Gift: Packard Bell Computer (1996)

Finally, redemption for all the video gaming misfortunes I’d suffered over the years. I pretended that I wanted a new computer for the educational elements, because I could get online and interact with friends, or so my family could finally get ahead of the technological curve. Those were all valid concerns, but they weren’t even close to the real reason. The mid 90s was the absolute zenith of PC gaming, and I wanted to be able to play games so advanced they put even the upcoming Nintendo 64 to shame. More than anything in the world I longed to get rid of our archaic 286 computer and finally use a computer that could run games that were the envy of my friends.

I had been buying PC games for several years even though my computer had no hope of running them. They were so much more interesting and complex then Nintendo and Sega games (at that time), with big giant boxes and long instruction manuals that talked about the game world as much as how to play the game. Some even included maps and charts and other goodies that made things even more fun. But I had no way of playing them.

My family was never very tech savvy, and they refused to understand the need for a computer that could actually connect to the internet and interact with the modern world. It wasn’t until 1996 when I finally sensed my wisdom was getting though, and so by the time Christmas rolled around I was fully expecting a new computer. If I hadn’t gotten a new computer, I would have probably just taken up a sport or started dating or something—it’s incredibly difficult to be a successful nerd without a good computer. Fortunately we’ll never have know what my life would have been like had I gone down that road. For on Christmas of 1996 I became the proud owner of a new Packard Bell 200 MHZ Pentium computer. Pentium, people. That’s like a million times better than a 486.
The first game I installed was Tie Fighter, part of a “Star Wars Collection” I got that included six Star Wars games of massively varying quality, from the ludicrously awesome Tie Fighter to the abysmal Rebel Assault. Star Wars was big again at that time—the Special Editions were about to come out, and the games and novels had been coming out in force for a few years. Tie Fighter gets my vote for being the best Star Wars related product ever, movies included. Nothing for me quite captures the spirit of what those movies were all about than Tie Fighter. Before the prequels Star Wars was a crazy gritty world of heroes and scoundrels, but the best thing about Tie Fighter was that you were just an average Joe imperial pilot trying to make his way in the Empire. In addition to being a great game Tie Fighter was the quintessential pre-prequel Star Wars experience.


I had also had King’s Quest VI laying around the house for a long time, an even older game that I nevertheless experienced for the first time on Christmas of 1996. Adventure games are long dead, despite occasional articles about a “renaissance” that never quite materializes, but back in the mid 90s they were still a viable genre, and some of the best ever, like Gabriel Knight II and Grim Fandango were just coming out. King’s Quest VI was from 1992, but it felt as fresh then as any new game, and indeed it remains one of the best Sierra adventure games ever made (good future topic: Sierra adventure games.) The backgrounds are beautiful, the characters are rich, and the game has so many memorable moments, from the very first moment you wake up on the beach to the climactic journey through the Land of the Dead. The production values and ambition were greater than anything I’d ever seen on Nintendo and Sega, and the game was from 1992!

Of course, the real highlight of that Christmas was a game I’d been fantasizing about for months. I rushed out with my Christmas money to buy it the second Wal-Mart opened up, and I don’t think a year has gone by where I didn’t play it at least once ever since: Daggerfall. Daggerfall is too huge a phenomenon for me to skim over here—it requires its own discussion. Suffice to say it was the most expansive, in depth, and atmospheric RPG I had ever played, and it really opened my eyes to what a computer game could be. I had infinitely more fun reading the Daggerfall instruction manual than I ever had with the Sega 32X.
There were so many other great games, and I got to play them all in one big burst during the first few months of 1997—Warcraft, Warcraft II, Diablo, Phantasmagoria (not great so much as memorable), Under A Killing Moon, the Pandora Directive, Ultima Online, and about a dozen more. I could spend days talking about any of these games, but I’ll refrain from that for now, since this was supposed to be about my introduction to the computer age. In addition to games there was also the world of AOL. Those years were the golden age of AIM conversations and online shenanigans—programs that could force people offline, internet romances, and personal geocities websites. Just the existence of the internet was a novelty—when I discovered that the cover of one of my favorite novels was online, I printed it out just because I could.

These days a computer is really just for the internet. There are still a few great games, but most of them have moved on to the Xbox 360 or the PS3. There are no more giant boxes filled with 120 page manuals and great junk—today computer games are just console games with inferior controls and difficult installations. But back in 1996 a good computer game was the height of interactive entertainment. That was the last Christmas where I really had that old childlike sense of excitement. How could I not? After fantasizing about playing all those computer games for years, I got them all literally overnight. A Christmas where you get to play King’s Quest VI and Tie Fighter for the first time on the same day is a Christmas indeed.