Blogs Games I Own: The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain

Joe talks about one of his earliest PC gaming memories...

http://www.bit-tech.net/blog/2009/02/16/games-i-own-the-lost-mind-of-dr-brain/

 

Hmm. For me it was Deus Ex - I wasn't to good at English, I would even say it was even a bit worse ;-) But it was first game I really wanted to understand, so I grabbed a dictionary.

I must admit - it was a big step in learning foreign language, something more than grammar or simple stories about nothing Now, tell me that games make people stupid

 

Wow - learning English from playing Deus Ex? That's impressive.

 

Interesting fact: A lot of French people still used this to learn English in 2005.

I remember martello towers, also a game which taught me to learn the time in french, Notre Dame or something, had to get the time right so Quasimodo would climb the tower, infact, I still have them!

 

My first memories of Sierra were Mixed-Up Fairy Tales. A game that I can remember playing for hours on end when I was only 8.

 

i'm intrigued joe, what did you learn from deus ex?

 

oh and i remember a copy of encarta that came with a pc back in the 90's. it had this game on it, it involved you traveling through a maze/castle thing, and every room you entered you had to answer a question - the idea being it was something you could find the answer to in the encarta software. it was very cleverly done, beautifully presented, and taught me um... i can't remember

but yeh - t'was fun

 

Ah Martello Towers and Granny's Garden were NOTHING on The Lost Frog. I swear it was designed secretly by Mensa, some of the puzzles in it were simply evil.

 

Mindquest I think it was. That and an army simulation game we had on the school library computers filled many of my lunch times.

Martello Towers meanwhile remains unconquered for me - I went back at it with a BBC emulator a few years ago and still couldn't get past the mystic rose puzzle.

As for 'What did I learn from Deus Ex?'...that's another blog post altogether.

 

Whilst at primary school we we're lucky enough to have use of a BBC Micro. One of the games on there was "Kingdom".
A simple turn based strategy game whereby you have to keep your village alive by making sure you kept 3 things in check
1) you had enough people in the village to defend attacks from thieves (represented by a "T" moving around on the screen)
2) Enough people to man the dyke which was prone to flooding and destroying crops.
3) Farmers to harvest the crops.

My first introduction to strategy gaming. It would be many years before I owned a system (Commodore 64), but I think that first encounter, sparked my curiousity into computer gaming and I've never looked back since.


(why don't they make games like "revenge of the mutant lamas" anymore)

 

I had completely forgotten about The Lost Mind of Dr. Brain until you posted this. My goodness, I must have played all the way through at least 15 times. I still remember all the elements, greek letters, and sign language letters from Pentode.

 

Yup! It's not that Deus Ex was full of good examples but it was more like an impulse to try to understand what are they talking about Now I just hate to play localised games...