Summer of 1992 was an interesting family trip because we brought along Chris K. There is a span here from late 1991 though spring of 1993 where thanks to the SNES, Chris K and I had made a weird alliance over game purchases, so we didn’t double up on any titles, thus giving us more games in total. This alliance led to a lot of hanging out after school and then just a lot of doing things together.

He became the obvious choice for me when somehow I had convinced the parental units I needed a friend to come with us on a family vacation so I wouldn’t get bored, or some such nonsense. So this plan was hatched and during some time, presumably July I think based on baseball game research, The four of us got on a plane and headed to Cindy and Riches house in Indiana.

At fourteen now this is going to be one of the more diverse trips to see Cindy. Some of her kids are getting older, but now Melanie and I along with Chris and I guess Will at this point are going to seem a lot older than the other kids there. Adding to this one of Rich’s nieces, or cousins that was a year older than Mel and I was also staying with them this summer.

I think I remember this building a strange dynamic of both Melanie and I having a close to age pair to do things with and everyone being arrogant about doing things with “little kids”. Out of this, along probably with Chris K.’s own attitude towards my nieces and nephews (he would coin the term “things” for Steve’s kids that we used until the Tomb Raider incident years later). Chris K and I would end up spending a lot of time in the basement playing what NES games Cindy and Rich had.

This mainly the became the NES game for the movie Willow. Willow not a great game, but one they had we hadn’t beaten already became a few days obsession as during out free time we worked out whatever we needed to do to beat the game. From what I recall the game was an RPG, with some form of puzzle in it, maybe. I remember taking notes on something for some reason while we slogged through. It’s a strange thing for my memory to hold onto but that was one of the highlights oddly of the trip, sitting in basement beating a middling NES game based on Willow.

That wasn’t the only strange memory. Now I might refence this  again, or have, but this is the proper area to try and explain this. By fourteen I had travelled a bit with Mom and Dad and seen a very small amount of the outside world. However even with trips to say Germany, we hung out as a family with family and did pretty touristy normal things. So one Saturday morning in the Chicago suburbs I had my first taste of culture shock.

This shock was thanks to a show called Saved by the Bell. For those not familiar, Saved by the Bell was a below average “teen” marketed show produced by Peter Engel. Now don’t get me wrong the show was popular, has its fans and helped me pay for many PlayStation games. But the show itself, which was a rescue of a Disney channel show wasn’t what you would define as good television.

It followed like five or six junior high/high school students over several years of television at a fictional California high school. Like a lot of low budge syndicated teen shows, the high school was humorously small, it would seem like maybe a thirty kid student body,  The characters would play to southern California stereotypes and the plots and writing were generally simplistic and sometimes just downright awful.

But this is the early 90s, television even with cable offers limited options to most of us, and even at fourteen one can find humor in laughing at the stupidity of it all. There was an understanding of the awfulness of the show, and finding humor in the bad jokes, jank plots and low production. However, it was well understood the show was not good. At least I thought.

That morning Cindy’s kids sat down, maybe not all of them, but at least Mel and the cousin, and un-ironically watched and got into an episode of Saved by the Bell. When I noticed they were into it like it was a serious TV matter and not mockingly I was actually taken aback. So much so that I remember the episode about the teen’s rock band “Zack Attack” and their VH1 behind the music documentary style episode.

It was then I realized that a reason these shows played up these completely insane stereotypes of California teenagers was that there were believed, and possibly idolized in a way, by kids that didn’t know what west coast life is actually like. It was something else, both Chris K. and I couldn’t believe it and I think that is what helped reinforce Chris K’s ideas that my nieces and nephews were sort of, well subhuman or things.

The other major memory I have of this trip is the Cubs game. I think we are dealing with https://www.baseball-almanac.com/box-scores/boxscore.php?boxid=199207010CHN this game, I may waffle if anyone ever reads different iterations of this, because well I don’t seem to have any keepsakes from the game anywhere anymore. But I know it was during the summer, I am pretty sure it was against the Mets and I for some reason remember that Jose Vizcaino had a really good game that afternoon.

Anyway this game is what we would call a memory, in the classic sense of it makes sense that I remember this. For one we know my history as a younger kid with collecting baseball cards, watching the Cubs on WGN and that my favorite player growing up was Cubs first baseman Mark Grace. Second I had seen Cubs games before in San Francisco with Dad at Candlestick park. Seen  Mark Grace up close when asking for an autograph, got to see Greg Maddux pitch for them before he broke our hearts and went to Atlanta. But I had never been able to see one in Wrigley Field. Which is maybe at this point in time and still to this day the most renowned of all history Ball parks in the United States.

This was a must do thing during the trip. And even though I had pretty much quit playing and collecting baseball by this time, I was still watching the Cubs and wasn’t going to not push for this even to happen. So some day before the game we went to, Dad, Chris K and I went to a local Sears and in their Customer Service center were able to get three tickets for a Cubs game.

Not bleacher tickets either, although I think I might have wanted those. I liked the bleachers in Oakland, you could got out during batting practice and catch balls hit over the outfield wall and that always seemed fun to me. But not for this game, Dad got us, after discussing what options were available with us, tickets along the left field foul line. Which for those who don’t know in Wrigley in the outfield is foul line, wall, seats.

However, for those that do know the park, you might also know exactly where I am talking about because of a famous baseball moment that would happen along that wall about a decade later. As of 2023 when I started writing this up, I one am not sure which day we went (100% so at least), but every game at Wrigley back then was on WGN, and I mean to hopefully find the day in question on Youtube and see what can be seen in the crowd. Unfortunately I fear it will be a lot like the 49ers game from 1984 where the quality is so low that even if I am looking I the right spot all the crowd will be is blurs of colors.

It is however just kind of those three things I remember from this trip. Which I guess in all honestly is more than I will remember from the Spring break trip that is upcoming where I go with Chris K, to see his, well mother, I guess not family in the broad sense of the term. What’s odd is I remember the travel from that one, but this one, on the airplanes is just gone from the old noggin.

I found the "program" from the game!

Eighth grade was the beginning of the rest of my secondary school life. After the summer that was 1991, I had really settled into the new friend group which is starting to house our usual suspects. We had quite the adventure during those free months, and Chris H. may have even been the inspiration for a fake crime report (see a story is coming for it). Jason R. from seventh grade moved away and so missed out on the new SNES in the house. However, for whatever reasons that I don’t recall he was spending less and less time with the expanded group near the end of the year.

Early in seventh, he was always hanging out with Keith and I, so one has to wonder if when we started getting the Chris H. and Jared if there had been some tension I didn’t know about. Also back in this time with Sacramento being a long distance phone call that cost money and us all being to young to drive, he sort of disappeared during the summer months and then just didn’t return for eighth grade.

What I didn’t know coming in tough was that Keith was weeks away from moving.  When I got my schedule for eight grade it was a disappointment. I had utterly no classes with anyone I was hanging out with, Keith included in that. I don’t know how the school managed to separate me from everything, but I wasn’t standing for it. I instantly went to my counselor, and under the rouse of wanting to take some specific class re-arranged my entire schedule after the first week. Ideally so Keith and I could continue to draw comics.

This worked out well in some regards as a lot of my eighth grade classes are memorable. However, yeah once getting all of the classes aligned properly it was a pretty big shock to find out we only had a few weeks with Keith before his departure to Grass Valley. One of the more memorable classes was one Keith had made the call on signing up for. Keith being dramatic, signed up for communication theater, which was essentially introduction to drama. I honestly had little to no interest in the class, but I wanted to be around friends.

This class luckily had not only Keith in it, but Chris M., who would have a big eight grade arc, from being drug out of my room over FF4, to everyday lunches by the end of the year. There were also some of our other friends we made over the first Junior High year there that I haven’t mentioned because well I can only focus on those that had a lasting impact, sorry guys.

Of course, as I have said Keith would spring a move on us though, his last day would be the same Friday as the first school dance of the year. That Friday since communication theater tended to be a kinetic class, we moved around in a lot. We somehow were in a group “rehearsing” some skit or another. Of course, we were just having fun during this rehearsal, with this being Keith’s last day and all. At some point this led to me being sprawled out on the floor and kicking and wailing in some overacted silliness. I think Keith was pretending to beat me up over something. What I didn’t know was while I was doing this that our teacher somehow walked into this hot mess and got repeatedly pelted by my feet.

Now at this time in the eighth grade I have become a pretty big and solid little guy, I was meaty big okay. I’m now two years deep into football, and this is during the football season. I was probably decently strong for an early teen, so this is to say my feet probably didn’t feel too good. I got up though unaware of what was about to come down. Suddenly an authority figure in tears began yelling at me, over a situation I was oblivious too. She was talking about kicking her and I didn’t notice a thing and was really just in shock of the developing scene.

I won’t lie I never really figured out totally what happened in class that day. After that scene the rest of the day went about like normal. I was retold by Keith that she walked into my kicks, which is what I presumed happened as well. However, by sixth period I was getting congratulatory comments from young ladies on my kicking of a teacher they didn’t like. I was more willing to accept that praise then figure out the finer details of what I had done wrong. I ended up getting two days of class suspension for the ordeal and I think an understanding from the teacher that it was accidental and neither of us knew how to react at the shock factor of it. Thus, that was moved on from, but remembering the time I kicked a teacher ranks up in the pantheon of school memories.

Keith’s last day falling on a dance night allowed that day’s hijinks to continue. Sure, there was a teacher beating to help get us all excited, but there was a dance that night too. I didn’t attend many dances though, By the end of seventh grade I was too cool for such silly things. I did go to a couple in the seventh grade though. I think almost every seventh-grade hits that first dance of secondary school. You don’t know what they are about and parents act like it’s some amazing thing.

