Ask HN: Did you grow up with adventure games and how did that affect yo? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Did you grow up with adventure games and how did that affect yo?

7 pointsHellDunkel11 comments

I grew up with sierra adventure games and these early cga/ega graphics still inspire me up to this day. it made me pursue a career in computer graphics.

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I never got into the Sierra ones, but I was familiar with some of the LucasFilm/Arts ones (Secret of Monkey Island and Loom were two of my family's early CD-ROM titles), I was deeply intrigued by Myst, and we won a copy of Star Trek: Judgement Rites from a local TV station when Star Trek: The Next Generation was ending (I always wanted A Final Unity, but never got the chance to buy it). Oh...I guess some others like Hugo's House of Horrors and "Dare to Dream", written by Cliff Bleszinski when he was 17. (and I vaguely remember an Incredible Hulk game on maybe the Apple II, that seems like it was some kind of text adventure).

I went back and played a lot more during college, especially a few of the early text adventures, more of the Lucas ones, the rest of the Myst series, The Longest Journey, and others.

I think they taught me a lot about looking for patterns, creative jokes, use of trial-and-error, and that sometimes things that are totally obvious to some people will be incredibly obscure to others. They also encouraged detail-orientation. I've ended up working as a software developer, and I sometimes wonder if early exposure to puzzle games helped encourage that.

I didn't but I grew up on a whole range of IBM-PC CGA/EGA games, most are ported bootable disks. It was sad that it did not lead me into an IT career until very late. I guess I would be much more interested if my father taught me game programming instead of competitive programming. To this day I hate pure algorithms and data structure classes (but I'm perfect fine if I need to learn it based on projects).

Some memorable games:

- Bigtop (I realized a few months ago this was a Michael Abrash game!)

- Sopwith

- Frogger

- Digger

- Alley Cat

- Moon patrol

- Jumpman

- Galaxia

- Paratroopers

- Evolution (This was one of the more interesting games where players play different life forms)

- Bushido (ninjas spawn at the edge of the room while spiders try to hit you from the top)

- Zaxxon

- Lode runner (I found out there is a level editor in it)

There are more but these are the most memorable. TBH I was bad with these action games so rarely got past first few levels. I didn't even know the shortkeys so had to try them out.

Competitive programming sounds aweful. Anything creative should be made of joy!

I'm sure many kids enjoy doing that, but I'm not one of them. There are people who do leetcode for fun and others who do not. I guess if you really love Math you will be into it. I'm not unfortunately.

I wouldn't say they were particularly instructive. You couldn't get very far without the cheatbooks. You did however imprint a playful cynicism from seeing the same snarky passages over and over again. Long live Steve Meretzky.

Having been through the gauntlet of Kings Quest / Space Quest / Monkey Island etc. I now can no longer play games without inspecting every corner and trying every possible thing in every screen. Kinda annoying in some ways. But I still run through the Sierra games with the siblings almost weekly. Too much nostalgia and bonding to let go of. No doubt has given us all an anchor to keep us in touch.

Same but it did not strike me this had to do with sierra until you mentioned it. My kids too are very curious if they see me playing an adventure- they don’t mind the blocky pixels at all.

Played the original text Colossal Cave on the school RML 380Z nearly 50Y ago! I still remember us slaying the dragon with our bare hands!

I have never been a big gaming person, but the excellent storytelling has impacted me more than anything else, especially in The Secret of Monkey Island[1] series, which truly impressed me.

Up until Monkey Island, I remember the graphics being quite mediocre (like in King's Quest). Monkey Island's graphics wowed me at the time and really boosted the immersive experience.

On the other hand, I recall playing Haunted House[2] on an Atari 2600[2] back in 1982, where the graphics consisted of white squares on a black background, and it scared us as kids.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_of_Monkey_Island

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haunted_House_(video_game)

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atari_2600

You're probably thinking of the kings quest games I-IV. KQ V which came out the same year as Monkey Island had pretty impressive hand drawn graphics, and King's Quest VI is absolutely outstanding.

> You're probably thinking of the kings quest games I-IV

You are correct. My age is showing.

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