A Spazeroid's Return
Mar. 3rd, 2022 08:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
krpalmerNudged by a mere indirect reference, I turned back to a particular “first-person shooter” from the mid-1990s. Although I’d played Bungie’s Marathon for quite a while, I know it’s been some time too since I last really dove into its action. Replacing both the “Aleph One” open-source engine now used with the old game files and the all-in-one bundles of the original games also available, I noticed the date stamps on the old programs were from before I’d got my current computer, and it’s been around for a while itself. I suppose that disconnection had to do with starting to use wireless keyboards without numeric keypads, which had provided me Marathon’s movement keys. Intent on at least trying “the way everyone says they’re playing these sorts of games these days,” I tried out the default setup of the game bundle, which moved ahead, backed up, and sidestepped with keys on the left-hand side of the keyboard and turned left and right and looked up and down with your “pointing device.” My trackpad, though, did seem a bit too sensitive that way.
Having noticed what other control options were offered, I then plugged in a “game controller” I’d got a while ago for the sake of having, and did mention in the first post I made about this that seemed a bit easier to handle. Really getting a handle on the secondary controls that way felt like it would take a while, though, and the thought “I’ve made the point of returning just to say I have; do I really want to do anything more?” was in my mind. Then, I took one more look at the options. The “move” keys and the “turn and look” keys were on two separate subscreens, but by flipping back and forth I did manage to cluster “move, turn, and sidestep” on the right-hand side of my keyboard, more or less matching the keys I play Lode Runner with in Apple II emulation (a game I hadn’t known about “in its day,” but interesting in its own way). With that, I’d approximated “the way I’d played Marathon,” and all of a sudden I’d gone from a nostalgic glance back to intent on playing through the original game again. The bundle goes to the point of including the full “interface graphic” that reduced the size of the actual game graphics that had to be generated in real time on the Macs of the day. So far as one of them went, even with the accelerator card in my family’s LC II we did have to shrink those graphics to “quarter-size,” switch to “low resolution,” skip every other line, and turn off the floor and ceiling textures.
For all of those remembered dodges now avoided, however, a few odd thoughts of comments seen how “my high school just didn’t feel as big as it once did when I came back after so many years” came to mind early on. For a moment or two I might have pondered how many of my pastimes are rooted way back in my life and think it wouldn’t be altogether bad to actually outgrow something, but that might have been overshadowed by reminders of the recent discussion on the “Digital Antiquarian” of Doom. The post comments there had included a sigh or two how Marathon’s design in general hadn’t been as enduringly perfect as the more visceral, big-market-first game’s. In turn, that might just point straight to “and you can look in more than a few ways at ‘not using the same sort of computer as everyone else,’ and some of those ways aren’t as flattering as you might like.”
Against an awareness of how Marathon’s “shield generators” and “pattern buffers” could turn the game into “making ever-longer runs back and forth” the cautious way I play it, the familiar unpleasantness of the “exploding bugs” partway through, and recalling how to get through the more infamous puzzle-levels, though, there was that immemorial thought “it’s the story in the ‘computer terminals’ that distinguishes it.” The moment when the shipboard artificial intelligence Leela, systems garbling from alien infiltration, plays back a final “good luck...” message still seems affecting to me regardless of how entertaining another and “madder” computer Durandal is throughout and how much some people got out of all the odder details in more obscure terminals. “Artificial intelligences” are “resurrectable” in a way unfortunate civilians aren’t (regardless of how the game didn’t quite develop its “failed rescue missions” and nudged towards gruesome callousness), though, even if it’s also seemed unfortunate to me Leela was just sort of written out again in the sequels.
Returning to the game, though, did start producing arm strain. I’ve had to move my computer lately, and maybe it was just a matter of “reaching a little higher than I’m used to,” but the thought “time has passed and maybe you can’t keyboard the way you once did” is concerning in its own way. I tried to space out my play sessions, and that might have helped as I did get to the end. While still not “a good player” (much less a “network player,” although my brother played a good bit of Marathon networked in our high school’s “Mac lab” when I was in university), I can at least contemplate follow-ups both official and unofficial.
Having noticed what other control options were offered, I then plugged in a “game controller” I’d got a while ago for the sake of having, and did mention in the first post I made about this that seemed a bit easier to handle. Really getting a handle on the secondary controls that way felt like it would take a while, though, and the thought “I’ve made the point of returning just to say I have; do I really want to do anything more?” was in my mind. Then, I took one more look at the options. The “move” keys and the “turn and look” keys were on two separate subscreens, but by flipping back and forth I did manage to cluster “move, turn, and sidestep” on the right-hand side of my keyboard, more or less matching the keys I play Lode Runner with in Apple II emulation (a game I hadn’t known about “in its day,” but interesting in its own way). With that, I’d approximated “the way I’d played Marathon,” and all of a sudden I’d gone from a nostalgic glance back to intent on playing through the original game again. The bundle goes to the point of including the full “interface graphic” that reduced the size of the actual game graphics that had to be generated in real time on the Macs of the day. So far as one of them went, even with the accelerator card in my family’s LC II we did have to shrink those graphics to “quarter-size,” switch to “low resolution,” skip every other line, and turn off the floor and ceiling textures.
For all of those remembered dodges now avoided, however, a few odd thoughts of comments seen how “my high school just didn’t feel as big as it once did when I came back after so many years” came to mind early on. For a moment or two I might have pondered how many of my pastimes are rooted way back in my life and think it wouldn’t be altogether bad to actually outgrow something, but that might have been overshadowed by reminders of the recent discussion on the “Digital Antiquarian” of Doom. The post comments there had included a sigh or two how Marathon’s design in general hadn’t been as enduringly perfect as the more visceral, big-market-first game’s. In turn, that might just point straight to “and you can look in more than a few ways at ‘not using the same sort of computer as everyone else,’ and some of those ways aren’t as flattering as you might like.”
Against an awareness of how Marathon’s “shield generators” and “pattern buffers” could turn the game into “making ever-longer runs back and forth” the cautious way I play it, the familiar unpleasantness of the “exploding bugs” partway through, and recalling how to get through the more infamous puzzle-levels, though, there was that immemorial thought “it’s the story in the ‘computer terminals’ that distinguishes it.” The moment when the shipboard artificial intelligence Leela, systems garbling from alien infiltration, plays back a final “good luck...” message still seems affecting to me regardless of how entertaining another and “madder” computer Durandal is throughout and how much some people got out of all the odder details in more obscure terminals. “Artificial intelligences” are “resurrectable” in a way unfortunate civilians aren’t (regardless of how the game didn’t quite develop its “failed rescue missions” and nudged towards gruesome callousness), though, even if it’s also seemed unfortunate to me Leela was just sort of written out again in the sequels.
Returning to the game, though, did start producing arm strain. I’ve had to move my computer lately, and maybe it was just a matter of “reaching a little higher than I’m used to,” but the thought “time has passed and maybe you can’t keyboard the way you once did” is concerning in its own way. I tried to space out my play sessions, and that might have helped as I did get to the end. While still not “a good player” (much less a “network player,” although my brother played a good bit of Marathon networked in our high school’s “Mac lab” when I was in university), I can at least contemplate follow-ups both official and unofficial.