Then you go, and its oddly boring, everyone seems weird. You get explained that dancing is just sort of spastic activity, in my case you get riddled with MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, and eventually you retreat to the MPR for refreshments and antagonizing the guy that checks the lunch passes. I think we called him Disco Bob, or some such name, I don’t totally remember, he was a obvious UCD student who drove his car into the back racks and did a pretty laisse fair job of checking for lunch passes, too which Keith would start to antagonize him like the Road Runner did Wile E. Coyote.

Memorably though, it was one later in the year were Mom made all of us going pizza and Keith walked out in front of traffic daring some cars to not halt for him sticks in my brain. That was probably the last one we attended in the seventh grade and was the only one we gathered up in a big pack to go to. Then we graduated into too cool for school.

This eighth grade dance though was a weird one though. I went on my own and spent most of the night hanging out with a ninth-grade girl named Diana who I had met recently while skipping class with Chris H. We had bonded when she bit me in the arm in the ceramics supply closet. That is a sentence I just wrote. In a lot of ways this would hit all the qualifying bubbles as going to the dance with a girl, we danced, hung out together and talked on and on, it just wasn’t planned. But I was pretty bummed Keith was moving, so it was a nice distraction and I don’t think I understood completely what was going on at the time. Kids.

At the end of the night though I came across Vanya and Nicole, the same friends that Keith and I hung out with on the last day of the seventh grade. Vanya was having an angry outburst at the locker near hers that belonged to a unliked individual. She spat on it at one point is the major thing I remember from that interaction. We got to talking and I reminded her it was Keith’s last day so the three of us walked off to the K street apartments he lived in with his mother. The rest of the night we hung out there and had a little goodbye party for him.

After that Keith would sail off to Grass Valley. However, unlike Jason R. who sailed away, Keith had enough ties with Chris K. and also another friend Sam that this wouldn’t be the last of him. This would just be the last of him at school and on a regular basis.

Now fortunately, unfortunately? We need to run back to a sentence I just planted during Keith’s move and moved on from. That being I skipped class with Chris H. Eighth grade would feature a lot of skipping class. This was the year I was introduce to Mr. Kingler’s art classes. A place one could go to escape a class period they didn’t want to attend.

Even though it seems like a long time, we are only what 5 and half years from when I had perfect attendance in elementary school. In seventh grade I only skipped school once that wasn’t something Mom concocted. I should be clear on that, probably around fifth grade Mom introduced the idea of Mental Health days. Every once in a while, Mom would let me stay home and watch the Price is Right instead of going to school under the idea I needed a mental refresher day. Since fifth grade was a super weird year, I think it was a way for her to hopefully keep me from pulling a fourth grade and riding my bike away from school when I got too frustrated.

In seventh grade I participated in a walk out too so that really doesn’t count. Now the details of the walk out make it iffy. During seventh grade this big world event happened. A foreign leader invaded another country and took control of it. American then interviewed on that country’s behalf. Now the motives to why the U.S. would do this was pretty divisive in the country’s debates, in Davis, were my people live, there was a strong sentiment that the Gulf War, as it was being called, was driven solely for Oil and no other reason. Devil’s Advocate says what about the invaded country? But then I guess small countries have been gobbled up by stronger powers all the time, not all of them spark international incidents.

Regardless the local views got some kids riled up and whispers of a protest against the war in the form of walking out of school began to circulate throughout the day. How it got to us I don’t know. I’ll try and link it but there is a video yearbook that goes over how this was an idea spawned at the Senior High School. Once again, no cell phones etc. at this point so rumor had to spread this all the way to our Junior High.

Then it seemed like nothing was happening. However as we started sixth period P.E. that day suddenly coming towards our end of the school was a bunch of silly teenagers forming a protest in a small town in California whose stance on the issue was already well known. Sorry, I hate to be mean, but it was a pretty meaningless gesture this walk out, it was more so some High School kids could feed their sense of moral entitlement. Me and Keith and some other friends just noticed it as an opportunity to get out of school early that day.

We marched in our P.E. clothes as far as downtown. We ran in Randy who had gone back to get his skateboard and then ditched the ditchers to go have Taco Bell and hang out. Nothing to big. We told Mom about the whole thing and she didn’t seem to care very much and the school never really put the hammer down on the whole thing.

In a weird display, the promised to punish the students, but then gave everyone that was absent those two periods 30 minutes of after school detention, which back then was nothing, interesting how times have changed. And since it was so many kids, these detentions were done in alphabetical blocks on certain days.

 On our day, Keith, me, Chris H. Randy, and Jared all had it. We went to the library were everyone had to sign in. Singed in, then promptly went out the backdoor and downtown again. Punishment served. That was the extent by eighth grade of ditching class.

Now though we had Klinger’s art class. Technically it existed the year before, but well, seventh graders. It’s odd though I didn’t know about it. By seventh grade I was a constantly drawing comics, during school and after. I had art as a quarter long class, with Keith and other friends that year, but it was with some weird teacher in a regular classroom, not in the art room with Klinger.

Too add, as I was about to find out my mother was aware of Klinger. We knew him from the days of her first marriage and her first husband behind the other art teacher with him at the school. But until Chris H. came up to me one day and asked me to please from ditch class with him in the art room I was somehow unaware of Klinger and his sanctum.

I began ditching with Chris H. to visit these two ninth grade girls that were teacher’s assistants in Klinger’s ceramics class. We see where this is going. Chris H. had started talking to one of these girls this year and somehow caught wind that he would come chill and hangout this period while she “ta’ed” for the class. Of course being a teacher’s assistant that class seemed to mean go in the large ceramics closet, close the doors and yeah.

So really I was being dragged along for support. Chris H. was at that time the most girl crazy of any of the boys. He had comically spent seventh grade “asking out” what at the time we claimed was every girl at school. It may not have been that many, but he was definitely on a mission. Chris H. was one of the new kids that year after all. He had moved back to the U.S. with his family from Saudi Arabia, just in time perhaps with that whole Gulf War. And I think part of his seventh grade was a all out attempt to do what he thought he was supposed to do to gain popularity, thus just going for it.

He simmered down by the summer, but here was a chance and I think this time he wanted to play it safe after the rejection filled year he had just had. I feel bad having to speculate on others motivates, while I don’t doubt what I said to probably be somewhat accurate I am sure there were more nuances to it, and I don’t really intend to make people look simple and one dimensional, but yeah sorry Chris H. you saw girl you wanted to talk and you needed a safety buffer.

I apparently was a safety buffer. I don’t know if that meant Chris H. thought I was a solid friend or I was the safe friend that wouldn’t charm away his mark. Either way there I was sitting on a shelf in a closet watching Chris H. talk to this other girl. And that is how Diana and I got talking, it went weirdly. Going on the idea that maybe a similar game was a foot with Chrises prey, we got to awkwardly talk and then help interject ourselves into their conversation.  So like I said it felt weird, but I was pretty happy to not be in class and to be unsupervised.

Then somehow one thing led to another, and Diana bit my arm. It wasn’t very hard at all. I was just left sort of laughing at it with some very feint teeth marks and lipstick on my forearm. It was random enough to break Chris and his friend from their interaction. Somehow that was the tension breaker which would lead to this hangout session this period becoming an everyday thing. Much to the detriment of my P.E. class, I think.

I started just going on my own to hang out with Diana after that school dance. There would be the normal group, But Klinger’s class was kind of an open door. Thus when I say going on my own I mean I ditched more classes to make this all work out. I was still helping out Chris H. and his dance, but their support now was cool with hanging out other periods without them.

So, it was quite a surprise one day when I decided to skip out of class and saw her friend waiting outside for class to start decidedly sad. Seemed over the weekend Diana’s parents had decided to send her off to private school instead of staying at our Junior High. Once again without cell phones and the like that we have today that was the last I ever saw of her or heard of her.

That is such a weird thing, the idea that someone moves a few miles, or goes to another school and they just drop off the face of the earth. Coincidentally this all had to happen right now in the first half of this school year for that to be a thing. I keep having to being up the lack of cell phones and the internet, but part of that is going to change in 1992.

Back o Klinger’s class though. Diana was a pretty big hit, too say I ditched a lot of class to hang out would be an understatement. I really started mounting out after school detentions and an angry mother. Now were we smarter kids, maybe one of us should have moved to a telephone to communicate, thus making that abrupt end not a thing. But if I were to have to guess, seeing that she was transferred to another school mid-year out of what seemed like nowhere to the rest of us, I have always had the assumption that there was a reason for not wanting to move the narrative home under parental eyes. Could be wrong, but I once again only have my angle of the story and it seems to fit with the times.

Now though I knew about art class and so second semester, second period, or the start of my school day in the eighth grade, would feature Mr. Klinger’s art class. It’s weird how quickly kids move on, although precious little time has passed, this seemed almost like a new year. What that marks is the first time the changing of one semester too another ever affected memory.

Anyway, onto this new life second period, semester two in the same art class. This was during the height of the Street Fighter 2 (SF2) video game dominance, which ties into this class. I would walk to school in the morning and present myself on the front middle table in the art class. I would be met by Vanya, and we would draw pictures and discuss pertinent matters to eighth graders. Nothing much, that was until The Show sauntered into class.

Marty was The Show. Was he ever on time for second period? Probably, do I remember him being, nope. Marty would detour in the morning to then 7-11 on L street which  had an arcade cabinet of SF2 in it on the way to school, just about evert morning. A couple things were a foot with that, one SF2 was a big deal and Marty, although he probably wouldn’t admit it openly, had a deep addiction to the game. Too add, and this is speculation, and knowing Marty it’s another thing he may not admit, but I think he really didn’t want to be at school at that particular time in his life and SF2 and that 7-11 was the morning excuse he was looking for.

So, he would detour there in the morning. Then, in only a way Marty could, he would get invested in annoying the proprietors of the establishment to the point of some sort of incident seemingly always occurring. One day it would be him getting into a yelling match over some odd something, or they would think he stole something, or he would try and steal some food on the way out and cause a commotion. No matter whether he started it or not, he wouldn’t back down from getting into it with them.

