You Never Forget

"Nostalgia isn't what it used to be."-- Peter de Vries

In a burst of eco-insanity muddled with a realization that my waistline isn't getting any smaller, I decided that it was time to get off my duff. So I bought my son's unused bike from him and took it down to be tuned. I used to love riding my bike, and this was a nice touring machine that just needed some TLC. When I went to pick it up, I decided I wasn't getting any younger. I threw a leg over it and coasted down the parking lot with nothing but gravity and my rusty sense of balance keeping me upright as I struggled with the unmarked, Japanese shift levers.

The lady who owns the shop shouted after me, "Don't worry! You never forget!"

She's right, but only as far as she went. I hadn't forgotten what it was like to ride a bicycle. The problem was that riding a bicycle wasn't the same anymore. I'm not the same, the bike's not the same, and the world I'm riding through isn't the same. But I found that I had to do it again, just for the hope of what it used to be.

And that's not the only thing that's coming back. Once I get home, I sit down to my computer. My old Sidewinder has made a recent re-appearance, and with it an old habit.

Hit the power button on the tower. A long stabilizing breath, then ease my neck and shoulders into the chair. The hardware check beeps, then rumbles through the desk surface. My eyes idly watch the blue boxes crawl across the bottom of my screen as my right hand closes around the grip of my joystick. Left, right, up, back, then run the high-hat through the same motions. No hurry here. Just shaking it all into place. Flick the throttle lever full forward, full back and then to center. Hit all four base-buttons and pull the trigger. The screen flashes blue and I log in without even really seeing the dialog box. My background and it's dusting of screen icons burn into the lamp's shadows. Since it's a Tuesday morning and the real world's duty calls, I fight off the double-click that will take me back a thousand years into the future, stomping around a nondescript dirtball on the border of the Lyran Commonwealth.

I can't even begin to list the differences between my 10-year-old self on that beat up old Schwinn banana seat and my 40-year-old self on my Cannondale. Just as the green-lit black obelisk of my current gaming PC would run very large circles around the poor, old 286 boat anchor that ran my first ventures into the Successor States. I'm definitely not rolling the through same realm, either. I remember spending hours crunching my way along my Gramma's gravel driveway to the post-office parking lot, and then around past the back of Mr. Bergey's old truck, and then back around again. Now I've been swept into a rapidly urbanizing suburbia dotted with Starbucks and hipsters. Traffic and real sidewalks are bigger obstacles than my uncle's daffy bike-chasing dog and his loose chain.

And that world at my desk is not the same, either. I'm not in the same relationship with my PC. Concentrating on business computers and console gaming have eroded the childlike zeal I once felt for the Blue-Screen Challenge. Winning past it to even load the game used to be just Level 1 as far as I was concerned. No more. It's taken a lot of effort to bring me back this far, and the years have left me with a mostly adversarial relationship with this hardware. Just as I'm not exactly best friends with my new bike seat; there's not enough super-gel or whatever in the world to make that feel the same. And for those first few rides you feel every creak and crease Father Time has carved into you since your last ride.

Why would any sane person dig up the past like this? Why not just realize that you're different now and you do different things? Because you know if you stick with it, one day you will get a flash of what it used to be like. At some point on a sunny trip, you'll crest a gentle slope and by the bottom of it you'll be flying along effortlessly. It happened for me that first time on the way home from the shop. I had been huffing and puffing my way up this hill, then all of a sudden I was cruising along like that old combo of Evil Kneivel and Superman rolled into one with a huge grin on my face. When it all comes together it just echoes through you. And that is what you really never forget.

This is why Smith and Tinker recently announced to the gaming community at large that they'd like to build a new Mechwarrior game that sort of bore a resemblance to the old ones. They're even going to go back and use the old storyline. They don't even have a publisher, for crying out loud, and here they are announcing a AAA, multi-platform title. What are they thinking? I think they remember. They know what it felt like, and they know we do too.

They released a trailer, and it showed they knew just how to aim it. No marketing bullshots with semi-martial horn music stirring up the background. No throbbing voice over telling us what we already knew. They just powered up and dropped us in. All it took was looking up at that old familiar skull's flat, painted glare fading in through the smoke and it's designation flashing up on the HUD. Sold.

