Monday, August 7th, 2006
And now for something completely different…*
What can I say? I’m a nerd. And as a confirmation of my inner nerdness, I admit to being a video gamer. And not just your average gamer - I’m what you would consider "old school." My first console? An Atari 2600! My favorite games of all time are old school games. They’re "dated" in the sense that the graphics are not on the par of today’s Final Fantasys or Xenosagas. However, because of hardware limitations, game developers in those days had to be much more creative with the backstory for their games in order to draw in gamers. My enjoyment of one such game, the classic 4X space opera by which all successors have come to be judged - Master of Orion - continues to this day. Incidentally, there was a fan-made remake of the original underway - a more or less solo operation that ended after the author got too bogged down in bug fixes and real life concerns. There is also an open-source game inspired by the MOO series under development called FreeOrion, about three-tenths of the way through their planned roadmap, that grew out of the disappointment of many fans with the rather lackluster Master of Orion 3.
Click here to see the rest of the story…