Then late to school Marty would come in, plop down at our table, and begin a heated rant about the mornings adventures in being a mild delinquent at the 7-11. The two of us would listen as he would ramble on an on. Amused as kids would be of a boy and his mildly ethnically intolerant war with the owners of the 7-11. For a half year that was how I started every day in junior high. And as much as I try to be ethically fair about the situation, that was a pretty solid start to school of which I would not always get the pleasure of having. I have to be fair, Marty wasn’t really in the right with his behavior, but neither I or Vanya cared, or at least she didn’t seem too, and I’ll always give Marty the pass for the memories.

Other than a seventh grade paper route adventure poking fun at Keith, this was the first real bonding time Marty and I would have. And yeah, oddly it stems from SF2. So we need to walk away from Holmes Junior High School for a second and look at another location, Arcades, most notably one called The Library.

image 50 A Street Fighter II arcade cabinet, and  Street Fighter II Turbo on the TV in the TV room at the L street House mid-1994.

Arcades obviously had been around long before the early 1990s, however the NES and PC and so on had eating into the market slowly over time. By around 1989 the arcade was more fun as something you did at kid’s birthday parties. Like mine in 1992 when we killed The Simpson’s Arcade Game at the local Rico’s Pizza thanks to Mom and Dad being willing to supply us with an endless stream of quarters. But one game would come out and reinvigorate the arcades themselves. In 1991 Street Fighter II (SF2) was released upon a world. It’s hard though to encapsulate how big this game was in teen boy culture from 8th grade through High School. But this one game made going to the local coin operated video game hangout, called The Library a near every day thing for a time.

Before I get into the game, exploring that, The Library is also important. Nestled in our little downtown was this arcade with a prohibition style name. “Hey junior where ya’ head?”, “To the library mother.”, ”Oh that junior always working hard on his grades!”. That fantasy though wasn’t the reality. Instead The Library was well known by parents and for whatever reason, maybe earned I don’t know all the details, had a morbid reputation among them.

Many kids, including me when I was younger were either strictly forbidden or heavily hinted that The Library was a bad place that only bad kids when to do bad things. At some point though, I had to test this out in grade school. What it really was, was a darkly lit, slightly humid, maybe musty, 1980s style arcade making a small living off teenagers and college kids that wanted to be inside somewhere.

And that was kind of it. By the late 80’s no one wanted to play Pac-Man or Joust anymore when we had Mario Brothers 3 or Zelda at home. Then SF2 came out and the scene changed. And it still wasn’t what parent’s thought. I mean sure there was an interesting element now more than ever there. But with the popularity of the game, there was also a lot of nerdy college students (looking at you J.F.) and dorky kids that just wanted to show off their ability to throw fireballs.

Obviously in the early 90s me and my friends were breaking into more sophisticated video games. The upgrade to the SNES, getting PCs (spoiler) and exploring games that could take up multiple megabytes of data. We were into this wave of new gaming technology. But for the most part games like SimCity for example for single player.

Now Chris K. had one item that was technically ahead of its time at this point. A Turbo Graphics 16 (TB16). Now the SNES and so on that were all coming out at this time would also be 16-bit consoles, but the Turbo Graphics did hit the market before them. And on that machine was a port of a fighting game called Street Fighter, or on the TB16 as it was called, Fighting Street. This was the introduction Chris K. Chris M and Marty got to this “semi-martial arts” style fighting game.

This was a big deal to them at the time. All three of them were into Tae kwon and would take classes down the street at the local center. This at the time was the nicest looking game anyone had with what looked like two guys fighting people in gis, just like they wore in class.

Since the game was a port (a game designed on another systems hardware then converted over or changed to fit on a different systems hardware), it was introduced late into the cycle of its release and therefore it wasn’t that long after that the fancy new version, SF2, showed up the in the arcade cabinets. Marty, armed with his Fighting Street knowledge, quickly latched onto the new game, as well as both Chrises in this scenario, but Marty liked it a lot.

Two prime locations had the game early on. The two locations we’ve talked about, which were “The Library”, and the other, the 7-11 on L street in between the K street apartments and Holmes Junior High.

Now I keep hinting at what multiplayer video games were like 1991. Let’s make it even more clear. Some NES games and a couple of SNES games had a two-player option. And now I have explained multiplayer gaming. With no internet really to speak of, most competitive video games were against the system, very few non-sports games at the time had two player options, let alone two player competitive options. Then came SF2, where you could ride a quarter as long and as far as your skill could take you.

So, kids, like say Marty, would cash in a dollar, go to one of the SF2 machines, if he got there early enough there wouldn’t be a line, but usually there would be. Take their quarter and line it up on the machine behind everyone else waiting to play. Then, whoever the currently reigning king of the machine was would sit at their control stick taking on challengers until someone eventually beat them and then had to stand their ground in the hot seat as the next quarter would be taken off the line and put into the machine. This would then repeat until there were no challengers, and the game could be between in it’s not often played one player mode, new challengers came in the arcade or the store closed for the night. Which of course 7-11 never closed.

So now not only is there this head-to-head video game, that is cutting and edge and fun, but theoretically you could play a whole afternoon on one quarter. If you were good enough. Now I’m not being disparaging, but Chris M. and Marty didn’t have a whole lot of access to video game funds during this era of their lives and here comes a game that if they can skill up in, they can play for pennies compared to what others are putting in the machine. It took hold. And it wasn’t just them, it caught other kids for similar and different reasons, but the time sink it became was incredible.

I, usually with one or both K street Chrises would head downtown after school and then search for a free machine. The Library was almost always full, but as the game snowballed in popularity, there was a machine next door at Woodstock’s Pizza. But because of its close proximity to The Library that might be in use as well. Don’t fret, across the street at the Mountain Mike’s Pizza, they had one or two machines depending on when in time you are and so on. We could walk a little route downtown until we found a machine, we could play at without waiting and eventually the challengers would show up from busier locals.

Others though latched onto the standing and the watching and the talking about how to play the game. As I have stated this is how we all came to know J.F. he was a put a quarter in the line guy, talk about the game, have his turn come up, get beat, then repeat. SF2 became just as big a spectator event as a played event. With some many people in line it was just a natural progression. Plus if your quarter was about to be on the line you wanted to see what the king of the machines tendencies were so you could kick his ass.

Also fighting games are easy to watch for those that aren’t shy about violence.  Then SF2’s fighting is in many ways cartoonish, so even that isn’t as big of an issue. Fighting is easy to watch because without knowing the game its pretty easy concept to understand. Two people are punching each other until one doesn’t get back up, and luckily the only real noticeable HUD item in the game are the two players health and the time. Making it so if you don’t know the game, wander in to see what people are starring at, you can understand the main concepts immediately. There is a pretty valid argument in the 20s and the 10s before that these games would be huge in the “professional” and spectator gaming space if not for the fact that for some reason these games draw so many toxic competitors into its ranks.

That stands firm, SF2’s legacy just for this time is immense but it is clouded with the fact that a lot of the same things that made it so fun, also could cause drama. The fact that the opposite of Marty riding a machine on one quarter for an hour could happen was there. Instead of stretching your money, you could be dumping it into a machine over and over again and then getting your characters ass beat by a teenager that used that beating as a metaphor to question your sexuality or intelligence among a litany of other things.

This is pre-online so someone acts like that long enough and Street Fighter 3 maybe materialize as a real life game that happens in and around the SF2 machine. This to an extent is why I think my parents were happy to invite the SNES ports of the game into the L street house once they came out. Once this happened we went out to play the game less since it was free to play at home. This wasn’t a complete exodus from the Arcades and convenience stores but it did lessen it.

No longer were Chris M. and I running into the sports bar near Sam’s house at midnight to try and get in some games, only to find out we got into a 21 and over night and get kicked out. We could just fire up the SNES machine and play at the house and not be witness to the debauchery.

Humorously the SNES over the next few years would come out with multiple version of the game, one for each upgrade to the arcade versions. And my parents would keep indulging. With kids always on limited funds, every time a release would come around, Oddly friends who we hadn’t seen for a while would show up to play. How did some of them know? Not sure, rumors almost worked fast than cell phone calls and twitters to these days and a couple friends that weren’t regulars at the house always seemed to know when it was SF2 on the SNES time.

For everyone that was there this was a fun time in gaming. And for everyone that was there not named Marty, I remind them of this. Marty, whom I keep mentioning with this game, because it was his game in a sense, was also very cocky about the game. His ego with it did become unbearable at times. Luckily there was always one little tournament we had, where he played his ringer character, Guile against my not ringer character, E. Honda, which was a character at that current point in time he thought extraordinary stupid and pointless. Then promptly lost too. Giving us an afternoon of complaining about how it was impossibly stupid he lost to E. Honda, and giving us a humbler when he could out of hand by remind him of said loss.

Okay back to school. Another major class I have to tackle this school year was fourth period. Which was and all year pre-Algebra class with Mr. King. Get ready for some quick tonal changes. The year before had been rowdy in Math class for various reasons, mainly pertaining to the start of the year and a substitute, but regardless Math and junior high had gotten off to an odd start. This year’s class though had some students that really needed to talk, a lot. We had a girl named Jessica that maybe was fifty percent mouth. She talked every day, through lectures and beyond. But the reason I remember her was the thing about putting a whole coke can in her mouth. So maybe I am exaggerating the mouth percentage, but it was somehow talked about a lot.

Chris M. was also in this class with me and is prone to his own fits of talking. But we had enough kids like that he was probably considered one of the more mundane kids in the class. One day one of the students, Eric, was challenged to act like a chicken for either 30 seconds or a minute, on top of his desk for a dollar. Down the road Eric had a run in with the towns littlest police officer who kids called “the midget cop”, and a pack of cigarettes he was trying to steal from the Long’s Drugstore. Our teacher then turned the days lesson in probability into a game of get Eric away from the midget cop, by having him roll dice to see what odds he would have to escape.

