Snap Dragon and the First Era

I often find myself mapping my life through clusters of time defined by the game or other preoccupation which dominated my thoughts for a given period. When looking back in terms of my access to games, these periods-- or arcs, or epochs-- become sharply defined.

When the newsroom my dad worked in had an overhaul of technology in the mid 90s, our house received its first and second computers. I remember that one was an old Apple computer, possibly the Apple IIe, and the other was a PC that became "The Computer." When someone in the house made mention of using it, we always described it as The computer, as I imagine many families of the time did, in that era of Computer Rooms.

I was very young and had limited understanding of The Computer. All I knew was that everyone was very excited for it to be in our house. I also knew that my oldest brother was doing something on there that led my mother to call him her "Little Genius". Seemed fair, as it appeared that he had managed to create a game, one that had that funny little yellow circle character who made the wakawakawka sounds in the arcade cabinet at the pizza shop near our house. That pizza was not very good, and I would probably kill a man to get a hold of a slice of it right now.

Almost all of the oldest memories I have which can be confirmed to have happened by some third party, and not just dreamt up by a feverishly imaginative child ready to lie hard for fun, have all been in 1997, when I was five years old. I believe that five may be the age at which I broke the surface of the waters of unconscious, suddenly aware that I was.

In 1997 my brother was eleven years old. We were two years away from The Matrix blowing our minds with where computers and internet and digital clocks were going to take us. In 1997 my brother made a computer program on a floppy disk which allowed him to control a 5 fps yellow semi circle to move around a black screen; this was as good of a proof of capability as I needed to confirm that my brother knew all there was to know about computers.

In 1997, my parents, possibly in the heady excitement of the new technology in our house, brought home a series of educational and simulation games which could run on our computer. We had two drives available, so both the library of floppy disk games like Jill of the Jungle and the CD-ROM games like SimCopter could be played on the one computer. I believe my dad was on the forefront of the video game purchases at that time, as evidenced by SimCopter, some kind of Fire Rescue management game, and Math Blaster for my brothers. Somewhere in the mix, he had also picked up a game for me called, Snap Dragon. A bright, colorful VGA graphics game which tasked the player with looking at stuff and clicking if they felt so inclined.

I would beg my Genius Brother to help me turn on Snap Dragon-- I still remember so clearly asking him to do it-- as I didn't yet understand how to call commands in DOS. One day, my second oldest brother taught me the string I needed to know in order to launch Snap Dragon, and somehow it finally stuck. Not surprisingly, that was around the same time my intellect was developing enough that such a cute but aimless game no longer stimulated.

Thus began what I'm imagining as the "First Era" of my gaming life. I knew I was interested in games, sort of, but I didn't know anything about them in the wider context of the world. The games that existed were in cabinets at pizza shops or in The Computer, and most of them involved looking at stuff and clicking things. This First Era, like so many fresh, new movements, gave little care for form, style, or substance. It was all exploratory, all the time. I tried out the three different "Museum" style games my parents had picked up, which taught the player about the oceans and dinosaurs and ancient places. I found some kind of airport simulation game which diagetically simulated the real experience of being bored out of your mind at a country airstrip with nothing happening.

But in reference to that exploration; I started "playing" any program I could get my hands on, just to see what it would do. I fooled around in Access, Excel and DreamWeaver, seeing what happened when I pressed this and that. I switched over to the disused Apple whose screen was blank, but I would play with its ability to draw green rectangles with its cursor, which for some reason would remain on screen after you made them. I was just pushing and prodding and turning over every bit of our computers that I could, looking for some activity. Of course, somehow I could never be bother to learn about the computer and how it did things, but ce la vie.

But like so many exploratory art movements, my First Era came rapidly to a close, making way for the more deliberate preference for games specifically, and not just interesting digital distractions. This was not a solitary venture, nor was it particularly conscious-- my brothers were also going through this experience, but with the elevated consciousness and deliberation of older children with objectives. I was still floating, accepting whatever came my way, and my was there a lot of it.

But this is a self-serving preface to the real thing I want to talk about moving forward-- the games which really had an impact on my sense of games over the course of my life. As a designer, reflecting on the past games which helped develop my sense of what games are and what they are "supposed" to do is an exercise which helps me better understand my inclinations and preoccupations. What did I learn from you, games?

Later this week, I will post my first piece in this little journey of mine (with far less childhood reflection, don't worry), starting for no particular reason with Joust and Balloon Fight. What better way to catalogue the important games to my game sense than by immediately breaking a rule and discussing two games instead of just one!