Well, no, fuck that. A few hazy recollections of eating lunch at the goddamn food court across the street and nearly getting fired several times for coming in at 10:30, a practice now generally accepted throughout the IT world. A trailblazer to the core, this one.
The one lasting, vivid memory, though, was when I first discovered something which would stay with me from that day, to the very present:
Holy shit, you can play games at work instead of working.
Again, trailblazer, since I don't think any IT shop in the world anymore actually does any work. But back in '88, there was only one guy in the Treasury building not getting anything done, and that was your boy, Pinner.
The game I was playing, the only game I was playing, was called "Begin". The worst- or best-named game in history, depending on your appreciation of irony. The full name was "Begin: A Tactical Starship Simulation". The colon separates a noun and a verb which have absolutely nothing to do with each other. I think that's what first attracted me to it, its completely inappropriate name. It still kinda makes me chuckle.
Look:
The version I grew up on was Begin 1.65, and in its time, it was the best starship simulator of its time.
Oh, the times we had. It was totally an 80s game -- all text, and you controlled your starship by typing commands. A particularly ambitious coder could probably turn it into a zcode or Hugo game. I played it to death, but at some point you have to grow up, and I did, and forgot about it.
Then a couple weeks ago I saw the new Star Trek film, and liked it a lot, and then got all nerdy and started looking for a Trek video game. The only recent one I could find was Star Trek: Legacy for the Xbox 360, which had two things working against it: 1) the reviews were not altogether glowing, and 2) nobody has it.
Then the memory banks finally offered me a withdrawal, and I remembered Begin, and did a Google search.
The weirdest fucking thing that's ever happened on the internet was seeing that "Begin 3.0" had been released... in 2009.
Fucking game hadn't had an update since 1993 (when "Begin 2.0" had been released haphazardly after the authors apparently just abandoned the project and put out what they had.) And then here it was, my past coming back to life.
Begin 3. Holy shit.
Just to give you a sense of what 25 years of technological advances can bring, Begin 1.65 looked like this:
Flash forward to present day, and watch how Begin magically becomes transformed into the multimedia extravaganza which is Begin 3:
Finally, Begin has graphics befitting a game that was released in the decade that it was originally released in.
And look again:
21 years after I first found it (and 25 years after it was first released), it is still the best starship tactical simulator available on any gaming platform.
There is no point and click. You still have to type the commands. The Windows port is a bit clunky, as the massive graphics update actually makes the interface slower and less responsive.
It is essentially the same game it was in 1984, but the shit works. It has everything it should. Power management, system management, multi-armed tactics, team tactics, tension, and various Star Trek requisites like boarding parties, transporters, tractor beams, and all that. The only game I know that ever came close to this was Starfleet Command, in the late 90s/early 00s, but countless bugs and an atrocious interface doomed that one.
As insane as it sounds, and as wrong as it should be, Begin still fucking rules. And the new, state of the art, cutting edge Begin 3 just makes it better than ever.
Here are some links:
Download Begin 3.0
The Begin Wiki
Ben Hallert's Begin page, the fansite which ended up lighting a fire under the original author to keep Begin alive.
Tom Nelson -- author of Begin 3 and co-author of 1.65 and 2 -- started this site along with the release of Begin 3.
Begin Yahoo group, surprisingly active.
And now look once more:
Micro Foundry BBS Archive
This is the BBS where the authors and fans of the game would hang out and discuss stuff. This archive spans the years 1988 to 1990.
Right around page 5, you can see an 18-year-old Pinback come in and start taking over.
Misty, watercolored memories!