It was a class that wasn’t bad to go to during the day. I can’t for the life of me remember what second period was first semester, but then third was when I was ditching a lot of class. But I started getting to a point where I wouldn’t skip this class, its hijinks and Chris M. and I getting to laugh and talk with other peers we liked. Then in the spring something changed. Eric’s friend, Andrew was the one that did the chicken on the desk challenge. He thought it so funny it even lives on as a quote in the yearbook that year. Andrew was a kid I knew too, we had just won that Babe Ruth League championship less than a year ago and his mother lived next door to my Aunt Dorothy. Well Andrew was about to hit an unfortunate end one weekend in April and change the landscape of that year indelibly.

Not long before it feels like we had that year’s talent show. He and Eric had a band that played in that year’s performance. All seemed normal, but that weekend in April, Andrew got into it with some kids from other schools in town, they beat him up and tossed him in front of an oncoming train. The outcome goes as one might think.

With my aunt being a neighbor to his mother we got the news on Saturday. I can still remember mother coming into my room to tell me. I know we had Steve’s kids there that day, and probably at least Chris M. Once again it was a weird sensation to find out. Prior when grandma died, as I said, kids get sheltered from it by there being this prevailing feeling that it was expected since grandma was old. This however was a jolt, this was someone that just the day before was fine and well and joking in math class. Who was friends with our friends and lived next to our family. It was odd.

The next day on Sunday I had to go to church. In the eighth grade I had almost worked my way out of going all together, in April I was on a I’ll go one weekend, but I get the next off. This was a weekend on. I have a feeling Mom wanted me to go anyway since that morning the story about the incident came out in the newspapers and was on the news. It’s strange sitting with a group of boys that all just found out a classmate passed away. In fact if I recall they did some large group activity for Sunday school in the church gymnasium and as far as the part of the main meeting us fourteen year old boys were supposed to do. I think I would remember that part but oddly I don’t. Maybe I just chose not to participate that day, maybe in some wisdom they had older kids do it, I just don’t remember it.

When Monday came, that fourth period math class we all had together happened to be at the front edge of the school, so all the media vans and reporters that couldn’t be on school property were camped just a few feet away. After going through several yelling sessions, when class finally finished Chris M. and I quickly exited through the mess and wandered off campus under this idea we needed to find Eric. Obviously, he was at home that day with his family, we got it in our minds he wasn’t and something bad was afoot.

So instead of going home for lunch we walked downtown and to where we believed the event of a few days prior had happened. See there is another story from seventh grade I haven’t told yet. Downtown behind where the Boy Scout Christmas tree lot was, would be every winter was a small dam, I looked up what a small dam is called, and it google claims it’s a weir. Either way it was a small cement structure originally designed it seemed as a control over the creek that ran behind that section of downtown but had long since been useless after some other project cut off the flow of the creek to that spot.

Instead in a little valley this structure just sat there fenced off with a couple stories of dirty exposed rooms cut off from the prying eyes of the pedestrians in the area. In seventh grade Keith had decided the whole process of climbing into the building and descending wasn’t unlike where the kids had to traverse in Stephen King’s novel IT, to duel with Pennywise the clown. So, we always called the location Pennywise. That year one night Keith decided we needed to explore the validity of the paranormal at the location.

Keith, myself, Chris H. and Jared then went on a night time reconnaissance to Pennywise armed with wrist rockets and skateboards. I think amped up on stories of what could be, we all allowed our imaginations to run wild while we entered the edifice. Or there could have been a homeless man or wild animals living on the bottom floor, who knows it was dark. But we were convinced we had to fight our way out once we got in there. It made for a fun Friday night in the end. But a lot of running.

Behind Pennywise was the train tracks. Where a year later this real-life tragedy would occur. On this night though reaching the tracks just meant a place to rest before walking a long them back downtown. It’s an odd thing to have such different memories of a place in a short time. That seventh grade trip was fun and has a lasting postcard in my head of Chris H. and Jared smoking at dusk while Keith prepared the wrist rocket along the side of those same tracks. That moment being some sort of idealized picture of what junior high school is, and then well tragedy.

Pennywise was well known by kids, maybe not by Keith’s name for it, but because of it being so close to downtown and also being secluded from the people downtown. So, it became a place where kids would hang out and smoke and drink, you know teenager things. It was at this location then two years later that the incident with Andrew occurred, and where Chris M. and I thought to go looking for Eric that day.

It was a dumb idea, we ended up climbing down, finding it disturbing and then climbing out only to have to stay to the bush line to avoid the police cars still watching over the area. In the end it didn’t solve anything, but it gave us a set goal of something to do on a day that maybe the school should have let us all off in the first place.

Time would pass and fourth period would get almost back to normal that year, but it lost one of its jesters through a really sad event and changing the course for a while of how we saw things. Not to take focus of the tragedy, but it is a weird thing to follow a ninth grade class in our junior, senior high system. I may state this again, but years later I talked with the all-knowing janitor of the school from then, Lester, who later I worked with when I became a school employee. He told me he could always remember that graduating class, the class of 95, but mine, it’s like we didn’t happen. Like being the first movie to try and copy Star Wars, it happened but you have to be really into trivia to know what movie it was.

Now it seems like I am just going down every period of the day, which is sort of what I am doing. Fourth would make more sense as the end cap, going by its downturn and reflection. But my brain has to have order and I seem to be sticking to it.

And then I get to fifth period and I already told the story about communication theater and the kicking of a teacher. So, I’ll have to call myself a liar. After Keith left, I was in that class with Chris M. for the rest of the semester. This was also FF4 time, this is where a bad showing of annoyance early on was forgiven and where we had more time to bond since forth period was another show to watch and we didn’t have time to talk about at home stuff like FF4.

Whatever it was I had second semester was replaced by Art class. Or it was art class and I sometimes didn’t leave after lunch, thus building up that years insurmountable detention time. Mom would get calls about me missing classes, I would shrug, and more time would get added and I would no show detention and more time would be added. Honestly at some point someone must have stopped caring. Mom finally sent me to a Saturday detention that I had to sit through a couple hours in a classroom and it seemed like someone decided that was enough to cleanse the record or just forget about it. It was a two-hour nap in a desk for someone that must have had a good two months’ worth of time owed.

Sixth period that year would be English class. Which while I did ditch some, I didn’t do it that much. We had a colorful teacher that year that as students we found we could get on a story tangent if we just asked about her weekend and the like. The class was also filled with kids I hung around like well a puffy haired, guitar drawing kid name Karl.

However, the most notable time in that class was when our teacher got called away on jury duty. Since she was selected to serve we had to get another temporary sub to teach the class the couple weeks she would be away. Well remember seventh grade and Math, those classes don’t work out well. What I remember most though is Jared and a couple other boys in the back of class one day trying to use a table fan to smoke in class. Technically they got away with it but that was on the sub who really seemed oblivious to it all.

Now I wrote that end of the last paragraph in like 2021. Now reading this section back over in 2023 there is a new wrinkle to this story. That substitute I know share a room with at my current job. When I made this connection, since I inherit my father’s inability to not talk about something, I brought this time up. Turns out what I thought as a kid was pretty spot on. She was a young substitute teacher, and we were so out of bounds it was somewhat overwhelming. She didn’t know about the smoking, which is surprising considering the smell, but she wasn’t surprised by it either. Seems she got to a point where she just assumed stuff was going on constantly and was just trying her best to get through the lesson plan in hopes of not being a sub one day. Because although she didn’t remember Jared and companies smoking, she remembers that particular sub job.

It's crazy to me that three decades later that story got more added to it. I wish I remember all the stupid things we did to misbehave at that time, but unfortunately watching the three stooges try and use a fan incorrectly to blow smoke out of the back of class ends up trumping all other memories.

That class also featured the video shoot for parent teacher night in which Chris M., who was in that class as well, blew a giant bubble with his chewing gum, that I popped and got all over his face and hair and then into the video.  This footage would be great if not for all certainty lost. It’s also pretty funny that our teacher filmed it after it happened instead of punishing us in some way which could well have happened in some other classes from that time. From sixth period I would go to seventh period U.S. history class.

This was also where we got Junior High sex ed for a few weeks with a school counselor and our crime talk with the police officer assigned to the secondary schools. What I did in that class when I was there, was talk though. Highlighted by two girls, Sonya and Erin being in the class as well. Sonya was a young lady that happened to live on the street behind me, I didn’t know who she was though until we had a class together. From there talking during class became a problem. So much so that I can distinctly remember when Sonya got her desk setup all by itself starring out the back window in class while the rest of us where in groups.

I will just be honest here, I don’t think that teacher cared for us much. At this point in time History was a class that even with bad attendance and not paying attention in class I did fine in, I think making the issue even greater. I wasn’t acing anything mind you, but I would do just good enough to not be failing out, which probably added to the frustration of dealing with me. B’s on tests, but no credit for in class activities. It also counts as the first place I ever heard a girl say “whip it out”. Junior High sex ed is a weird weird thing. It also included a lecture about looking at a lineup of anonymous penises. You know I guess they just want to answer any question at that point since they know what’s a coming with teenagers the next few years.

During this year Chris K. who was in seventh grade, had his mother move out, so for a while we got his dad staying in Davis with him. This was a big change for us all when visiting at the K street apartments. His dad was maybe a future path for who Jake could have grown up into. Complete with a history with playing in garage bands. This was one of the big reasons why he was willing to go out of his way the next year to get Chris K. a drum set for the I.D.S. band.

This school year also featured a birthday party at Rico’s Pizza, the Simpson’s Arcade game one. It wasn’t planned but somehow Mom and Dad offered to take those of us that were hanging out at the house to the pizzeria down the street. The group I think was almost primarily comprised of the K street apartment kids, so Chris M. and Marty and Chris K. We ate large amounts of pizza in which everyone saved their crusts for George. This made a massive pile of bread in the middle of the table, lucky dog. Then we played that Simpson’s game in four-player mode to completion, which was an all-out attack on mom and dad’s wallet.