True to form, old-school PC gamers reacted like Weisman found a way to digitally distribute chocolate-covered crack. Then he sweetened the deal with the taste of the old days by promising to distribute the last game and all it's expansions for free to tide us over during the wait. They knew we'd bite, and bite hard. Just like we struck at the lure of Zork, Metroid and Monkey Island. And they hope the echoes of our longing drag our newer brethren along for the ride.

I think it was a solid business decision. They have to be hoping that collective gasp and leap of adrenaline rumbling across the wires push the guys with the money into action. And I bet the CEOs of Logitech and Thrustmaster had huge grins on their face that day. It's been a long time since anyone but the few flight-sim guys left have needed their products.

And just as I hope I can make it another mile along the bike trail tomorrow, I hope they're right. We'll have to huff and puff our way through a couple years of hard development work and the inexorable grinding of the marketing machine. We'll get a couple more trailers rippling through cyberspace to keep us turning pages in our old manuals and clogging whole forums with speculation, rumors and rules-lawyering. I'm already ready. I've found my old disks, books, maps, and joystick. I'll be waiting with one hand on the throttle for this new, old ride.

Comments

Sometimes I find myself struggling to do long division or remember basic math formulas, but I will never forget the optimal order to fight the boss robots in Mega Man 2.

Boy, I sure wish I could load up MechWarrior 2 for my Mac again. I must have played that game a dozen times.

The just the steady loping of your mech as you wandered around ten-vertex-polygon terrain was fun all by itself, as was the soundtrack. Figuring out it was easier to shoot their legs off the hit their cores, and watching 'mechs gimp around one leg was just priceless. Even in wireframe.

And Nagging Nelly for all the voicework was wonderful:
"Point two reports target destroyed."

---Nathaniel

Colleen,

I could read your stuff forever. Thanks for another outstanding contribution!

It wasn't Mechwarrior but rather Janes F-15 and Longbow2 that wore out my Sidewinder.

I am really looking forward to the new incarnation, and am likewise looking for an excuse to dust off the old joystick.

Though it seems to me that more of these games are becoming mouse-centric, to the point where it is a detriment to play with a true stick over the mouse. Case in point: Mechwarrior 4. I could aim much more accurately and hit-on-target much more quickly using a mouse than I ever could with a joystick, but I still preferred to play with the joystick out of some weird notion of fidelity to the material.

I really miss MechWarrior. My grandpa got me into it when I was 9-10 because he was a big PC gamer and I believe he still is.

HedgeWizard wrote:

I am really looking forward to the new incarnation, and am likewise looking for an excuse to dust off the old joystick.

Though it seems to me that more of these games are becoming mouse-centric, to the point where it is a detriment to play with a true stick over the mouse. Case in point: Mechwarrior 4. I could aim much more accurately and hit-on-target much more quickly using a mouse than I ever could with a joystick, but I still preferred to play with the joystick out of some weird notion of fidelity to the material.

Yes. That's why I had very little patience with MW4, compared to the technically more primitive MW2. Using a mouse wasn't as fun, but using a joystick just made the game too hard and unsatisfying.

I... I may go out today and purchase a new joystick. Something too expensive.

Dang, this makes me miss my old Sidewinder and my many hours of Tie-Fighter and X-Wing, and Flight Sim(sigh).

Great essay, thanks for sharing these thoughts. And this comes from both a cycling and Mechwarrior enthusiast.

My nostalgia for games also has to do with the people I gamed with. Star Wars: X-Wing and Mechwarrior 2 were both keystones of my college experience. My roommate had a souped-up PC capable of rendering that stuff (I had a Mac) and we'd spend hours, with us taking turns being the pilot (on the joystick) or R2 unit (on the keyboard). Mechwarrior was more of a watch-on-the-sidelines affair, but I remember the awe we felt at the opening movie. ("He's got a lock on me! He's got a ...")

There was also something particularly kinetic about Mechwarrior - the speed of the 'Mech was more in line with real walking/running than any FPS. Even now I occasionally imagine myself piloting a 'Mech when I run (maybe this says something about my form?). Does that kind of kinetic memory count as nostalgia as well? How might we feel about Portal 10 years from now?

