{"id":13,"date":"2022-10-12T10:05:14","date_gmt":"2022-10-12T10:05:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/?p=13"},"modified":"2022-10-14T16:21:52","modified_gmt":"2022-10-14T16:21:52","slug":"lostwolfe-an-introduction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/2022\/10\/12\/lostwolfe-an-introduction\/","title":{"rendered":"Lostwolfe:  An Introduction."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hello, and welcome to The Infinite Playlist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m your host Lostwolfe and together, we will be playing games played by other people on different blogs around the internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">My History With Games<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I started playing video games in the very early 80&#8217;s. The very first few games I ever encountered in the wild were Pac-Man, Frogger, Asteroids and Space Invaders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Most of these were in arcades or little corner stores, where for a little while and a couple of cents, I could lose myself in the rhythmic shuffle of the invaders, or I could outsmart Pinky and the gang, or I could have the zen experience of trying to dodge asteroids.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-medium\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/01_01_arcade_games.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"93\" src=\"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/01_01_arcade_games-300x93.png\" alt=\"An image depicting some of the very earliest video games I ever played. From left to right: Pac-Man, a game about eating pellets and ghosts, Frogger, a game about crossing a road - as a frog, Asteroids, a game about surviving in space in an asteroid field and Space Invaders, a game where you were earth's last hope, repelling invaders...from space!\" class=\"wp-image-9\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/01_01_arcade_games-300x93.png 300w, https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/01_01_arcade_games-1024x318.png 1024w, https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/01_01_arcade_games-768x239.png 768w, https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/01_01_arcade_games.png 1120w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>I have fond memories of playing all of these.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the long run, though, none of these games held a lasting appeal for me. My hand-eye co-ordination was never really great to begin with and these games were very much just testing those skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What I didn&#8217;t know I wanted was an actual COMPUTER game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I didn&#8217;t know that I was looking for a kind of game that was slower and that didn&#8217;t so much depend on me hitting the fire button at the right time while I was in the right place for things to work out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This notion of a slower game only ocurred to me one summer in 1986, when I visited a friend and they showed me both King&#8217;s Quest III and Space Quest I.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-medium\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/01_02_sierra_games.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"106\" src=\"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/01_02_sierra_games-300x106.png\" alt=\"An image showing a pair of old Sierra games. The top half of the image is devoted to King's Quest 3, in it, the hero Gwydion is walking down a treacherous pathway to a valley where he might find items to aid his quest. In the bottom half of the image, we have Roger Wilco, the protagonist of Space Quest, battling against a Spider Droid [which explodes on impact] and an Orat, a strange, rather violent creature that lives on the planet Kerona.\" class=\"wp-image-10\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/01_02_sierra_games-300x106.png 300w, https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/01_02_sierra_games.png 700w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>Tread carefully!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After that, all bets were off. I had an old machine that was in the process of dying [my trustworthy, but ill-fated Spectravideo computer] and I traded that in for a regular old PC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That PC was solid as a rock and lasted me almost right until 1991, where I had to buy a whole new machine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">During that time, I finally got my hands on and played Space Quest I and King&#8217;s Quest III, which then opened other vistas: The Secret of Monkey Island, occasional dalliances with the Gold Box games. An aborted attempt [with a bad disk] at playing Hunt for Red October.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;ll readily admit that none of these games \/looked\/ as good the games in the arcades at the time, and I desperately wanted some developer to create something is beautiful as Toki, but in the end, my patience won out.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-medium\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/01_03_toki.png\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"233\" src=\"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/01_03_toki-300x233.png\" alt=\"This is a screenshot of the game Toki, in which a man gets turned into an ape and must save his girlfriend from the clutches of evil. It's a proto-typical [though very difficult] platformer. Here, Toki must ascend a vine and shoot a mid-level boss to proceed.\" class=\"wp-image-11\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/01_03_toki-300x233.png 300w, https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/01_03_toki.png 560w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>A VERY difficult platformer, but look at that beautiful pixel art.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">VGA and Soundblaster both ushered in something of a golden age of gaming and I was there for it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But times change. At this late juncture, I can no longer enjoy the AAA half of the industry. It&#8217;s too greedy, too cynical and too mired in Live Service nonsense for me to give it much of my time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, I have branched off into indie games, but also back tracking some, to where things all started. Which leads us to here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Infinite Playlist<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As of late, I&#8217;ve been reading blogs by other people and been thinking about back tracking &#8211; playing &#8211; and sometimes re-playing &#8211; old games for pleasure and documenting the act.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At first, I wasn&#8217;t sure how to tackle this idea, but then I hit on two concepts I really liked. One was the written Let&#8217;s Play and the other was appreciating other people&#8217;s accounts of their time with these older games.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I figured I could do a little bit of both of these things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, this blog will be devoted to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>highlighting other blogs that have covered these games<\/li><li>playing them through for my own enjoyment.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">First up, we&#8217;re going to tackle Below The Root.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-medium\"><a href=\"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/01_04_below-the-root-cover.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"259\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/01_04_below-the-root-cover-259x300.jpg\" alt=\"This is the cover of Below The Root, for the PC. The picture depicts the land of Green-Sky which exists on two planes: an upper plain, which is beautiful and serene and a lower plane, which looks dour and frightening. There is also a person floating down from on high to the little village depicted above-ground.\" class=\"wp-image-12\" srcset=\"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/01_04_below-the-root-cover-259x300.jpg 259w, https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/10\/01_04_below-the-root-cover.jpg 663w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 259px) 100vw, 259px\" \/><\/a><figcaption>This is so evocative.  I wish we still got interesting covers like this.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><!-- wp:paragraph --><\/p>\n<p>Hello, and welcome to The Infinite Playlist.<\/p>\n<p><!-- \/wp:paragraph --><\/p>\n<p><!-- wp:paragraph --><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m your host Lostwolfe and together, we will be playing games played by other people on different blogs around the internet.<\/p>\n<p><!-- \/wp:paragraph --><\/p>\n<p><!-- wp:heading --><\/p>\n<h2><\/h2>\n<p><!-- \/wp:heading --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[18,6,3,5,13,14,11,19,8,4,17,7,9,10,12,15,16],"class_list":["post-13","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-author-introduction","tag-aaa-games","tag-asteroids","tag-below-the-root","tag-frogger","tag-gold-box","tag-hunt-for-red-october","tag-ibm-pc","tag-indie-games","tag-kings-quest-iii","tag-pac-man","tag-soundblaster","tag-space-invaders","tag-space-quest-i","tag-spectravideo","tag-the-secret-of-monkey-island","tag-toki","tag-vga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38,"href":"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13\/revisions\/38"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lostwolfeslair.com\/TIP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}