What's your story? - Michael

Intro: Ilmari
The rest: Michael

It has been quite a long since we've received answers to our What's your story? -questions, but we were just contacted by a longtime commenter of the blog. He goes by the name Michael, but judging from his profile picture, I suspect this might just be another alias.

I knew I'd seen him somewhere!

Without further ado, Michael, the stage is yours!

My home country is…

United States of America

My age is…

44

The first adventure game I played was…

I'm not answering this... yet.  I plan to start writing a Missed Classic post about this shareware game, which, when I was 8 or so, I would play with my grandfather every time I went to visit.  He would print out the screens and tape them together (using a loud, slow dot matrix printer, of course) as his way of mapping out the land.  We never finished it, but I suspect we came pretty close.

I usually consider my first modern adventure game to be the original Police Quest.  Starting 6th grade in a new school, I met a new friend in the lunchroom the first week, and we found that we both enjoyed computers and computer games -- not exactly a common thing in rural upstate New York in 1989.  He (ahem) loaned me his copy, and we both started playing independently, comparing our progress along the way.  When he got the hint book, we shared that as well.  I didn't know it then, but that hint book was the first real introduction to the humor of Al Lowe (he wrote most of the Sierra hint books) and I would become hooked on those games for years to come.

I still play PQ1 at least once a year, even though I can solve it by heart, just because I love visiting the world that Jim Walls and Al Lowe created.

Jim Walls and Trickster both would be proud of me.

My favourite adventure game is…

I suppose PQ1 is the answer, but I've had a few other favorites throughout the years.  Other games I replay on a regular basis include LSL3, Fate of Atlantis, DOTT, and Codename: ICEMAN.  Wait, maybe not that one.

But my favorite "modern" adventure was Sanitarium.  Great graphics for the time, solid third-person adventure game features when other games were branching into hybrids of other formats.

I grew up in the woods.  Of course, I'd like a game about farming.

When I’m not playing games I like to…

The boring answers would be reading and hiking, but I spent most of the last 6 years running my own restaurant (a small coffee shop) and I run the books behind the scenes for my sister's boutique bakery.  So, I'd say running businesses is on the list too.  I sold off the coffee shop late last year (hasn't been much fun since COVID, so it's time for someone with a fresh look and energy level) so now I have time to catch up on fun again.

I like my games in (a box, digital format)…

Tough question to answer.  I prefer physical copies, but I hate the clutter and also modern computers don't want to interface that way.  So I'm okay with digital, as long as I have a backup or two.  Because I'm somewhat paranoid about losing access to something because the online game cloud went out of business, or my hard disk got fried, or...

The thing I miss about old games is…

Even when they were made by corporations, you could tell that it was still a labor of love.  Now, it's just a 9-to-5 for many game devs.  Look at what's happening to the next GTA game, it appears that they are removing many of the controversial features that defined the series and the genre, in order to simply sell a few more copies or be allowed to put the game on a Walmart shelf.  A large reason for this is that the original developers are no longer there, and the new teams don't have a personal investment in the property.

The best thing about modern games is…

Faster computers and better graphics cards have allowed for ideas that couldn't be executed before to come to life now.  Even in the classic games -- could you imagine a Grim Fandango made on systems 10 years earlier being anywhere near as enjoyable or engaging?  Look at the evolution of the GTA series.  The first game was, in ways, just a step above Spy Hunter in the arcades.  But as the technology became available and affordable, they were able to expand the world and change the viewpoint to make a better game each time over again.

Dah dah dah dah, dah dah dah dah.  Or however the theme music goes.

The one TV show I never miss is…

Nothing in recent years has grabbed my attention.  As a teen, it was Married... with Children.  A few years back, it was the period drama Halt and Catch Fire.  Now, I could watch again and again other period pieces like Downton Abbey.

If I could see any band live it would be…

Never interested me.  I think it's because I don't like people. :)

Seriously, I enjoy things more when I don't have other people's talking, laughing, or off-key singing around me.  Same for movie-going.  It's been about 9 years since I last saw a film in a theater, I think.  I don't miss it.  (It's been 25 years since the last musical concert I went to.)

My favourite movie is…

Used Cars, a black comedy released in 1980.  It came out the same week as Airplane, so it didn't get the attention or appreciation it deserved.  It was the only R rated film by Robert Zemekis, just a few years before the PG-favorite Back to the Future.  Kurt Russell, in his first post-Disney teen role, is a sleazy used car salesman who will stop at nothing to make the sale to raise money for his true ambition: to run for public office and become a sleazy politician.  Legendary actor Jack Warden plays two different parts, twin brothers, one of whom can't stand the existence of the other and does something about it.  (Fun fact: the love interest in Used Cars has a cameo in Back to the Future as the newscaster reporting the stolen nuclear parts during the opening credits.)

Trust me, $50 never killed anybody. (Or, at least, you shouldn't pay more than $20 for an adventure game.)

One interesting thing about me is…

As a teen, I created a very popular pre-internet shareware program.  It was a database of cheat codes for various games, and was titled, simply, CHEAT.  It got big enough that it was reviewed in Computer Gaming World, and one of the major pirate groups of the times (on the worldwide BBS scene) created a crack for my program.  To me, that was like a musician being parodied by Weird Al.  It means you've made it.