Greetings, beautiful party people of the world wide webbernets. It’s said that our first memories are the most influential. They help define our personalities, our likes and dislikes, and even our attitudes towards life. For some people, their first memory is of them on the school playground on a bright spring day, zipping down a metal slide that feels hotter than the surface of Mercury. For others, it’s the sight of their mother’s smile, or a being awoken by a mouthful of cat fur from an overly affectionate feline.
For me, my oldest memory takes me back to August 9th, 1994. I wasn’t quite seven years old yet, and my Uncle Bucky took me to my first baseball game: a 10-4 thrashing of the Milwaukee Brewers by my beloved Detroit Tigers. After the game, we returned to his house and he put me to bed and went off to do whatever it was that he did. But after the excitement of the ballgame (and the hour-long nap on the drive home), I was wide awake. Sleep was not going to happen – so I climbed out of bed and walked into his office, where the TV with the VCR was located. It also happened to be where he kept his newfangled thing he called a “computer.”
Sure enough, there he was. His face illuminated in green and purple hues, he was completely transfixed on whatever it was on that screen. Of course I wanted to see what it was, and as I walked around the two beanbags in front of the TV to his desk, he caught me out of the corner of his eye.
“Hey Butthead,” he said. “I want to show you something.” He pulled up a chair, and I sat down. He hit a few buttons on the keyboard, and the screen flickered a few times. Then the screen turned a blood red, highlighting the yellow symbol that was unfamiliar to seven-year-old me.
This was the moment when my Uncle Bucky introduced me to video games, and it was the moment that would, in essence, shape my entire life.
By today’s standards, there is absolutely nothing spectacular about Stormovik: Soviet Attack Fighter SU-25. For its day, however, it was a state-of-the-art military fighter simulation where you took control of a Sukhoi Su-25 jet. It was a remarkably technical game that required you to utilize at least half the keyboard. Throw in the flight stick my Uncle owned, and it was one of the closest things you could find to a military-grade flight sim on home computers.
Perfect fodder for a six-year-old, right?
But we sat there, and he walked me through the take-off sequence and how to get the plane in the air. I learned to keep my altitude steady, and I even managed to “steer” the fighter. I attempted to land once or twice, but the results would’ve earned me a failing grade in flight school. He didn’t let me play the game too much – I mean, I was six. But that night I became his copilot, accompanying him on vital missions to protect the motherland from all manners of threats. We’d read about our next mission in the Soviet newspapers, and he’d ask me for which weapons I thought would be best for the mission. I always picked missiles, of course, because explosions were awesome (and 20+ years later explosions are still awesome). I couldn’t tell you exactly what we did, but I still feel that sense of excitement and awe at being inside an airplane cockpit, and I remember thinking “this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”
That night turned into something of a tradition. Whenever I’d go to see my Uncle, we’d go see the Tigers play (or Red Wings), then go back to his place and play on his computer for the rest of the night. I credit him for introducing me to Doom, Wolfenstein, Ultima, and Secret of Monkey Island. He let me play through Sam & Max Hit the Road, and when my aunt Paula wasn’t around, he’d even pop in Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards.
“You see him,” he’d ask as he pointed at Larry Laffer. I’d nod and laugh at whatever the silly-looking guy in the bad suit was doing. “You don’t ever want to be like him.”
Sage advice for the youths of every generation.
Despite those early games, as well as his insistence that we play Links Championship Course: Pebble Beach all the time because he loves golf as much as I love baseball, we always came back to Stormovik. By the start of 1995 I was an ace virtual pilot. I didn’t even need him watching over my shoulder to know what to do with different missiles, or to remember which keyboard buttons to press. He did, of course. It had become a bonding experience between the two of us, but there is no denying that after a few months I was playing the game way more than he was.
I was devastated that following summer, when he bought a new computer that didn’t include a drive for 5.25″ floppy disks. Most games were now on 3.25″ or fancy CDs, and yeah the games were visually more beautiful and offered more variety and promised fun stories and exciting adventures. But none of those were Stormovik, and I was mad as hell. But I got over it. Eventually. Games like Star Wars: Dark Forces, Tomb Raider, and even console titles like GoldenEye 64 helped, of course. But every once in a while I would ask about “that Russian flight sim”, and every once in a while he’d distract me with another game.
I was 12 when he moved to North Carolina. When he left, he bequeathed that old PC to me. He didn’t have the majority of the games that we had played on the thing; those were sold off at yard sales and loaned to friends who never gave ’em back. But sure enough, sitting in the bottom of that box was the floppy disk for Stormovik.
I still have that old PC at my mother’s house. When I go home to visit for the holidays, after everybody else has gone to bed and I’m left awake with only the TV and the cat to keep me company, I’ll go back to it. By this point the computer barely works and when it does the monitor has this strange green tint to it. But the game, and the sense of awe and wonder that I felt when I first found myself in the cockpit of a Soviet fighter jet some 20+ years ago, remains.
Without Stormovik, I may have never fallen in love with video games. Without that initial passion for video games, I would’ve never followed AllGames.com, or GameSpot TV. I would’ve never become an (overly) active member of the early G4TV community. I would have never pursued freelancing for game blogs, and I sure as hell would’ve never started a gaming blog of my own. I would’ve never met the people I now consider friends, and I would have never had the opportunity to work on games like Star Wars: The Old Republic, or Firefall.
Without my Uncle showing me that little-remembered Soviet flight sim from EA (yes, EA), I wouldn’t be me.
So, next week is PAX and I, for one, am pretty damn excited for it. Which is impressive, seeing as how I have a deep, deep hatred for conventions in general, but that’s beside the point. I’ll be taking some time next week to talk about PAX and tell you which panels I’m excited for, as well as why despite my personal reservations about these kinds of events I can only see these shows as a positive force.
Until then, be excellent to each other – and feel free to let me know about your first gaming experience below. I mean, if nothing else it’ll give you a chance to talk about that retro game that nobody else in your group of friends remembers*.
*Time Pilot was awesome. That is all.