Famously this birthday was remembered though for the drive home, and not George’s carbohydrate stash or the quarter destruction. Mom in the head position driving the Volkswagen station wagon, we had for a short period of time, full of kids who died when they caught Dad in the trailing car picking his nose at every stoplight on the way to the K street apartments. Dad did stuff like that to everyone’s amusement but his own. We would also sometimes catch him cleaning his ears with his car key and doing other odd groomings like that with his trustee pocketknife. That was also I think what would constitute the last kids style birthday party of my life.

That birthday group was quickly becoming near the end of eight grade that group that stayed at the L street house the most. Chris H. and Jared were trying harder to dabble less in constant gaming and other tech stuff away from school, so they wouldn’t be over as much. To boot Chris H. wouldn’t be in a perpetual cast for his arm this year like the one before so he would skateboard with Randy and others a bit more.

 So, the birthday crew was more centered around gaming. Marty had SF2, Chris K. was definitely a gaming nerd and I think Chris M. was just down for having fun. It was through Chris M. that I found out about a friend of his, Keith and Chris K’s named Sam.

We Burn Down Sam's...

The main story here is probably early 1993, but this is more of an origin 1992 thing so here it goes, as again this is from the initial write up, the story will meander around through the decade a bit. The more I think about it this is definitely 1992 to begin, but now we are talking about stuff that happened away from tie-ins with school, so I can’t just remember this happened in that class and so on.

Let’s do this. While electronic gaming was important during the 90s and 00s, I did have those friends that did some pen and paper role playing. Chris M. and K., Marty, Keith, and Sam were prone to an adventure from time to time. Which of course was the conception point for My Game, Ryan’s Game, let’s keep that a mystery for a second or two. But anyway, aversion to playing Advanced Dungeon and Dragons (AD&D) with them wasn’t all there was to draw inspiration for my mystery game. Chris K. and Sam had some other games that weren’t computer based that I got introduced to during the same era of going to Sam’s house to play games we didn’t have.

Initially when we started doing the stay at Sam’s house thing, he had us play a game called Cosmic Encounters, which was a lot of fun. A space strategy game, it was more in the vein of PC games like Civilization and SimCity that were the bee’s knees right then. Cosmic Encounters is in fact the ending to one of the great junior high school stories from my life. It’s my nature to veer us of course then for a sentence or two to go over that event. Also, it seems on reference, that the game is called Cosmic Encounter, but I always made it plural and am sticking to it.

So, probably sometime in early 1993, in other words for this story post-Christmas 1992 (Okay I hate breaking up my own narrative but the more I ponder this the more I think its post 1991 Christmas and early 1992), Me, both Chris M. and K. and Marty were setup for a Friday night extravaganza at Sam’s house which was near the University Mall at the time. This would be just another weekend at Sam’s, until later, so the pre-event details are going to be fuzzy, but something that night tied us to having to be outside during an event at the Universities International House.

We spent most of that time outside on the lawn doing fake concert silliness, essentially just playing. When the event drew to a close, I guess there were enough of us that Sam’s mother had to give us a ride to the house in groups. The first group was me, both Chrises and Sam. The International House was only a few blocks from the mall, however it was a few long Boulevard blocks, so while the distance wasn’t too bad one can get stuck in the lights on the way there for a second or two.

So, she dropped us off. When we got the house, she went back to get Marty and I think whatever goods etc. that needed to return as well. Also coming home with us was Sam’s little brother Mikey, who was probably around three years old at the time. Once she left Sam informed us of his big news. “Hey guys mom said we could burn the Christmas tree in the backyard.” A tale as old as time really. No this would have seemed absurd as a statement, except at the wild west town that was Sam’s house. Sam’s house initial tag line for coming over was “Ryan, we can go over there and do whatever we want and no one cares.” So, being teenage boys we were “cool.”

We went out back and Sam drug the small tree out with him. Now as I’ve said Sam, and some of the other kids were big into AD&D, and that game especially through the 80s got this weird reputation for being evil. If you would have met and seen Chris M. back then, the idea he was some evil devil worshiper would have made you laugh. But there was a stereotype people pointed to, and either by chance or by embracing it, Sam was into at least the illusion he was up to no good.

As many do when they get into genre specific gaming, I guess that’s the way to put it, there is a lore you can follow others too and Sam was deep into his Lovecraftian arc at this time. Now I know he didn’t believe in it and knew it was all fiction. But to an outsider that particular branch of Horror and role play is going to just look like straight up Satan worship. That is what kind of made it all the cooler, made it edgy. And edgy is the goal of some many teen boys. So, we weren’t just taking the tree in the backyard, lighting a match and dancing naked around it, nope, Sam had a whole ritual concocted and the tree was the sacrificial lamb to the Ancient Ones.

So, with a carefully drawn circle of power that the tree was placed in the middle of, we all sat around cross legged and ready for burning. Then he attempted with mild success to lead us all in chanting. See what a few badly placed stop lights on a major street can do. Then Sam ignited the flame, but before we were to start the tree ablaze, we had to singe a hair on our heads as an offering the great Cthulhu or whatever the hell Sam was going on about. I think at this point were just getting antsy to set this thing on fire.

This didn’t go off without a hitch. I don’t know what was up with Chris K.’s hair, I had a pretty curly mop, so its not like he had unique hair DNA in our séance circle. But when he went to lightly singe, he managed to have his hair momentarily go up like a Christmas tree in a teenager’s back yard. I’m getting ahead of myself. It was for a split-second frightening but luckily for Chris K. a couple smacks to the scalp and it subsided. Finally, after a bit more show from Sam the main event. Burn that tree and that we did. It was a roaring fire once it got started. Now fully engrossed in the mayhem we created Sam’s chanting was more melodic and entertaining. But it was at this time the blazing inferno caught Mikey’s attention from inside the house.

Yes, Sam’s mother did leave a small child to be watched by a group of teenagers that then just locked him in the house and went outside to commit sacrilege to most holy of trees. But somehow it was this moment with his little brother pounding on the sliding glass door to come outside and see the fire that Sam’s brotherly nature of inclusion came to bare. Sam insisted that Chris M. let Mikey out to enjoy the towering inferno we had created. And under protest Chris M. finally did so. Chris M. then tried to keep the toddler at bay, who once outside had gone into a zombified walk and stare towards the fire with the giddiness of someone that thought the flames would wash away their worldly cares. I guess they would in a way.

So, Chris M. placated him by making little fire torches of to the side for Mikey to play with like sparklers on the fourth of July. That’s when the reality of the situation came crashing down on us. I remember looking through the large window in the backyard that looked into the house’s living room and seeing a wide-eyed Marty running towards the sliding glass door in the kitchen. “Oh, their home.” I said to which Sam replied, “Hey guys, you know that thing about it being okay to burn the Christmas tree? I lied.”

For me and the two Chrises survival mode kicked in, before Marty ever made it to that backdoor, we dropped everything, turned, and ran through Sam’s room’s backyard entry way to go find a safe place to hide from the coming rapture. We went through his room and into his weird zig-zagged walk-in closet that his room was home too. There we hide and positioned ourselves with the tiniest line of sight to see anyone coming up or down the connected hallway towards us.

What did we see? Sam running from his room right past us and down the hallway. We did a quick check, one, two, three… Sam makes four. Mikey. A sense of actual fear then took over. Sam had left the fire gawking tike alone outside with the fire. We sucked up our courage and ran back through Sam’s room and out the door into the backyard and what did we see? Mikey, hands forward, mesmerized and walking straight towards the crackling fire.

It was then that we saw Sam’s mother make a gazelle like move from the sliding glass door down to the patio to swoop Mikey up with one arm and return him to the safety of the house. While this feat was going down Sam would come running outside with a yellow Rubbermaid broom and start beating on the fire like teenage boy in a TV room with a weekend of the adult pay per view channel and his friends parents gone for the weekend. His mother, Mary, would then return to the backyard sporting the giant stainless-steel pot that was simmering with the noodles for the night’s dinner and dowse the top of the fire with the noodle water.

The fire would begin to subside. We three decided discretion was the better part of valor and locked ourselves in Sam’s room. We stayed locked up in there for a good fifteen minutes before venturing out to see what sort of beating Sam was going to have to endure. However, to our surprise instead Mary was deep into restarting dinner and Sam greeted us with Marty and the box for Cosmic Encounters. We setup to play the game and his mother asked us if we wanted ice cream while we played and waited for dinner. Later she had a good laugh at how flammable a toddlers clothing was and that was that. She it seemed was just glad it wasn’t the house on fire which is what her and Marty though as they approached the house that evening and saw the flames shooting up into the darkening sky.

Cosmic Encounters was great but somewhere along the line a game called Illuminati popped up into the game circle. I think it was a birthday party at Sam’s that I first saw them playing the game. Quickly it became a must play when there was around four or five of us. A game, where the only rule was don’t get caught cheating. Well, for time’s sake the bank portion of the game had to be on the up and up, but other than that do lying, cheating, back room deals, all okay.

So, to explain Illuminati I need to get into Sam’s house again. It was during ninth grade that Sam moved out to a decently sized house right outside of town. This house would be the inspiration for Chris M.’s Sarlacc Software game “Sam’s Mansion”. The house, which I believe was a prefab house from some time earlier in the century was as I said just situated out of town down Russell Boulevard. The previous dwelling that we used to visit Sam at for the weekend romps was in town by the University Mall, this of course allowed easy access to SF2 machines in both the Davis Graduate a sports bar in the mall and the machine in front of the Safeway. Yes, the Mall had a grocery store in it.