As much as I loved the mechwarrior series, my real love was the little known Heavy Gear 2. Armoured suits about 4 meters high. Sneaking around and taking out anti-grav tanks.

I found mech warrior good for when I didn't want to have to rely purely on twitch reactions but heavy gear had that as well as stealth.

Bear wrote:

Colleen,

I could read your stuff forever. Thanks for another outstanding contribution!

It wasn't Mechwarrior but rather Janes F-15 and Longbow2 that wore out my Sidewinder. :)

The nostalgia is just too much for my aging heart too bear!

Dominic Knight wrote:

I really miss MechWarrior. My grandpa got me into it when I was 9-10 because he was a big PC gamer and I believe he still is.

Wait... what do you mean "I believe"? You have grandpa who is a GAMER and you don't hang out enough with him to know for sure?

Tsk... tsk...

Hobbes2099 wrote:
Dominic Knight wrote:

I really miss MechWarrior. My grandpa got me into it when I was 9-10 because he was a big PC gamer and I believe he still is.

Wait... what do you mean "I believe"? You have grandpa who is a GAMER and you don't hang out enough with him to know for sure?

Tsk... tsk...

We live pretty far away from my grandpa. He also played The Sims, Myst, Tomb Raiders and various other games. But I'm not sure if he still plays those games. He used to when I was really young.

The Sidewinder FFB2 is still one of the best sticks ever made. You see the price Amazon has on a new one?

It's because they are awesome.

That said, joystick's aren't exactly dying out. There's still a huge community of simmers that swear by top-quality products. I'm looking forward to the new Logitech HOTAS myself.

Mechwarrior 2 Mercenaries was simply one of the greatest games of its time. Graphics, sound effects, mission design, and gameplay were top notch, especially if you downloaded the graphic card patch. Each mech was unique and could be infinitely customized, and the game had dozens of different machines. And the story could have been made into a major motion picture: corrupt Houses squabbling among each other must unite against the greater technological threat of the invading Clans. And the music was good to boot.

The customization options were incredibly granular: you could map any function to any key, mouse, or joystick function you wanted to. I would play with a CH throttle in my left hand and a mouse in my right. The throttle would control mech speed and turning, as well as a myriad of other things including weapons switching, shut down, and other functions necessary to control the machine in battle. The mouse would control the turret and weapons firing.

And despite being a fairly linear story (excepting side missions), the game had a great sandbox element to it. You would build your mechs: ballistic weapons, ammo loads, energy weapons, heat sinks, engines, armor, and on and on until you had balanced it just right for the upcoming mission. They you'd take it into battle and see if it held up, or if you screwed up (4 heavy lasers + only two heat sinks = burnt toast). The infinite number of options in customizing mechs allowed complete freedom and creativity in executing mission plans. Unfortunately, later games restricted customization somewhat.

The flexibility allowed some crazy set ups. I'd build a 20 ton Fire Moth with the biggest engine I could fit and no weaps (no room!), and run around the map at 500 MPH, just completely running circles around the enemy mechs. They couldn't even touch me I was moving so fast. Or for the final mission I'd do 20 machine guns with 400 rounds each in a 100 ton Dire Wolf and even though I'd have to get close, the total firepower could take out ANY other mech in seconds. The trick was not to miss, or I'd run out of ammo before the mission goals were complete. That build-it-and-play-it gameplay has seldom been reproduced with the same kind level of flexibility and execution.

In the new MW, I hope the elements that made MW:M so great are kept in tact, and not dumbed down the way they were in later games.

Yeah, the Pecision Pro is a great Stick, and when I read about the upcoming sequel (or prequel?) to the MW series, I dismantled and cleaned mine. Oh I will so own you all. I thought I was excited about Diablo 3, but this is so much bigger, brings so many more fond memories of how I owned my friends with my new shiny Sidewinder 3D (midi port baby!).

And I have nightmares about the game sucking. Yeah! I want the old game back because it was better than all the others! MW3? Well, I don't want to get too technical here.... But you know, an AC20 should blow a light Mech's leg clean off, don't you think? MW4? Well, it had a nice feel to it, but you couldn't even run a lot of standard configurations, thanks to that wacky construcion system.

It's true, first we're in such a hurry to grow up, then suddenly we yearn to have the good old times back.

