This game blew. my. mind. when I was a kid. The first summer we had it, I played it eight hours a day on our IBM PS/2. When school was back in session, I wrote about it and drew maps for school projects. I dreamed about it.
I remember spending hours on it, not knowing what I was doing.
I had an english version of the game, and being 9 or 10 at the time, I didn't speak a word of english.
It took me ages to understand that you could switch from despotism to another form of government (monarchy, republic, etc). I was always wondering why my cities were so small, even with irrigation and railroads everywhere.
Also, I didn't have the manual, so with time, I started to learn the tech tree by heart (the "license" verification was based on knowing the parents of a given tech IIRC).
I've also read the civilopedia countless times.
I'm still proud to have beaten the game in Emperor ^^.
I've also spent a lot of time on other Sid Meier's games like Railroad Tycoon or Colonization.
same here. I was having great fun travelling around with the little carriage and exploring the world. Took like three playthroughs to realize you can and should build a city with it. And being super proud I've learnt a new english word - "granary" was probably in the first 100 english words i knew
I also had this as a kid. I think the game was quite lacking in the "game" aspect, though it was nice to have my new mutated orchid overtake the world.
I had the same experience. I was a bit older, but didn't know much English either and had a printed copy of Civilopedia with me to study. It was fun experience both playing the game and studying English (and a bit of history) at the same time. I still occasionally play it with my kids.
That's actually a really good point... it also goes on and shows how viscerally those cities are connected in terms of trade, movement of troops, and thus warfare/conquest.
Also brings back memories for me. I was never good at managing many cities, focusing on a few megacities instead and opting for large scale nuclear war :) Kinda reminds me of another game I used to play around that time, Global Effect.
Civ.exe was also the first game I customized. I was entertained to no end when I found out you could use a hex editor to change the strings. I rewrote the introductory text, and gave all the leaders new dialogue. That was also probably around when I started getting more interested in how games worked, rather than just playing them...
I remember eventually seeing "my" intro texts on the computers of people who had absolutely no chance of understanding the terrible in-jokes I put in there years earlier. Fortunately they did not know who ruined the experience for them.
We had absolutely no concept of "legitimate copy" at the time, I had one industrially labeled disk (Genius mouse driver) and its existence confused me to no end.
>interested in how games worked, rather than just playing them
I've commented on HN before about the power I think "hackable" games had teaching us how to create on the computer. I have a similar fond memory of heavily tampering with Halo PC via the fan-made Halo Editing Kit, which gave hex access to do all kinds of fun things. Those summer weekends spent changing which side I played on Silent Cartographer were key to me becoming more than "just" a computer user.
One was this Galaga clone for the TRS-80 Color Computer. The CoCo had a couple analog joysticks [1] which were ergonomically horrible. The player would move the joystick left and right to position the on-screen spaceship. The x-position of the joystick would correspond to where the spaceship would be. However, you couldn't just let the player move the joystick quickly from one side of the screen to the other, that would be "unrealistic" video game physics, and from a gameplay perspective, would make it too easy to dodge incoming bullets.
So the ship would move slowly on the screen until it reached the position which corresponded to the joystick position. This was rather annoying and hard to control.
Since I had seen an article to convert a digital joystick (from an Atari 2600) to be used on the CoCo, I also modified the game code to use a more normal control scheme. That involved searching through the disassembled code to find the joystick polling routine, and patch it out with my on version instead. Which, unfortunately, didn't fit, so I had to jump out to a bit of code past the normal end of the program, and then jump back when finished.
RedEdit in the system 7 days was a godsend in my life. Hacking new sounds into Maelstrom. Changing character names in Pararena. Stumbling into learning what a sprite was.
I don’t think it involved ResEdit but we once changed the Starcraft sounds at one computer in the school Mac lab so that when you made a dragoon it would play “carrier has arrived.” Freaked opponents out all the time.
As an amateur game developer and professional developer. I got into both because of similar origins of things. I do wonder though how modern games and tools are both easier to use but also more complex how it will shape the next few generations of devs and game designers.
If I wasn't so good at mathematics, my teacher would've probably called my mom for me being late so often when I just needed to play one more turn before bed and one more turn before going to school...
That's your problem right there. We convinced the teacher of it's historical merits and brought the game to class each day to play after we completed our assignments!
I had an RE gcse exam (a mock I think) in about 95. One question was "describe a creation story".
So I wrote something very close to this:
In the beginning the earth was without form, and void.
But the sun shone upon the sleeping earth,
And deep inside the brittle crust, massive forces waited to be unleashed.
The seas parted, and great continents were formed.
Mountains arose, earthquakes spawned massive tidal waves.
Volcanoes erupted and spewed forth fiery lava,
And charged the atmosphere with strange gasses.
Into this swirling maelstrom of fire and air and water,
The first stirrings of life appeared.
Tiny organisms, cells and amoeba, clinging to tiny sheltered habitats.
But the seeds of life grew, and strengthened, and spread, and diversified, and prospered.
And soon every continent and climate teemed with life.
And with life came instinct, and specialization, natural selection, reptiles, dinosaurs and mammals.
And finally there evolved a species known as man.
And there appeared the first faint glimmers of intelligence.
The fruits of intelligence were many:
Fire, tools, and weapons,
The hunt, farming, and the sharing of food,
The family, the village, and the tribe.
Now it required but one more ingredient:
A great leader to unite the quarrelling tribes,
To harness the power of the land,
To build a legacy that would stand the test of time:
A CIVILIZATION!
I used to love games like Oregon Trail and Spaceward Ho as a kid, and I remember dreaming about what games could be as a result. Then Civ came along and it was a revelation. My dreams were nothing, and I fell headfirst in love with Civ. It was the first game I could point to and say, “Do you see that? Can you see where this medium can go from here? The value and pleasure in it?”
It was just so deep, and so far beyond anything else I’d ever seen. I think I can honestly say that it was the first game that was at least as good as a great book.