Thus, the move out of town was a change in play pattern for us. Also now being in “high school” maybe we were more mature. As this year goes on most of us will fall out of favor of the big crazy weekends with no rules for more simple weekends at the L street house, leading to the patterns we see in senior high. But for a while in freshman year packing up for Sam’s was still on the docket.

It was at this location that some of the wilder events started to take place. Free of the draw of arcade cabinets, bored youth started wandering the countryside in search of amusement. This all sort of culminated in a weekend where Keith, now of course living in Nevada City came to visit, yeah I guess I said Grass Valley earlier I need to edit that. The first night he was over we did a large exploration expedition. We challenged a few of the local sheep, explored the water ways and at one point stupidly spelled you F U C K U with our bodies on one of the Universities country roads. Yes, someone stopped, and he asked if we were stupid. The answer, of course, is yes.

It was at the end of this night out that we got back to Sam’s. tired people started to fade into more sedentary actives over the house. But before I can continue, I have to go over another theme for that weekend at Sam’s. Sam’s little brother, Mikey, now a little older than the Christmas fire, had refused to wear diapers anymore and forsook any attempt to be potty trained either. So, we also had a shirt-balling four-year-old running around the house popping a squat wherever and whenever nature called. As Charlton Heston once said, “it’s a mad house”.

It was this part of the evenings events that led to Keith, who was about to setup a sleeping area in the family room only to find a little brown friend right where he was about to lay his head. This caused some tension. Keith not one to shy away from letting people know how he felt, went into the kitchen, grabbed a paper towel, picked up the offensive leftover and marched up to Sam’s parent’s room to show his displeasure. The words “this is unacceptable” were the words I remember being uttered most from him that night.

But as things did at Sam’s that too blew over. It wasn’t until about three of four in the morning that the real show was about to being. At this point in the night everyone has either fallen asleep as I know the Chrises had upstairs or were on their way too as Keith and I were downstairs in the now cleaned family room. It was at this odd hour where everyone was passing out that Sam decided it was time to crack out Illuminati. Why, I would say I don’t know, but I do, it was because with everyone tired and unwilling to really play, he could stick it to Keith, which for some reason Sam always reveled in. Which is what unfolded.

You have a game where anything goes and all but one player is constantly falling asleep during, makes the game board your oyster. And Sam well, reveled in his victories, pointing and laughing, screaming in Keith’s half-asleep face about how he was besting him at this current game. And that’s when Sam’s father snapped. Now Sam’s house during the University Mall days was lawless and had stayed the same during the move. One facet of the household all of us had noticed was that Sam’s father didn’t seem to want to be along for the same ride. But he was at this point famously known for caving into the wishes of his kids and wife. Almost to the point where he seemed to be lacking the respect one would assuming the gainfully employed adult of the house would usually get.

Tonight though, late into the night Sam’s revelries seemed to be the tipping point on rational thought. From burning down the old house to never sleeping and playing music all night at the new one he snapped. At this point I was about 95 percent asleep, if not for Sam’s constant yelling I would have been in dream land. It was at that same snapping moment when Sam was yelling about his prowess at the game into Keith’s closed eyes that I heard a pounding coming down the stairs.

I looked up, it was a very aggressive sounding march down the stairs, what I saw was a father who was broken. Then it got weird, still pretty out of it if I had any expectations, it was that Sam was about to get a yelling at of his own several years in the making. Instead, Sam’s father turned towards me and then kicked me. Then turned and kicked Keith, both of us of course were sheltered up in our blankets and laying on the ground. Keith and I confused and still dazed from getting a spurt of adrenalizing to wake us up a bit looked at each other for the answer to what was going on.

That’s when Sam wrestled his father to the ground. The rest of the scene that was playing out now was about to be even weirder than the first part. Sam would then march his father up those same stairs he just stormed down and up to his parent’s room. Then Sam started in on his father, yelling a lecture to him about respecting the guests in their home. We heard no reply from his father. Keith and I were just in a state of shock over the event and then started uncontrollably laughing due to the absurdity of the situation. This is Illuminati the game of world domination and conspiracy.

The game stayed with us for years, the company that ran it tried to migrate it to the collectible card game style in the mid to late 90s, and we had some of those cards, but the best version was always just the base game. Somewhere along the line though, probably when I moved to San Diego, I lost the original game. Luckily around a decade later I would get a newer printing of the base game and was able to introduce it to a whole new group of friends.

Eight grade, Sam’s house, the SNES, Street Fighter, thing after thing after thing, it was a busy time and still I haven’t tackled the biggest change of all, The Almighty PC.

The Personal Computer (PC). 1992. Where to begin? Sam, as I said was Keith and Chris K.’s friend initially, they knew him through that weird parental grapevine of University of California at Santa Cruz (UCSC) parents that all seemed to be in Davis with kids around the same age. I knew nothing of Sam until the eighth grade. Chris M. though had been over to his place a few times before I was introduced to the “scene” there. It was through Chris M. that I started getting the sales pitch to come over on the weekend. Chris M. told tales of our console games being so much more different on a PC, which he knew because this friend Sam had his own PC in his bedroom.

The other hard sell for Sam’s House that both Chrises were pitching to me was the amount of freedom there was to play these games as in little to no parental guidance on play time and the like. I figured that Sam’s mother must have had my mother’s philosophy of, if the boys are here and being dumb, they aren’t out committing crimes. But once I agreed to go over one Friday night I was about to learn, accommodating the boys at Sam’s house was more of an extreme than some motherly philosophy to not have to post bail.

By extreme I mean, there wasn’t much in the way of law and order there. Large groups of us would go over, spend the night, play on his computer, which at that time was a novelty, or do whatever all hours of the day and deep into the night. Whilst his mother would just bring us piles of whatever we seemed to desire to eat, no questions asked, no set dinner time, just mayhem. For a thirteen- to fourteen-year-old boy group this was beautiful mayhem though. Of course, we tested this and found we could almost burn down house and home and get ice cream.

Sam himself was sometimes unfriendly and aggressive, it was strange, his behavior was tolerated mainly for the no rules clause. It was oddly antagonistic towards the friends he had over sometimes. I could theorize he thought everyone was taking advantage of the situation, but it seemed Sam was the catalyst for a lot of what was going on, so I think it was just a weird socialization issue. He wasn’t always that way, but as I said with Keith, He would have Keith over, then revel in making Keith miserable. It was, like I said strange.

But anyway, it was at Sam’s house we were introduced to the PC and the world of DOS gaming. Broadly generally. I mean the TI/99 did allow one to program in basic. Also I think in 1990 Dad brought home a black and white Macintosh. I at the time was pretty excited and set it up in my room. It took about a day for me not to be excited. Being able to word process and make line drawings in black and white didn’t seem as cool as the TI or NES which could play color video games and didn’t suck to use.

So Sam’s was the first PC meaning IBM style computer. Which at this point meant a DOS machine. For anyone note old enough to know what DOS is, it was a PC operating system (OS) before the days that everyone had a graphic based OS like Windows. It wasn’t the only, in fact a version of Windows existed at the time along with some others, but it was the standard I guess is the best way to put it.

Instead of icons and graphics, DOS made you load and search for programs with a command prompt, which meant a lot of typing in line commands to execute programs or look through directories for the programs. While that sounds exhausting, to do it was actually pretty clean and forced us to learn how the software functioned to some extent in order to play it. Which added a layer almost of fun to the games.

The video game selling point to get me there that first time was that he had SimCity for the PC, which was supposedly different than the version we had all fallen in love with at home on the Super Nintendo (SNES). So, on some random weekend I think Chris M. and I got a ride from my parents over to his house to play some SimCity.

While that was the entry point, some snags came up in the plan. The first major one for me was that Sam couldn’t locate the copy protection for SimCity. This was a sort of dark burgundy piece of paper with black printing that had a series of codes one had to match up with a prompt in the game or you couldn’t play. It was what is now an archaic style of copy protection, to stop would be pirates from simply copying the files of a game on PC and putting it on another. This sort of dampened my mood, however Sam had another game that everyone seemed to be interested in as well.

So, we quickly switched our focus this newly discovered game on his PC, Civilization (Civ). Civ would leech our time like no other game had to this point and admittedly maybe like no other game since. I said there was won more great game to come. What is Civ then? Well SimCity was a game we loved that let you be the mayor of your own city. You managed and controlled what was built in the town, it also let you unleash disasters upon your poor little citizens too. It simulated a city, controlling the disasters made you simulate being the divine as well on your simulated townsfolk. This gave you a balance between being all powerful and still simulating a person with a lot of power that had some rules to adhere too. Civ was the next step up in this simulation that almost made you feel like a Deity but grounded you in the real world of city management genre.

Civ took some of what SimCity was, you could manage some of the buildings that were built in a city you founded, but then scaled up to the World stage. You would settle a city, help cultivate the farmlands, build Churches and Banks in the City, then send settlers and military personal out of the city to go settle or conquer other lands. The whole while you would fund your more science minded citizens in developing new technologies so that when your cities grew you could handle the larger populations, and of course so you had an advantage when those military units ventured out of the safety of their home city. The game only ended, if you wanted it too, with complete world domination.

One of the first weekends I got to play the game, Chris M. and I stayed up all night playing the game, in lovely sixteen color EGA graphics. The one downside of Sam’s PC was that his monitor didn’t support the larger 256 color pallet that was cutting edge at the time. The consoles and arcades of the time could display more so Chris M. and I weren’t so sold on only sixteen, but it was what we had. Our game, that weekend, ended when the Egyptians started lobbing nukes around to display their power, some thirty or so hours after we started the game. We lost and we didn’t care. That defeat was just as fun for us as winning. What did care however, were my eyes. I got home that weekend on no sleep, staring at those sixteen-color graphics and saw irrigated farmlands and dirt roads overlaid on everything else in real life, Civ was with me even after leaving Sam’s. It took a good day for my eyes to heal, and coupled with the sleep deprivation made me feel off the rest of the weekend, good times.

