Oh man we’re officially over a week into the themed posts. Not too shabby. I hope everyone has been enjoying these. I’ve been enjoying going down memory lane for a bunch of them. But lets continue!
I know I’ve already discussed my love of RTS games from my post about Metal Fatigue. Now I’m going to kind of combine two games in this entry because I feel they impacted me in the same way. The first game that ever really introduced me into the RTS style games was Age of Empires. Even though at the time I had no idea what the heck I was witnessing. I remember it all pretty vividly, I was at my friend Tyson’s house. Some days after school I would go to his house before we went to Cub scouts. I remembered him showing me some games, then we went to his computer and he fired up a game I had never seen before.
It was simple, but the concepts were different than the other games I had seen. Gather resources, plan out your cities, defend them, expand, etc. I was in completely awe as he clicked around on the screen. I honestly can’t remember how I ended up getting the game, but I played it a lot. I failed just as much. Although it was explained to me rather simply, there was a lot to the game that I had to learn. It was more cutthroat than I had originally thought, but I liked a challenge. The game was probably a bit dated even when it was shown to me. Or perhaps it was released just before the renaissance of gaming when graphics could be pushed further than before.
My older brother then gave me another game, that was from around the same time as Age of Empires. Wargames. This RTS was a little simpler than AOE was. So I found it very easy, but still a lot of fun. I liked the management, and how there were different ways to achieve victory.
This game showed me how even though the games were the same type, they could be completely different from one another. I liked that variety. I beat this game fairly easily, and played it for quite some time. Mostly because my computer at the time was just not strong enough to play games. I’m sure my dad loved how I would have to keep taking his computer to play things. But I had no choice, I liked games, and I still did all my school work. I don’t think I could really revisit either of these games now. Just thinking of how the UI worked back then feels like it would be difficult. I’ll always have fond memories of my first RTS games though. They created a monster.
EK Creates 