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how to make an old person like birthdays

My dear, sweet husband informed me that the Commodore 64 that's on its way to my house is a birthday/anniversary present. Yes, I get a combined present. I was the one stupid enough to suggest getting married on my birthday, so I suffer for it. Either way, this is the best present EVER. And now that the husband paid for it, I can take the money I stashed away and use it to purchase some extra games. Oh, and this shirt! Now all I have to do is make a mix tape with some Howard Jones and Thompson Twins and it will be just like time traveling. No, no, I am not going to stop talking about this. Blame my husband. He enables this behavior. He encourages it. With things like this. (Thanks to reader Loudness for that link)

Comments

"Howard Jones ... Thompson Twins ...."
Your Ramones bonafides are hereby revoked. Turn your haircut into that joint on 8th.

I wonder if Michelle will wear her Members Only jacket when she is playing?

Oops, my bad. I typed one too many L's in her name.

That's what I get for watching I Love the 80s.

My name is Tink, and I am an old person.

44 two weeks ago..bite me.

I also have to admit that 80% of my t-shirts come from Hot Topic..

The other 20% come from thinkgeek.com.

No, I'm not connected to think geek in any way, other than I spend way too much of my money there.

Yes, I'm am a sad excuse for an old person. I get great joy in the look of confusion that pass across the faces of those who read, or attempt to read my shirts..

Aww..the simple joys of life.

Having your birthday on your anniversary: inconvenient.

Having one of your kids' birthdays two days after your anniversary: trust me, much, much worse.

Wow.

Just...wow.

I remember back in The Day™ when I played on my C64 incessantly. It made me into the man I am today.

My favorite games:

Wizard/Ultimate Wizard - Great little Jumpman-style game. You're a wizard. Find the key and put it in the lock, won't you? And avoid the nasties along the way - they bite.

Ultima III and Ultima IV - If you haven't played these games then...well, you just haven't lived. While Dungeons & Dragons gets credited (rightly) for inspiring a lot of how modern computer roleplaying games work, how they are actually implemented almost always comes right back to the Ultima series.

Summer Games/Winter Games - I have never been able to figure out why these games never got widely ported and updated - they're fantastic! Both games consist of a large number of minigames, and both games support a large number of players. Perfect party game.

Legacy of the Ancients - This was another superb RPG. It was noted for its simplicity of play and its fantastic graphics. And the fact that the swamp squishes between your toes.

Impossible Mission - A great game for three reasons - speech synthesis, unique gameplay (your agent has no weapons), and the Sphere of Annihilation.

God, I could go on for days. Spell of Destruction, Gauntlet, Defender of the Crown, Questron I and II, Bard's Tale, Wasteland, Hardball, Maniac Mansion, Airborne Ranger, Monezuma's Revenge...

Wow. Yeah, graphics have gotten better, but I just don't get the same sense of fun from modern games that I did from those. Except from Ratchet & Clank - the designers of that game wisely went back to first principles.

This post reminds me: Gotta go to the Chess King and pick me up some thin ties. I actually DID by 3 pairs of pants there. The fabric wore out after about 4 months, but man did I look cool.

P.S. The serial number on my C64 is 00001889. Almost the prototype.

Wow. I just went into an involuntary nostalga state for a minute, there.

Did you have one of those C64s where the black box attached to the cord would overheat on a semi-regular basis? I hated it when that happened.

I never owned a C64, although I wanted one for about 2 years (until my folks got me a IBM PC). But my best friend had one, and we spent many an hour playing Bard's Tale, Wasteland, Mail Order Monsters, Airborne Ranger, Summer Games, Elite, Phantasie, Moebius, and many more. I would pay $500 for a modern game that could make me feel the way I felt the first time I saw Bard's Tale (still one of my top 2 games of all time) boot up on that old C-64 and created my first party of characters.

I'm having flashbacks of manually flipping over floppy disks & three minute load times. Ah, the good ol' days.

I should now point out that I had a C64, a 1541 Disk drive (which I had modified so it could be device 8, 9, 10 OR 11 at my whim,) and a lovely 1702 monitor. I was also a sysop on three separate C64 BBSs, and lived in a house with two other C64 nuts. We had a room full of computers in the mid-Eighties and played Archon and M.U.L.E. until we were ready to pass out.

Girl, you speak my language. :-)

Why is it your afternoon jogs down memory lane with my husband always seem to end up co$ting me eventually...? ;-)