Computer games were still in their infancy, so those of us who were interested in them played what we had at the time. It should also be noted that 50,000 copies sold was considered "blockbuster" status for a computer game back then, so there were admittedly not a lot of us who were interested. Crowther's kids loved his game, though.
At the time, it was still a novelty. I played these games on Atari 130XE, which was still pretty primitive. While RPGs and graphical adventures had begun to come out by then, text adventures were still in preference as a way to present a game that didn't involve shooting space bugs, eating dots, or jumping over barrels on limited technology. However, by the time more graphical adventure games had come into vogue, I had gotten into RPGs, though my parents were into point-and-click adventures. So while they were playing The 7th Guest and Myst, I was playing Final Fantasy and Ultima.
I'm a pretty avid reader. I was reading Stephen King and Douglas Adams in grade school, which is part of why I missed out on so many free Personal Pan pizzas through the Book It! program. So that was part of why I took to these games relatively well at the time.
I never played this one, mostly because it came out around the same time as the Switch and BotW did, and I've kind of been heavily invested in the Switch since then. Maybe once I can get my hands on a PS5 I'll take a look at this series. Graphically, it looks pretty damn good.
One reasons why Microsoft doesn't do more in the phone space is that mobile market is where Microsoft sufffered a pretty humiliating defeat in the market. Windows Mobile was one of the first moblie phone platforms, and the iPhone slaughtered it easily ten years later. Windows Phone never had a chance against both iOS and Android. I think Microsoft is scared of the mobile market because if more casual users ditched PCs for mobile devices, they'd lose a lot of money. It's one of the few threats to the dominance of Windows.
I remember doing that too.
Of course, in Leather Goddesses of Phobos, the computer would take those four-lettter words as literal commands, meaning the player character would carry them out depending on context.
I had a lot of these games, as well as the Scott Adams games. I didn't really play point-and-click graphical adventure games until Shadowgate on the NES and Martian Memorandum on PC. I didn't play a lot of those, either, because RPGs filled that niche for me a lot better. I actually did some of the Scott Adams games at 5 or 6 on TRS-80, then played the Infocom stuff at 10 on Atari 130XE.
Now that I think of it, I do remember playing a graphical adventure on a friend's Apple IIe called Tass Times in Tonetown. The guy who wrote it, Michael Berlyn, started out as an Infocom implementer (he wrote Suspended, in fact), and went on to create Bubsy the bobcat on SNES/Genesis.
I remember dealing with a lot of copy protection schemes. Starflight had a code wheel, and if you failed to enter the correct code, you'd be stopped by the "Corporate Police," who would give you one last chance. If you failed then, they'd destroy your ship. SimCity constantly bombarded your city with earthquakes. And supposedly, Earthbound could detect whether it was being played on a SNES or an emulator, as it had several spot-checks throughout the game that would not only freeze the game if a bootleg was detected, it would also delete your save files.
Plus, I used to love reading the manuals for Zelda I, Metroid, and Kid Icarus.
I definitely want GrimGrimoire. It came out right after OdinSphere and I missed it because by that point I had mostly moved onto the Wii and 360.
I remember an old Pepsi commercial from the time that was doing a promotion for Sony and FF7. It had a couple seconds of footage from Titan's summon. That was before I'd actually gotten the game. I didn't even have a PlayStation at the time.
Kao the Kangaroo somehow reminds me of an old arcade favorite, Kangaroo. I know they aren't by the same developer (the arcade game was from Sunsoft and published in the US by Atari).
Stage Select:
3. The monster team from Dragon Quest VIII. There's something so amusing about summoning a team of cyclopes and trolls to whale on a bunch of slimes.
2. Shadow from Tales of Symphonia. He has a really creepy voice clip that plays when you summon him. Plus, I like the battle music (Fighting of the Spirits) that plays when you're fighting Summon Spirits in that game.
1. Shiva and Siren from FF8. Their biggest power of all was how they managed to get those Demi Moore pelts they sport on the PS1 past both the ESRB and Sony Computer Entertainment America. There is no way you can even pretend those are costumes. The first time I saw them, I was like "What. The. Fuck."
Cage Match:
Terry Bogard was like "Evil What?" So someone handed him a copy of Evil Zone on PS1 to play. After playing it, he was like, "nah, this is too easy," and spent the rest of the evening looking at Mai's OnlyFans.