Good times, really though. Staying up all night playing games up until pretty much this time period of the beginning of the SNES era hadn’t ever been a thing. And there is something ethereally pleasing about finding an amazing simulation game for the first time with a friend when you’re young and then playing it to the point of exhaustion. To this weird point when the next day you fall asleep and it dominated your dreams, not because you want to play it, but because its all your mind knows for a little bit. You don’t get a lot of points of discovery like that in life. And when you’re like thirteen/fourteen seems to be one of those windows in life were you can even be allotted to do so with a friend or two. We have now in a short period off the back of Super Mario World for the SNES found SimCity, FF4 and Civ. Our sleep patterns will be ruined for years.

Eventually we would get better at the game, and as much as we enjoyed the lawlessness of Sam’s house, it was sometimes a bit much. But as luck would have it, this PC thing Sam had wasn’t as much as a novelty as it seemed initially. Sam’s parents were just the first to get one. PCs were becoming an eventuality.

My mother, being a slight technophile, whether motivated by how much we all talked about it, or my older brothers talking about how great PCs were, would buy the first PC for the L street house, a 386sx, under the idea it was for running her piano lesson business. Solely running it as a business computer wouldn’t last long.

image 30 An early weak start to a game of original Civ.

The first thing we pirated over and installed on Mom’s new PC was Civ. Two floppy disks are all it took to move everything from Sam’s house to my mom’s office. Now here one may say, stop Ryan, you rambled on about SimCity and weird pieces of paper that stopped people from doing said pirating acts. You’re right, Civ did have a copy protection to it. However instead of a hard to photocopy sheet of paper with codes on it, Civ tested you on the in game icons for the various sciences one could learn in the game. For example, you would see the graphic that represented he Steam Engine science. If you could recognize that and knew your in-game technology tree well enough, you could answer the copy protection question. Thus, by the time we were pirating copies around all us kids had the tech tree memorized causing the copy protection to be null for us.

Once installed arguments over who turn it was on the PC would become a regular occurrence. My mom slightly unhappy her computer was becoming another video game box with the kids and well, Dad, wanting another chance to conquer the world in Civ. Began to become susceptible to a new idea. So, it wasn’t too much longer until I convinced Mom of the sure-fire bonus of just getting me my own computer and freeing hers up for work. (Dad would still use hers for the game after anyway). And so, my 386dx PC was purchased, a slightly faster model than mother’s and a computer desk along with it, which would become part of our house for a long time. It’s funny how the computer desk ended up sticking around way longer than the PC but was bought as a afterthought need since we didn’t have computer desks at that time.

With all that gaming still was a focus on the PC. When doing my initial word document write up I separated gaming into different “eras”. This makes sense, games and gaming console’s are widely categorized by “generations”, so it makes sense to bunch years up.

This becomes harder however with the PC and once I started dividing things up by year. So, when I start talking about PC games I might jump around a lot. That bore in mind, there are kind of PC eras. My first PC, which I felt like I had forever, the 386, I think really was only the main PC from 91 into 93. Not that long at all for the 386, but it covered the discovery period of the PC which probably attributes to why I think this period was so rich.

It got to, run the first BBS, install the big legacy games like SimCity and Civilization, play with all the Operating Systems available during that time. Its small reign seemed like a long time since everything with it was a first. However, I would upgrade to a Pentium machine I think summer of 1993, maybe earlier, I just remember it was before Chris M.’s growth spurt thanks to an odd memory of Chris M. coming with Mom and I too T and D computers to get my new computer and Mom talking about how Chris could fit into my shoes, so some day he is bound to grow into his feet.

I’ll detour here for just a second to also place that we seem the FF4 story from Christmas of 1993, this story from the summer of Chris coming to the computer store to get the new PC with me and Mom. Him wearing a pair of shoes Dad brough home from the thrift store for me. This in here was the general point when Chris M. went from just friend that came around to being welcomed into the family. It was never something that was like drawn attention to, just somewhere along the line of all this eighth grade stuff and new computers and new video games, just happened, at least from our end, oddly I don’t think I have ever asked Chris specifically about it, but seeing as how in the 80s mom’s student Jaime did a similar thing this wasn’t abnormal for our family and even at fourteen I was completely trained to accept it.

I think that stands to my parent’s legacy of not letting prejudice make them judgmental. I mean prejudice in the actual definition of pre-judging something. They were both very devout in their religion, which to Mormonism’s credit is very charitable. However in practice, I noticed while growing up, was full of very judgmental individuals. So the pressure from their peers, while maybe not direct would have been there to not take in Ryan’s weird stray heathen friends. That to boot they never as far as I know used the open door to try and convince them to become Mormons. Which I think speaks volumes on them as people, we didn’t accept the boys we did as family for some divine reason or for morality points. Mom and Dad did it because in that situation it was what it was and we just moved forward. Us boys did and said a lot of things that weren’t in line with Mom and Dad’s life paradigm and it didn’t matter, my shoes were Chris’s shoes even if they had to ignore us cussing about how the damn computer cheated us in a game of Civ.

That next computer I can remember, for one it was a much larger tower (housing) than the 386 and because two it would house my first large hard drive in 1994. However, that computer’s time disappeared by 1998 because on my website from that time I have a listing for a different box, named NAT listed, which is a p2 300Mhz, and I know the original Pentium was 100mhz. So even though my memory says I ran with the same computer for large swaths of time, 92 really thought 98, I had three computers. I think Mom went through two, and I might be mistaken but I am guessing my P100 ended up being Dad’s first civilization PC.

In six years though that is five PCs purchased for the L street house. That is intense. Too boot in 1994 we got a laptop to go traveling with us to Europe. If we count that guy in a six-year span that is one new PC every year. My current personal use laptop I have had for twelve years as of writing this paragraph. That is a lot of PC, and it will be a lot of change. From DOS and the BBS to Windows 98 and Netscape Navigator. If ever there was a rapid development and change in this field it’s hard to not look at this window.

The exact day I started this journey is unknown. Sam’s, Mom’s late 1991 maybe. I just figure that my 386 was probably February 92, since a computer for my birthday makes some sense. It would make sense for me to lobby Mom and Dad for it around then.

Anyway, the games that shaped us, we have Civ, but let’s do this like the SNES which was super impactful at the same time. PC games (era) 1991 until the end of time. Expect some big time jumps.

While not an era of its own the PC would be the sidekick to every console going forward from the SNES era with my original 386. While we had a history of where we started with games and how they led to the birth of Sarlacc Software, gaming on the PC has its own world to follow as well.

image 55 SimCity 2000 and Might and Magic World of Xeen

Let’s start by walking back to SimCity. The original, introduced to us through the SNES version followed closely by Sam’s PC version was a hit. The Chrises vying for save space on the SNES and so on that I have already covered as an example of how. The game was a test of time standard. Other games would have their moment, but SimCity was a game one could always go back to and have a similar fun experience on. So, we moved from 1992 to 1993 more and more information was coming out about the sequel, SimCity 2000 (the future!).

In all honesty SimCity 2000 may have been the first game I ever had on any sort of pre-launch watch. Back in the late 80s and early 90s getting pre-launch game information was hard. Usually, you would just get a small magazine write up, a screen shot, and a release date. From that little bit you would have to decide if you cared or not about the new game. I think that is what helped fuel sequel culture, you could make more speculations if you had a frame of reference for the game, so it was easier to advertise in the non-internet days a new version of a classic title than a new title with no reference. Oddly though it seems more unique titles came from this era than now where sequels and spin offs to the same titles are super normal. And that is even though one can go over game development step by step with high-speed internet. Oh well.

For a PC launch though SimCity 2000 (SC2K) was maybe the first title on the PC that one rushed to the store to attain. The big thing with this title is it lived up to the external hype and really was just a superior version in every way to the original, which was a classic and fun. Adding the isometric angle to the town made the cities look more realistic, and what would be short comings now, like not being able to build on inclines and so on, were just not a big deal when going from a 2d top-down perspective to the isometric fake 3d space.

So, the world the of the L street house migrated to SC2k and never looked back. It would take six years for the next title in the lineup to come out. In that time, I was able to pick up what they (Maxis) called the urban renewal kit. Which let you design your own buildings to plug into the game. Now with a little elbow grease you could really have those skyscrapers you desired. The game held itself afloat through upgrading to the world of polygons in the PSX era. One could always just sit down and build a city for a few hours and then come back to it a couple months later and be fine.

This though also demonstrates the issue with grand SimCity memories, unlike other games that have single player campaigns with big moments that can happen during piano recitals and the like. SC2k and then in 1999 SimCity 3000 (SC3K), its sequel, where just an even experience of city building. After the training from the original game, the basics of urban planning were ingrained in one’s mind. So a metropolis from one generation to the next, while fun to play, are also in memorandum indistinguishable. Somewhere along the line you could import your characters from The Sims, a life simulator made by the same Wil Wright that made the original SimCity, into your city and watch them walk around. That could have been either SC3k or the next game SimCity 4. But while the graphics got better the basic city planning stayed the same.

And as far as fun factor this was a good thing. Sure each new version had more features but they never ruined the core game play that was what made the game, well fun. It seemed someone understood at the end of the day you wanted to sit at your desk and build your monstrous metropolis and fuel that part of your brain that is a megalomaniac.

The big change in 2003 with SimCity4 (SC4) was that was the first time they started shrinking the area your city could take up. I have never researched if this was a resource saving device, in other words all the new A.I. and features needed smaller cities to be able to not slog older computers, or if someone at the development level lost sight of what made SimCity fun. While SC4 is a great game, just that little flaw showed the massive flaws that would kill one of the greatest franchises when they botched the last title in the lineup, that of course didn’t come out until a decade after this one and has since had to send people to other studios to try and recapture the magic of city building and urban planning as a video game.