Why would any sane person dig up the past like this?

Can you spot the major assumption here?

I remember doing well in MW2, only to be beaten to a pulp at LANs in MW3. My sidewinder broke so I bought a desk-eating Thrustmaster number with a huge throttle lever. Not many points for realism, but mech piloting was made so much easier.
It'll be nice to take MW4 for a spin, too as I never tried it out. Although I look forward to any new installments, I don't think I could play MW games well nowadays - I'm too twitchy.

Extra points for the Dune quote.

I have two Sidewinders, and I can't plug them in: my computer doesn't have a joystick/MIDI port anymore. I am tempted to buy a soundcard just to play Freespace with one.

Thank you all for commenting. Just for the new guys, we have a specific thread on the forums here just for this game already - http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/4...

Gremlin wrote:

I have two Sidewinders, and I can't plug them in: my computer doesn't have a joystick/MIDI port anymore. I am tempted to buy a soundcard just to play Freespace with one.

I believe there's a dongle that'll let you get it hooked up to USB.

http://www.amazon.com/Belkin-F3U200-...

The only joystick I ever used was the Tandy 1000's and I enjoyed Mechwarrior (playing the demo of Mech3 at CES was cool!) but it was never really me. My nostalgic peak was realized when I played through Descent and Descent 2 again thanks to GOG.com.

Dominic Knight wrote:

I really miss MechWarrior. My grandpa got me into it when I was 9-10 because he was a big PC gamer and I believe he still is.

Seeing that trailer made me dig out my old sidewinder and my copy of MW3 and reading your sig made me want to watch Titan AE again. I'm now sitting in the middle of a pile of old pc parts watching a well worn VHS while my wife and cats look on with confused/worried expressions. Aint nostalgia grand?

With the popularity of Guitar Hero, one might think that publishers will take chances on giant peripherals for simulation games again.
Hearing about the free release of Mechwarrior 4 gets me all excited to download it and hook my Steel Battalion controller up to my PC again. Up to now, I’ve only used that colossus on my PC to play a used copy of X-Wing Vs Tie Fighter.

So, I am going to channel Andy Rooney here:

'Have you ever noticed'... even with the additional padding of age to your body that a bike seat hurts more and needs all the super gel you can find just to sit on it? I know my fat butt sure hurts more then it did 30 some years ago when I was 10.

cmitts wrote:

So, I am going to channel Andy Rooney here:

'Have you ever noticed'... even with the additional padding of age to your body that a bike seat hurts more and needs all the super gel you can find just to sit on it? I know my fat butt sure hurts more then it did 30 some years ago when I was 10. :(

Everything hurts more as you get old. That's why alcohol is reserved for adults.

I graduated from a CH Flightstick Pro - perfect for the yank and bank of XWing, to a full blown F16 Stick and TQS and RCS (throttle and rudder). You know, the one that has two sets of wires. The first runs out of compy keyboard port into TQS, then to Stick, finally to Keyboard. Then the game port is also used, albiet wired reverse of that. Years afterward I converted the stick to Digital - and now it only needs the game port. So, yes, I still have a game port on my PC. There wasn't enough new stuff on the Cougar - to allow my friends to convince me to trade in on the shiny new model. And the cougar kept losing their configs mid-flight. That has been corrected in the intervening 5 or 6 years, I suppose.

So now I need to find my old .cfg files for MW - because if I design new ones, my sub-conscious will remember the old setup, and the new will confuse me. Of course, I don't remember the old well enough to duplicate the design, only well enough to throw my gameplay off. Brains are weird.

wordsmythe wrote:
cmitts wrote:

So, I am going to channel Andy Rooney here:

'Have you ever noticed'... even with the additional padding of age to your body that a bike seat hurts more and needs all the super gel you can find just to sit on it? I know my fat butt sure hurts more then it did 30 some years ago when I was 10. :(

Everything hurts more as you get old. That's why alcohol is reserved for adults.

Yeah, don't get me started on that bike seat. The funny part is it's supposed to be designed for women, to "distribute the load", but all it seems to do is make certain that several points all around the area are as sore as my seat bones. No, I'm not going to describe it any farther than that. I don't seem to be getting used to it, either.