PixlBit

     At college, I hated the sight of a TV. I wanted none of the life I’d had at home of ritual TV watching on the couch every day. I was out skiing to classes in the Winter and hiking all over the woods surrounding the school. So I didn’t even think about home consoles like the NES, which I didn’t even know existed until I started getting back into consoles with the Playstation years later.

                                      

                                                            Gotta get those keys.

     But I did have my Apple Macintosh Plus computer, ostensibly to write papers on, which I did, but soon had a few games for it such as: Wizardry, Dark Castle, Beyond Dark Castle, and Shadowgate. My roommate and I managed to hack Wizardry and give ourselves all the rare loot. Dark Castle and Beyond Dark Castle were a ton of fun. They’re Castlevania style games. I can still hear the grunt the final boss makes in Dark Castle every time he throws something at you and the scream of your player when he’s hit by a fireball.  The jetpack segments in Beyond Dark Castle were great and a neat addition to the gameplay as was scrolling environments. Both games were very easy to play on the keyboard. The controls were perfect. I remember Shadowgate for the melody used on the flute which was lifted from Jethro Tull’s song “Songs from the Wood”. This was a point-and-click adventure game. I think it’s funny that your goal was to stop the Warlock Lord from summoning the demon Behemoth. Looks like I’ve summoned him myself in getting into the band by the same name. EPIC FAIL!

                                          

                                             I loved the design in Sky Shark

    Aside from the Mac games, I played Chess a lot at the local coffee shop and Squad Leader and Car Wars, board and pen-and-paper games respectively, back at the dorm with my roommate. I was in a Dungeons and Dragons group for a little while as well. The little college town had one arcade cabinet in a pizza shop. It was Sky Shark (also known as Flying Shark), and I played the heck out of that machine. You fly a WWI biplane in this vertically scrolling shooter. Like Xevious, you had to shoot other planes and bomb targets below you. This would be my first choice for a personal arcade along with the cabinet I played when I was home on break from college, 1943: Battle of Midway. Playing two-player in 1943 with my friend Mark made this game much better. It’s crazy hard in the final levels. This was the last gasp for the arcades for me. My last year at college was a turbulent one and I left a little early to pursue other things. Games would disappear from my life until the mid 90’s.