOW!!” like a gun firing. So sometimes I’d jump over and over into the cauldron and fly into the air until I was bored and then I’d suicide him. After we figured that cauldron bit out we could actually beat the level because it shot you up to the exit gate, but it was a lot more fun to see him incinerate into a little pile of spacesuit.
Crystal Quest:
And then there was Crystal Quest. I think Mom really was addicted to Crystal Quest. She was like a savant at it, which was baffling to me and Wyeth. Mom has trouble with the power locks on her car, but she could school you in Crystal Quest, I promise. It’s unbelievable. I mean we were good, but Mom was freaking spectacular. She was a machine.
OK. So you were this little circular spaceship (the round white/red circle on the picture above) controlled by the mouse, and you zipped around picking up these little crystal gems that made a “Ching!” noise when you ran into them. Hence the name Crystal Quest. It was a freaking death pilgrimage though, because the stupid things were EVERYWHERE and you had to get them. All of them! All you had to do was run into one and you’d collect it. Once you got all the ones on the screen, a gate opened at the bottom and you aimed the spaceship out very carefully but as fast as possible. And if you got out in a certain amount of time, you got like jackpot points to go with the points you got for shooting stupid aliens. Gathering crystals is tons harder when you’re dodging like 900 space aliens with varying weapons and speed. Some just shot slowly without aiming and you just had to drive around the bullet. Others came at you really fast and shot right at you, and others blew up if you shot them and emitted like electron orbitals of bomb shrapnel that you had to avoid. That sucked, especially if you were aiming at another alien and you shot at it right as you saw the last crystal or something so you slightly moved and MISSED and hit one of the bomb ones. There were slow-moving blobs that wouldn’t be that bad but they were huge and you sometimes ran into them agonizingly while trying to avoid a parasite or the bomb alien you inadvertently shot. And you had to shoot them like 7 times before they died, so you had to get a running (flying?) start and shoot like crazy while driving right at them and hope they died before you collided. You could only shoot things when moving forward, because you shot in the direction you were traveling, so if you were cornered by a bunch of land mines you couldn’t really shoot at an attacking alien or you’d run into the dumb land mine. Sometimes big shining and glowy diamonds came out of the places the aliens came out of and you desperately wanted them, not just because they were glorious and pretty and comforting, but because once you ran into one you got thousands and thousands of points and it gave you bomb power (or something did – my point system memory is hazy. The glowy things were good though. You wanted them). Then once the screen got too complicated and freaking parasite aliens were coming after you (they tracked you! None of the others did that! What the h!), you could push spacebar and the screen lit up and everything would be obliterated. Thank God. After level 25, the exit gate started MOVING across the ground. Half the time my last precious lives would be wasted on trying to get out, because the sides of the exit gate killed you if you bumped them. Plus you’re always on edge in the higher levels because everything is after you. Sometimes your last crystal is way at the top of the screen and you have to fly all the way down to the gate that might not even BE there when you finally arrive. It’s like trying to find an exit in Los Angeles at rush hour, if instead of being gridlocked and stopped, there were that many cars moving at 70 miles an hour and just as closely packed and in different directions. And if you had a gun that never ran out of bullets and would blast all the cars out of the way. You couldn’t really blink while playing or you’d certainly crash (unless you were my mom). So my eyes were always dry and bloodshot, and my hands were sweaty because it was terrifying. All for a bunch of crystals. Typical.
Oregon Trail:
Oregon Trail was also glorious. We got to play that in school! Teachers thought it was educational! I did learn a few things:
1. Don’t shoot the only six buffaloes* in the first part of the game in one hunt, because you can only carry back 200 (250?) pounds back to your wagon. Even though it’s REALLY tempting, because they’re kind of cute when they’re in a little heap after they’re dead. Spread it out so your family can at least eat regularly in the first 15 minutes of the game. Once you get past the first river there are only mangy squirrels to shoot and they’re way spazzier to aim at. And yeah, that asterisk was on purpose. There’s a footnote at the end of the blog!! Fancy.
