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Comment by jmkd | Hacker News Reader

Forklifts were a highlight for me.

When you took Ryu to the arcade to play Space Harrier etc there's a well-established if indirect teasing of the fourth wall. After spending in-game money to beat your in-game (in-game) high score, you begin to ask yourself what on earth you are doing.

When Ryu gets the job as the forklift driver this same question leads directly to a beautifully uncomfortable awareness of your self, and of your quest, and of Ryu's.

I don't like the way this writer put it, but the forklifts were at least evolutionary.

They follow a path set by some early 80s job-simulator games[1], but perhaps most memorably by 1995's unreleased Desert Bus by Penn & Teller for the 3DO [2].

[1] https://www.digitiser2000.com/main-page/10-mundane-jobs-that... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penn_%26_Teller%27s_Smoke_and_...

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A more apt comparison is probably 1999's Tokyo Bus Guide for Dreamcast. The developers of both games were probably aware of each other.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBxFiNxdso4

That's more like the many Japanese train-driving games.

Tokyo Bus Guide is my favorite Dreamcast game.

It requires intense focus. A single mistake 15 minutes into a course will result in a game over (small mistakes like going out of the lane or forgetting to signal the next stop will deduct points, but if you even tap another car then that's it). You have to find the perfect level of pressure to apply to the analog trigger to get the bus at the correct speed. I find it meditative in a way that resembles when I work on something that requires very precise and fine movement, like soldering or fine woodworking. A course might take 20 minutes to complete, but time seems to pass in an instant, and when it's done I feel incredibly relaxed.

I highly recommend it, at least to try once!

Sounds like an action packed version of Train Simulator.

Or Morrorwind if you get through reading the 36 Lessons of Vivec in game.

https://fallingawkwardly.wordpress.com/2010/08/29/the-metaph...

Speaking of Morrowind, one of the things I liked in the extremely long oral history just published the other day ( https://www.polygon.com/2019/3/27/18281082/elder-scrolls-mor... ) was that the Vivec sermons, among other things, are all conflicting and rival accounts because the dev team itself was internally divided and rooting for particular factions:

"It’s never dogmatic. We would tell the stories basically from a character’s point of view, and we were always very careful that anything that was presented was told from that specific viewpoint. So you had conflicting notions of what went on in the world: “What happened to the Dwemer?” Well, one group says this; another says that. “What happened in Red Mountain?”

What was great about that is you would actually have factions develop on the design team: “Vivec and his buddies were actually the bad guys, and they usurped their power.” And, you know, “Dagoth Ur — our main villain — he was the victim in all this.” You had the room to do that back-and-forth. So, whenever we would present any history, it was never quite like, “Well, the dwarves disappeared because of the following reasons.” Each race has their version. What’s the truth?

And that’s kind of the magic of it all."

I was wracking my brain trying to think of early '80s job-simulator games, mostly because there aren't many at all. I'm not sure that I'd class Trashman, Paperboy or Tapper (fond of all 3 btw) as job-simulators. Other than driving and flightsims, I can't think of any from the early '80s :) Late '80s perhaps.

You're probably right.

Over time I conflate the concepts found in games like Skool Daze, Make a Chip, My Name is Uncle Groucho, Software Star, Grand National and suchlike that brought together semi-prosaic simulation tasks with a startling self-awareness.

TLL was way ahead of its time, IMHO. Fast forward 10 years and Desert Strike is a hit on the Megadrive! I can vaguely remember proper flightsims on the Speccy (one required a lens-lock! remember those?) :) This is going to bug me now - I'm going to be sat here all evening trying to think up games from back in the day!

> (one required a lens-lock! remember those?) :) This is going to bug me now

That would probably be Tomahawk by Digital Integration

Hmm, ACE - Air Combat Emulator was apparently lenslok'ed too.

Star Trader from '74 seems to be the inspiration for Trade Wars and Drugwars of '84―they're essentially ‘grind simulators’ with the player looking at sheets of numbers for a lot of the time. However, the apex of popularity of such games was likely in the early-mid 90s when office drones apparently sought to get their minds off the grind with a different grind, and countless knock-offs appeared for DOS.

Still, this ‘spreadsheet’ gameplay is rather different from box stacking. Some Game & Watch titles might be closer.

I always took Tradewars and [Barren|Solar] Realms Elite to be descendents of Lemonade Stand, 1973.

If there's an earlier instance in the genre, I don't know it.

Huh, Lemonade Stand does look closer to the static reports of Drugwars clones.

However, Chris Sherrick apparently specifically modeled Trade Wars on Star Trader—according to Wikipedia. And, if those Realm Elites are anything like the other Elite, they should also involve travel like Star Trader and unlike, fittingly, the Stand.

Loved Trade Wars, it feels like at least once or twice a year I'll find a BBS that has it installed and play around. Aurora 4X is definitely a descendant of this spreadsheet simulator genre. That's a great game, but I wish there was more variety in the genre for wanna-be beancounters.

Right, the 3 you mention are largely mechanically identical to shooters.

Earliest thing I can think of that is even close is Alter Ego which was '86, though I'm sure there are some job-simulator games in basic code in a magazine somewhere.

Somewhat off-topic, but searching for something older than Alter Ego turned up "Little Computer People" which Wikipedia lists as the Ur-example of "life simulation" and looks a lot like "The Sims" but on the C64.

Yeah, the 3 mentioned are listed in the link in the article. Agree about Little Computer People. As a speccy owner, I can vaguely remember being envious at the time!

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