You Know You’re a Geek When…

Over the long weekend I decided to start cleaning out the garage – a project, by my estimates, will take several years to complete.  I came across some old software that has been hiding in some box for … well, decades.  I found many 5 1/4” floppy disks of some old favorite games I used to play.  Recognize any?  (Many of the labels are in pretty bad condition.)

First up is the original Zork.   Nothing more really needs to be said on this one.

I probably put the most number of hours into this one.  This was Ultima III – not sure why I never really played the other Ultimas until much later. 

StarGlider wasn’t as well known as Ultima or Zork, but I was so jazzed about this game because it was like the Star Wars arcade game – where you would fly your x-wing into the death star with the vector graphics. 

Night Stalker was also on Intellivision – no, it’s not a Richard Ramirez RPG, it was kind of like a creepy Pac-Man style game.

I have almost no memory of this game, Murder on the Zinderneuf.   I was big into Clue and games like “Stop Thief!” and this game was very much along those lines.

Everyone who claims to be a geek knows Archon.   Archon played like Chess, but when “battling” another player by landing on their square, you’d be whisked away to a virtual battlefield.  Stronger pieces had an advantage but that’s what made it fun.

I spend a great deal of time playing this one (The Ancient Art of War), too, and from what I remember I was pretty frustrated at that.   This was a really great strategy game for its time…

… which was followed up by a sequel, The Ancient Art of War at Sea. 

Hacker was a fun adventure game – probably the first to make you feel like a real hacker. 

And saving the best for last:

That’s right.  The original Flight Simulator.  

The good ol’ days.