27.08.2013, 04:38
yeah... lol, the good ole days, before graphic cards and cpu's became major 'had to have' items... when everything ran in DOS, when if you had 1mg of memory you were a powerhouse and likely worked for NASA or the Air force, when we all had to make 'bootdisks' to play our games, and so on.
my first 'real' computer (besides the piece of shite Tandy with the tape recorder it used for a hard-drive) was a Packard Bell 286. they should have been called, Packard Hell's, for it was a hell-driven device straight from the Devil's playpen sent here to earth to torment me with it's crap-tastic pure shite performance. it would run nothing other than a few simple games like pong and such. now some 286's from some makers were fairly good, but the Packard I had was junk. then a year or so later I got hold of a 486... wow...it was like comparing day to night even if it too was a POS of the highest order. sure...it stayed broken all the time (being a Packard) and was wonky to use but by God at last I could actually play a couple of games!
one of them being... the original Red Baron! oh wow...was this SOB cool or what? man...I was in 'the' air in a (to me then) realistic looking bi-wing fighter!
haha!
all I had to do to actually PLAY was to figure out how to make that mysterious Boot Disk...
which would give it more DOS memory...enough to run the game anyways.
well...like about three months AFTER I got the game, I FINALLY got a book disk to work, and dear God but I was playing! well, sort of. as the game wouldn't recognize the cheap joystick I had. so, off to the store and got a new one. it didn't like that one either. I took it back, and at last got one that worked. and yeah, THEN I was IN THE GAME, dudes! :lol:
I have to hand it to the original creators of Red Baron... this game was BIG. I mean BIG. sure, by today's standards it was a hokey piece of shite, but for it's time it had pizzazz, it had class, it was fun...and very high tech even in it's simplicity. man when you played that game you REALLY felt like you were really IN THE GAME. the makers put FUN things in there that almost NO modern game designers ever even try to put into their games.
sure the graphics wasn't much to look at, nor were the dorky sounds, but man the PLAY was amazing. and the background feeling they put into it was realistic. listen... after a few kills... suddenly on my screen pops up this message telling me that Albert Ball was wanting me to join his squadron, or the Red Baron was asking me to join him and be his wingman... or I got promoted and got a new plane and could even paint it if I wanted to. plus...the medals you got were accompanied by officers with stiff upper lips, in full dress uniform and with a regimental band playing as you got your medal pinned on! wow, now how cool is that?
war progress reports came up as I played... and sometime if I got shot down I was sent to the hospital to recover, or maybe got captured and if I didn't escape i'd have to sit the war out till it was over. ha! (usually they let you escape though.)
sometimes the dishonorable brother of the Red Baron would offer me a challenge to meet him in single combat... but, being the dirty dog he was, he'd ambush me with three or four of his lackeys... the bastard! :x
see this game was FUN.
I have no idea why they can't do things like that today.
:evil:
my first 'real' computer (besides the piece of shite Tandy with the tape recorder it used for a hard-drive) was a Packard Bell 286. they should have been called, Packard Hell's, for it was a hell-driven device straight from the Devil's playpen sent here to earth to torment me with it's crap-tastic pure shite performance. it would run nothing other than a few simple games like pong and such. now some 286's from some makers were fairly good, but the Packard I had was junk. then a year or so later I got hold of a 486... wow...it was like comparing day to night even if it too was a POS of the highest order. sure...it stayed broken all the time (being a Packard) and was wonky to use but by God at last I could actually play a couple of games!
one of them being... the original Red Baron! oh wow...was this SOB cool or what? man...I was in 'the' air in a (to me then) realistic looking bi-wing fighter!
haha!
all I had to do to actually PLAY was to figure out how to make that mysterious Boot Disk...
which would give it more DOS memory...enough to run the game anyways.well...like about three months AFTER I got the game, I FINALLY got a book disk to work, and dear God but I was playing! well, sort of. as the game wouldn't recognize the cheap joystick I had. so, off to the store and got a new one. it didn't like that one either. I took it back, and at last got one that worked. and yeah, THEN I was IN THE GAME, dudes! :lol:
I have to hand it to the original creators of Red Baron... this game was BIG. I mean BIG. sure, by today's standards it was a hokey piece of shite, but for it's time it had pizzazz, it had class, it was fun...and very high tech even in it's simplicity. man when you played that game you REALLY felt like you were really IN THE GAME. the makers put FUN things in there that almost NO modern game designers ever even try to put into their games.
sure the graphics wasn't much to look at, nor were the dorky sounds, but man the PLAY was amazing. and the background feeling they put into it was realistic. listen... after a few kills... suddenly on my screen pops up this message telling me that Albert Ball was wanting me to join his squadron, or the Red Baron was asking me to join him and be his wingman... or I got promoted and got a new plane and could even paint it if I wanted to. plus...the medals you got were accompanied by officers with stiff upper lips, in full dress uniform and with a regimental band playing as you got your medal pinned on! wow, now how cool is that?
war progress reports came up as I played... and sometime if I got shot down I was sent to the hospital to recover, or maybe got captured and if I didn't escape i'd have to sit the war out till it was over. ha! (usually they let you escape though.)
sometimes the dishonorable brother of the Red Baron would offer me a challenge to meet him in single combat... but, being the dirty dog he was, he'd ambush me with three or four of his lackeys... the bastard! :x
see this game was FUN.
I have no idea why they can't do things like that today.
:evil: