It is times when I think about how games were better, “in the old days,” when I realize just well, how old video games are.
When I started playing video games, there were no three dimensional graphics. There was a command line and a green squiggle that may have been a character, I don’t know. I had to use my imagination. (“Why, back in my day, we had to load games from a cassette tape! Both sides! And we liked it! And there were multiple floppies! And code wheels!”)
Then there were text adventures.
You are in an open field west of a big white house with a boarded front door. There is a small mailbox here.
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I was really into interactive fiction. I actually had a couple of boxed INFOCOM games, I’ll have to dig them out from somewhere. I just remember that the games came with such great swag.Wishbringer: The Magick Stone of Dreams, was about a wishing stone.
Inside the box, there was a map and a letter you had to deliver, and a descriptive leaflet about the origins of the stone, but best of all, there was a small plastic replica of the stone that glowed in the dark.
I just thought that was awesome.
I held on to that stone for years. I think it was still on my bookshelf when I left home to go to college.