time-traveling iconoclast
01.12.2008 @ 5:16 PM CST
Nearly everyone has a collection of photos, scribblings, crafts, and innocent/incoherent writings that form a sort of quirky, historical self-portrait. More often than not, parents are the gatekeepers of these items, hoarding them at their parent-ish domiciles - which is fine in my book (do you really want your colleagues to see naked little you in a bathtub?)
But thanks to the Interweb, these self-portraits are merging into the online world. Today's social-networking-hungry teens, what with their obsessive personal blogging and drunken Facebook photography, are the most obvious benefactors, but you might be surprised at what dirt you can dig up on the 9600 baud geek crowd - like me, for instance.
Because when you're thirteen years old and building up your fluency in QBasic, you might just want to make a game about... surfing. And jumping. And doing stunts. And sharks. I give you "Stunt Surfer":
The graphics are clearly way ahead of their time - these days you'd need a next-gen 1024 MB nVidia just to keep up. And you wouldn't believe the gameplay, not to mention the veritable cornucopia of secret moves available for discovery. And check this out - you even get to choose the color of your surfer shorts:
Why on earth Midway didn't pick this up back in 1996 we'll never understand, but what we do know is that some people just can't see the sublime beauty in surfing/blackflip combos, decrying it as:
In any event, I guess this means that my digital self-portrait has neon purple swim trunks. Beat that.
PS: Yes, you can actually download the game from games.qbasic.com, and yes, I called myself "Michael Ziphrus" online back in those days, because the Internet was still a shady place. It's completely un-shady now, of course.
But thanks to the Interweb, these self-portraits are merging into the online world. Today's social-networking-hungry teens, what with their obsessive personal blogging and drunken Facebook photography, are the most obvious benefactors, but you might be surprised at what dirt you can dig up on the 9600 baud geek crowd - like me, for instance.
Because when you're thirteen years old and building up your fluency in QBasic, you might just want to make a game about... surfing. And jumping. And doing stunts. And sharks. I give you "Stunt Surfer":
The graphics are clearly way ahead of their time - these days you'd need a next-gen 1024 MB nVidia just to keep up. And you wouldn't believe the gameplay, not to mention the veritable cornucopia of secret moves available for discovery. And check this out - you even get to choose the color of your surfer shorts:
Why on earth Midway didn't pick this up back in 1996 we'll never understand, but what we do know is that some people just can't see the sublime beauty in surfing/blackflip combos, decrying it as:
Well, there you have it. Personally, I'd call the gameplay something like "dubious" or "convoluted" rather than ganging up on it with two such sinister, ugly adjectives, and I'd certainly place "well packed" before "rather poor" in the name of good paragraph design, but who am I? I'm just a man who used to be a boy who wanted to do some tricked-out backflips over some killer waves.A rather poor surfing game featuring minimalistic graphics and highly doubtful and awkward gameplay. It's a well packed game, featuring nice menus and very good documentation.
In any event, I guess this means that my digital self-portrait has neon purple swim trunks. Beat that.
PS: Yes, you can actually download the game from games.qbasic.com, and yes, I called myself "Michael Ziphrus" online back in those days, because the Internet was still a shady place. It's completely un-shady now, of course.