2. Always name the last child (there are five people: you and four others) after someone you don’t like, because they will probably get bitten by a snake as soon as you leave St. Louis. No matter what age you designate, they will die. Even though I think it’s a lot less likely that a toddler is going to get bitten by a snake just sitting in a wagon with their mom all day, but what do I know?
3. Caulking the wagon means floating across the river. I never really understood this. Were there caulking guns back then? Wouldn’t it take kind of a long time to seal a wagon? Did they use pitch or something? Can oxen swim? Wouldn’t the wheels be heavy enough to sink the wagon? What the hell were they talking about?
4. The Green River is like 20 feet deep in the middle, so fording it is a good way to kill off your family if you don’t have many points and you want to start over. Fording means trying to just drive across, apparently, and your entire family will die almost every time. Nobody could swim in the 1800s.
5. Cholera and dysentery kill you, and you can get them a lot easier if you are in “Poor” health, ie., if you are only eating squirrels, or not resting. You have to rest a lot if you want to survive, which is easy to forget when you’re concentrating on finding more cute buffaloes* to shoot.
6. There is always an abundance of oxen for some reason, so if your oxen die, you can just trade for more. Who knew?
7. Don’t try to raft down the river at the end. There are tons of logs and there’s no way to practice because you have to play all the way through to get there. Just pay for the toll road thing. It’s only a slight detour and your entire family won’t smash into a log and drown before they get to Oregon.
So that was the Oregon Trail. I loved computer class because of that. Also, Keyboarding lessons were fun. (I know, I know: DORK!) But it timed you and you had to go FFF JJJ FFF JJJ FJF JFJ JJ FF JJJ FFF as fast as you could, until you learned more letters and then it would make you type paragraphs, which was nerve-racking. I was obsessed with improving my words per minute. My hands got sweaty in keyboarding too.
When we were older we got Myst. I'm not even putting a picture of Myst up because it will only aggravate me. Myst is a scavenger hunt (as far as I could tell, since I didn’t get very far) in which you wander around in some mist and try to find stuff. I never found ANYTHING! It was always telling you to find maps and spyglasses and other dumb things that were totally invisible in the mist! Plus it spelled Myst with a Y, which made me barf a little in my mouth. That’s about when computer games got lame and Wyeth started playing insane ones called SoulReaverIII and GroundControlLXXVIII and I started being a teenager and IMing everyone. Which, if you don’t know, is instant messaging, or Neanderthal texting, but cooler since you knew if the person was there or not because it showed unless you went invisible. So you weren’t just texting to space. Just like Facebook or Gmail chatting now, but old school. It was crazy, because you could have like five IM screens up at once and five conversations. So most conversations would be like:
Beada17 (that was me): Lalalala. What are you doing? I’m bored.
ilikebunnyrabbits1983: im like talking to 4 people rite now, sorryif im being slow lol
Beada17: Me too, who are you talking to?
ilikebunnyrabbits1983: john, laura, amanda and jason. and u obviuosly
Beada17: Me too!! Whoa weird!
ilikebunnyrabbits1983: what ru guys talking about?
Beada17: Who Jason wants to ask to the dance. I think he’ll ask Laura. Don’t tell him I told you.
ilikebunnyrabbits1983: i wont john just said hes asking laura!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Beada17: Ahhh!!
ilikebunnyrabbits1983: cul8r i have to eat dinner :(
Beada17: Bye!
The lazy typing made me want to die, so I protested peacefully by capitalizing proper pronouns and using apostrophes, but it was a useless crusade. Now I’m desensitized. I admit I have a soft spot for omg. Anyway, you had to have codes for if your parents came into the room while you were typing about something embarrassing, such as whether you like-liked someone or not. Ours was “oj.” If I typed that, my friend would know that I couldn’t respond at the moment and I probably had a window up blocking the IM with my homework essay or Encyclopedia Britannica or something safe. Either that or I was just going to get some orange juice and I’d brb. Lol.
* I’m pretty sure both ‘buffalo’ and ‘buffaloes’ work as plurals, but I’m sorry if they don’t. ‘Buffaloes’ is cooler and frankly I didn’t know it was a word until recently, and plus it looks like ‘toes,’ so I’m using it.