That game, which should have been SimCity 5, was just titled SimCity and was probably brainstormed by a table full of people looking at other popular video games of the time and trying to figure out how they mash their city simulation into a world that was getting dominated by online RPGs and multiplayer shooters. Which SimCity is not, and so they shot their wad and missed devastatingly badly.

Considering that this was like the game Civilization’s little brother, not having an active fun SimCity title anymore is kind of a sad thing. Some of the games I’ve mentioned so far seem to have a real impact on growing up, and in the 2020’s still. Mario isn’t slowing down, Tomb Raider got re-worked, Final Fantasy 14 is knocking on WoW’s door lately, Street Fighter still has a presence even though arcades are completely dead, Civilization is still the master of its genre, yet SimCity a game Chris M. or Karl or even my brothers or Dad would sit down and play only has clones now. Sure, I don’t have any post SNES SimCity reflective moments, but SC2k and on were more of a game to play in the downtime of life and are like the grilled cheese sandwich of leisure time, always good, never memorable. City Skylines is a great game, but our first love was always SimCity, and it is depression she is a crack whore in a ditch somewhere now.

While on the video game history of the L street house I should now double back as well to Civilization.  The original lasted us from 1991 until 1996. So basically, almost the entire Junior and Senior High experience. Starting with Chris M and I running into the nuke happy Egyptians at Sam’s house, so many great nations would rise and fall during that time. Near the end of the original games run I remember Dad even using sick days from work after all night sessions of world domination. So, the prospect of a newer bigger version of the game was exciting.

Civilization II (Civ2) worked. It also took a second to get comfortable with. The change to the isometric view was oddly jarring after years of the top-down board game style that had been burned into the back of our retina.  However, the newer additions all flowed strongly through the new game. To add, eventually finding out I could custom add units so the game had more late game stuff really opened up another can of worms.

The disappointment however still lay in that the flight to Alpha Centari was the end of the game. This would feed into buying all the other Civ style games that came out in the next few years. In 1999 a title Civilization Call to Power finally explored using your tech to settle the space colony. Had this competing version hit a couple years earlier, maybe Civ2 wouldn’t have felt as familiar and like the norm for that era.

In late 2001 we would get Civilization III (Civ3), although still not thinking about playing beyond the space race for other world colonization, this game sort of definitively dropped all the earlier generations games off our map. For my second stop at living at the L street house, this was the Civ game Dad and I would play. This version would introduce the multiplayer disk as well and I think the full version of the game would be what dad would get on his first and only Dad only PC, thus making it the last Civ game he would play.

Weird that through life we get these big hobbies, baseball cards, video gaming, etc. And still for those that come after us there is that statement. This was his last. Reflection is a strange thing, the Christmas we got dad his little black PC that had some free version of Linux on it I had to install windows over so he could play Civ 3 was never bought thinking this PC and game would last the rest of his life, but it was. I want that stickered up computer but I fear it lost to donation of electronics recycling.

The fourth game would come out before I left home, but admittedly most of my recollection of that game comes from getting it on the cheap years later. By the time it came out a few things happened, One, I was in the WoW era, Two, Dad didn’t want to learn any of the new design features or get used to anything new about it. His Alzheimer’s was getting to him a bit, and he was Familiar with Civ3 and could play it without much thought. Even though Mom and I though the new fourth title would get him to exercise his mind and bit since he loved the titles so much, instead he just got frustrated and went back to Civ3 indefinitely.

Years later visiting Mom and Dad in their new digs outside of California I bought Civ5. Aesthetically it’s probably the nicest looking of the franchise. While visiting them I played the game at night, and unlike SimCity 5, this game seemed to once again be a nice upgrade the core game I loved. Heck here in 2011 I could still find fun in the original Civ, which I still do on occasion. Civ5 is all that fun but expanded.

Surprisingly it would be visiting Mom again in 2019 that would get me to finally upgrade to Civ 6. The story of my PC gaming though during the 10s is going to be pushed back to when I start that section. But I dud keep up with Civ6 eventually and still play it and have fun with the game thirty years later. They did change some mechanics in the sixth title, but not so much that it’s a different game. Which makes it fun and also has me wander back to Civ5 and the original when I want more familiar game play.

When the future brings us more on this front I will happily add to this part. Luckily in the pantheon of games from 92 Civilization is still going strong, so far 50 percent, not too bad. Final Fantasy will fair better I think too, but I don’t think of it as a PC title, even though one could eventually see it that way.

Onto new things though. The Might and Magic franchise would be another PC series of games that would get play. Initially an RPG with stats more in line with Dungeons and Dragons, The CD-ROM version of the fourth and fifth titles called the The World of Xeen was one of the more exciting titles. The fourth game, Clouds of Xeen, allowed you to create a party and travel the world of Xeen. But as you travelled there were strange things afoot one couldn’t figure out. Upon beating the game, you would find out there was a larger overlord hiding on the “darkside” of Xeen.

Then, a year later the fifth game was the Darkside of Xeen. You could take your party from the previous title and move them though those odd buildings that seemed to do nothing before and enter a whole new game with a whole mirror world. Then as CD-ROM’s became more common, they just released the copy I legitimately bought which was The World of Xeen. With all the adventures included. It was Tom that introduced me to the fourth title so I have him to thank for those adventures, but it was an offshoot of the Might and Magic main narrative that would be the another big title for the franchise at the L street House.

Heroes of Might and Magic was a turn-based strategy game based on the worlds of Might and Magic. Based I think loosely on the King’s Bounty game that the two Chrises once raved about at Sam’s house. Maybe even published by the same company, I need to research the title a bit still. But here we got another strategy game on the PC, that checks a lot of boxes. This one with a fantasy theme as to make it distinct from others, extra points.

Another blockbuster title during the 90s on the PC was the X-Wing series from Lucasarts. The first titled X-Wing. Look here a Star Wars game on the PC. It was a space flight simulator that was also a dogfighter. You could to learn how to pilot a rebel ship from the Original Star Wars Trilogy. Then one you got the controls of the ship down, the game was mission based and you well, dogfought in space with the empire.

I would always go for the A-wing, it was my ship. This game was fun and was a catlyast for buying a game throttle. Between the throttle and the keyboard commands that operated the on board switches it didn’t just feel like you shooter, it was immersive and you were a rebel pilot.

Then to follow up that, its sequel was called Tie-Fighter, where you got to play the imperial pilots instead. A Star Wars game were you were the bad guys. Oh how I couldn’t wait for this title. I remember in Germany in 1994 seeing the intro video for the soon to be launched game playing in a store window. Animations of the emperor, this was a must have.

This was another time in the 90s when a sequel didn’t disappoint. And now learning all the Tie-fighters would go on. I ended up with the Tie-Defender I think as my main ship, because it was one of the only models with shields if I recall, and shield manipulation was pretty awesome and helped a lot.

Then 90s Lucasarts which was just a spectacular company at the time, did the unthinkably cool, the third title was X-wing vs. Tie Fighter. All of the first two games into another series of adventures in outer space. I want to rant on about it, but these games were to immersion into Star Wars what Civ was to immersion into megalomania. At this time in the world it felt like nothing could be more accurate to space warfare than these games.

image 56 Day of the Tentacle and X-wing vs Tie Fighter game art.

Speaking of 90s Lucasarts just being a house of hits, lets stick around Tie-Fighter time. Marty’s job in the summer of 1994 led to something more than just developing a taste for talk radio. Someone must have had an influence on game titles as well. While that summer I was extremely excited about the game Tie Fighter coming out, I had missed out on a game that had been around for a while, Day of the Tentacle, a adventure title from Lucasarts. But someone was whispering titles in the ear of Marty, so at the tail end of the summer when I got back from all the summer trips that year, for one of the only times every Marty and I sat down and just played an adventure game to completion.

This was an oddity and sticks out since Marty was always more into competitive content he could try to prove superiority in. For years at this point most of the time was spent with Street Fighter II, or the occasional Madden games and, later on in life, games like Goldeneye would consume the group time with Marty. But very rarely would he do single player stuff at my house, where as Chris M. ingested almost all the games that came through single player and beyond. Different brothers, different tastes, I guess.

But then there was Day of the Tentacle (DoTT). Here we were traveling through time with the chrono-johns trying to save the world for the tyrannical rule of the evil purple tentacle. For as much time was spent this part of life at home with large groups, this was an odd moment of what most kids did with their friends. Not as much skylight chaos, more someone has a computer that can run this game lets work as a team and see the story a nice break in the pattern. Fun game, worth checking out all these years later I would say.

Now as the years of high school would go by all these things blended into what made those years so fun and sparks the nostalgia demon later on in life. Hearing old SNES music from the Final Fantasy games can remind me of what it was like back then. I can’t see any clip from DoTT on a YouTube video and not remember sitting in my room one weekend with Marty as we marched through the contents of the game. The things around the story helped shape the way they are remembered. DoTT oddly helped shape the way I would sympathize for Marty the way other friends did not. Funny getting to legitimately hang out and do something gives a better vibe than doing SF2, where we would remember the E.Honda campaign. Marty was a good kid at heart he just let that competitive nature work against him with some of our mutual friends.

Look there were a lot of SimCity type games, other great adventure games, Return to Monkey Island comes to mind. But these are the titles I instantly remember from the 90s. Even though some run on for the rest of time. Even though PC gaming is a huge deal, it has to share time with the console and the fact that the PC was going to become my teenage job as well. So even though we played a lot of stuff like Doom as well, that was oddly less impactful. I’ll get to some of the games in their right year anyway.

So, while not entirely 1992 here and just eighth grade, this is that general window. When I first started writing I started in 1994 which I few as they most landmark year of my childhood. What I didn’t realize was how ridiculously impactful this window was as well. This may be the first “in retrospect” moment working on my own personal history. So much has gone on here that I never think of this as just this little period of time and think of them as almost separate timelines. I’m baffled to realize when I am dodging detention, I am also trying to make a software company with Marty. If this is any indication of the way things are headed 1993 seems daunting to sew together.