WSAD

While I was in Okinawa, Computers, electronics and Games took a big leap forward.
Cell phones were becoming common place, Bulletin boards were replaced with web pages, email was catching on and online gaming was becoming very popular. Dial up was the way we connected, I had a kick ass 1400 modem lol. Now it was time to play online.
Quake 2 was one game I played allot, also by Id software. The quake series was fps king,for quite sometime, it had over 30 single player levels and a great soundtrack as well.
I have always liked games with a horror theme, so when Blood hit the streets it was my new number one - it took game gore and violence to a new level. Kicking heads around the floor, dual wield weapons and a spooky soundtrack. A mirror, never seen that before, and a whole level on a moving train. It was a fantastic game.
I now had a PC in the 400mhz range and my first video card- a voodoo2 by 3dFX.
Along Came Starsiege Tribes, the first online only game with no single player levels. This was the game for me for the better part of 2 years. Quake had become rife with hacks and this new game was a riot - a si-fi rocket-pack on your back shooter.
Two other games filled out my roster, Xfing v/s Tie fighter - hands down the best Star wars flight game ever made, and Command and conquer red alert, one of the best rts I have ever played.
There were many other games, but as I said before I wanted to touch on those i found the most enjoyable. New games and new game developers were coming out every week, EA and Blizzard were 2 who had some cool stuff, now they are huge.
I am a big fantasy fan from way back, and as I began to spend more time looking for games I stumbled on a few that were great....

Oh my... and I thought Wolf 3d was cool. My time in Okinawa was the beginning of my computer training both at home and work. We have a few well trained tech's on staff and they taught me about my own PC as well as all the new options that were coming available.
First upgrade was a sound card, a sound blaster, and hooked up to my stereo in the barracks gave a whole new meaning to playing Doom.
Doom was the most violent, bloody thing out there and it was awesome. Fighting aliens with a variety of weapons, and a Chainsaw. The music was leaps beyond any game I had played so far. Two other games occupied my time in Okinawa, a real time strategy game called Space Hulk, one of the first PC games in the Warhammer 40,000 universe (which is going strong today), and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe - a Truly enjoyable WWII flying sim. Now the question was which of the 3 RTS, Flight sim or FPS would dominate my available time? In 1997 I moved back to the states for recruiting duty in Cleveland, in case you don't remember, 97/98 in video games was like 1980 for heavy metal.........that's when British Steel and Back in Black came out. If you don't understand that well, guess you had to have been there.

The new Shareware game was ID software's wolfenstein 3d, the beginning of my love for the "first person shooter". So now my 15 year + battle against the Nazi's had begun. We played the game several times, then mapped each level on graf paper in the evening after work. The Game had all the elements you see today, objective based missions, big boss fights, and a catchy soundtrack. This was a huge leap in games for me and it was a godsend at sea to combat the the boredom of down time. I came back home and went out to the exchange within a week to buy my first PC - If i remember correctly is was an IBM 386 DX66 with a monster 30mb hard drive.
Enough for 688, wolfenstein, and gato. There was this thing called the Internet that people were going to as well.. have to check that out also.
3 months later and I'm packing out to go to Okinawa for 3 years- with PC in tow. It was around 1995 and there were all kinds of new goodies to check out. Being at sea and traveling had me almost 2 years behind the power curve game wise, there was this game "Doom" that was supposedly way better than wolf...

In 91/92 I went back to sea before I had a chance to buy a PC, we were heading out to the Red Sea in support of desert shield, searching ships to enforce U.N. sanctions on Iraq. As a helicopter crew our job was to provide cover for the boarding teams, it was hot as hell with long workdays. We had little contact with home and allot of down time. Our det had a PC in the hangar shop and one of the pilots installed a cool little game called "Scorched Earth", it was a riot! a turn based artillery sim for up to 8 players. You earned money to purchase weapons and could ply v/s the pc or your friends. This game was a much needed and welcome diversion.While working on the helicopter we would take turns on the game. I remember console games were now showing up all over the ship as well and they were a Little ahead of the Pc game wise. Word was the "The Mother of all Games" slogan came after Saddam declared that if the U.S. invaded iraq it would be the mother of all wars....it was not. While deployed, one of the ships did find a cargo vessel smuggling the huge barrels to a super gun Saddam wanted to build, that was pretty cool. Half way through the journey we received a disk in the mail, it was a "shareware" game from id software, and it changed everything.

In 1988 I transferred to Cubi point, Philippines. I worked in an operations center, briefing crews on various long range patrol missions. The compound I worked in was loaded with computers, and we had plenty of down time. The last 4 years had seen a major leap in computers and PC Games. Working in the Navy my interests leaned to Navy combat simulations, fortunately there were some great games in that category.

688 Attack Sub was next - take command of a 688 or Soviet Alpha in a cold war setting. That was basically our mission at work, except for the part where you got to blow up the Alpha. These were DOS based games, graphics were amazing at the time and they provided a nice balance between realism and fun game play.











Near the end of my tour Harpoon came along, like the above games it was actually relevant to what we were doing every day, and the level of realism was pretty amazing. The Harpoon series were by far the most advanced combat sims of the day, Harpoon was actually used to train Operations Specialists in the fleet. These were fun and challenging games.
I had survived numerous coup attempts in the PI, as well as the eruption of MT. Pinatubo. Desert Storm was winding down, and I was on my way back to San Diego.
It was also time to get a computer of my own, and go back to sea.

While my interest was peaked in 84, a computer was not a common item by any means. Once I enlisted in the Navy, the next 4 years held little time for games.
I attended Aircrew candidates school, Rescue swimmer school and then went on for anti-submarine warfare training as a helicopter crewman.
I mention this because it had a huge impact on my gaming taste. From 84 to 88 I was either in training or at sea. I operated SONAR, RADAR, FLIR, and a M-60 door gun. I literally went around the world, tracking Soviet subs, Iranian patrol boats and pirates in the South China Sea and Africa. (hmm... those are still the bad guys 20 years later as well.) Top that off with jumping from a low flying helicopter into the ocean. I wasn't playing games, but it felt like I was living them.
Fortunately, I wasn't causing death and destruction as I did in my future game play, its more fun in-game vice real life anyway.

My PC gaming world, that is.
Over the next few posts I am going to archive the games I enjoyed most over the past 20 years. This list will not contain all the games I have played, but it will hit on the major games that shaped my play style and gaming preference.
I graduated High school in 1984, and enlisted in the U.S. Navy shortly after, prior to that I played the average number and type of games for kids my age.
"Home Gaming" Started with pong, and a standalone two person tank game. Fireball was my favorite pinball game and I spent allot of time playing Tempest and Missile Command, but this blog will be about PC gaming.
I remember being at my friend Paul's house in 1983. He had a Computer at home, which was a rare thing to see. I have no idea what it was, it had a green screen and he played a game that consisted of little squares and triangles that represented Skeletons and Goblins. A combination of text selections and random rolls indicated the outcome of your encounters. It was my first exposure to a PC Game and it was fascinating.