The Hooksexup Insider A daily pick of what's new and hot at Hooksexup.
Scanner Your daily cup of WTF?
Hooksexup@SXSW 2006. Blogging the Roman Orgy of Indie-music Festivals.
Coming Soon!
The Daily Siege An intimate and provocative look at Siege's life, work and loves.
Kate & Camilla two best friends pursue business and pleasure in NYC.
Naughty James The lustful, frantic diary of a young London photographer.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: kid_play
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: Super_C
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: ILoveYourMom A bundle of sass who's trying to stop the same mistakes.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: The_Sentimental Our newest Blog-a-logger.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: Marking_Up Gay man in the Big Apple, full of apt metaphors and dry wit.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: SJ1000 Naughty and philosophical dispatches from the life of a writer-comedian who loves bathtubs and hates wearing underpants.
The Hooksexup Video Blog Deep, deep inside the world of online video.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: charlotte_web A Demi in search of her Ashton.
The Prowl, with Ryan Pfluger
Hooksexup @ Cannes Film Festival May 16 - May 25
ScreenGrab The Hooksexup Film Blog
Autumn A fashionable L.A. photo editor exploring all manner of hyper-sexual girls down south.
The Modern Materialist Almost everything you want.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: that_darn_cat A sassy Canadian who will school you at Tetris.
Rose & Olive Houston neighbors pull back the curtains and expose each other's lives.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: funkybrownchick The name says it all.
merkley??? A former Mormon goes wild, and shoots nudes, in San Francisco.
chase The creator of Supercult.com poses his pretty posse.
The Remote Island Hooksexup's TV blog.
Brandonland A California boy capturing beach parties, sunsets and plenty of skin.
61 Frames Per Second Smarter gaming.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: Charlotte_Web A Demi in search of her Ashton.
The Hooksexup Blog-a-log: Zeitgeisty A Manhattan pip in search of his pipette.
Date Machine Putting your baggage to good use.
61 Frames Per Second has been chugging along for a few months now, collecting readers and writers alike. Whatever differences those who come here may have, we all share an interest in video games and thus, I've become curious. When did you first play a video game? I was a wee lass when I played my first video game in a local arcade. My first console was the Atari 2600 and I've pretty much been dedicated to console games. Sure, I've dabbled in the occasional computer game and have owned hand held systems since the original Game Boy, but consoles hit the sweet spot for me. If I believed in fate I'd even say I was destined to be a console gamer since the Atari was first released the year I was born. Alas, I can't remember what exactly the first game I ever played was, but here are some close approximations of what I cut my teeth on way back in the day. Joust Donkey Kong Junior Phoenix Kangaroo Are we feeling the nostalgia? Edit: A big thank you to Peter Smith! There was a DOS game I played in the 1980's that I could not remember the name of. Castle Adventure! Related Links: Don't Call It Retro: Mega Man 9 and Design Resurrection Bringing Sexy Back: Retro Controllers of the Future Earthbound and Back Again
I'd have to say that I started young, so my memories may not be fully realised...
I started on a Speccy 48KB, shortly followed by a Speccy QL and a BBC-B, back in about 1986 at the youthful age of 5... there wasn't much on that system, but I do recall that we had Twin Kingdom Valley (BBC), Paperboy (Speccy - a tape that would load about 1 attempt in 5 - it could take you an hour to load, for 5 or 10 minutes of play), some top-down racing game that came on a cover-floppy (BBC), and a big book of listings, entitled the Ultimate Compendium of Basic Games, 1978 Edition. Most of the games worked, and were of a very basic (Hunt the Wumpus) format, though I did manage to get Trek typed in (That was a monster - over 1,000 actual lines! (I say Actual, because they always used to do lines numbered 10, 20, 30, 40 - so that you could easily insert more later)), though it never actually worked (BBC).
The first 'big-name' game I recall was Erik the Viking, from Level 9 (Can't recall which system it was on, shame). Of course, there were various other text adventures scattered around, eventually including the Zork series, ADVENT (Colossal Cave, the first one, based on Monument Caves), and leading to my undying love for the adventure game series.
First game was Pole Position on my dad's (later mine) Atari 2600. I can't recall what else he had in his collection and what I added to it later - I know ET (ugh), Tutenkhamen, Indiana Jones, Pitfall and Winter Games were among them - but Atari was the first. Then we got a DOS-based PC in the 80s... 87? 88?... and I developed a dual addiction to Infocom text adventures (wherein much of the humor was way beyond my malformed mind) and Sierra's classic "Quest" adventures. Plus LSL when mom wasn't looking and when I was able to luck my way through those infernally hard five questions. Ah the days before the Internet. At about the same time, I also started venturing out to my local Nathan's (2nd in the country!) and burning quarters on every game imaginable. The rest just snowballed from there.
Awesome. My first computer games were on a DOS system in the middle 80's too. I can't remember the names of any of the games I played though. They were nothing I bought, just stuff that was on my dad's computer. There was an adventure game where I moved my little pixel guy through a castle full of smiley faces that were supposed to be ogres. I always died when I met one. I just can't remember the computer stuff like I can the console and arcade games.
Perhaps it was Hack or predecessor Rogue? It was a very basic - but surprisingly deep - dungeon crawl using ASCII characters to fill in maps with monsters, treasures and, of course, the player character. Rogue lives on today as NetHack, a freeware, Windows-friendly (Mac too maybe?) which I HIGHLY recommend for any and all RPG fans.
The first game I ever played was either Super Mario Bros. or Duck Hunt, when I was three or four years old. I would get as far as the first hole in world 1-2 but I was too scared to try to jump over it. xP I could skip the holes in 1-1 using the warp pipe before the first one.
I absolutely loved them, buy my parents would never buy me a NES at that age. I can't really blame them. I was too young for video games. My uncle gave me his Atari 2600, but it didn't work very well. For my sixth birthday, I got a Game Boy so I've always been kind of partial to handheld games since then.
Amber, you might've been playing something like Rogue (man I love Rogue), but I'm guessing you were playing this:
en.wikipedia.org/.../Castle_Adventure
Castle Adventure... I loved Castle Adventure, and I had a messed-up disk of it that occasionally threw various random collections of ASCII at the hero along with the usual ogres and demons. Good stuff.
I actually played Super Mario Bros. 2 years before 1. It took me around a year to beat it. I could only get to around the 5th world before I ran out of lives. I let it sit for something like 6 months before playing again, at which point I cruised through to the end after just a few tries. Sometimes you just have to walk away for a while before succeeding.
Castle Adventure! Yes, that's the game! I never could figure out what the heck I was doing in it but I played it anyway.
Mine was Donkey Kong on the Colecovision.
I do believe the first game I played was a Game & Watch. Either Mario in some bottling factory, Donkey Kong or Donkey Kong Jr. If that doesn't count, probably something on Commodore 64.
John Constantine, our superhero, was raised by birds and then attended Penn State University. He is currently working on a novel about a fictional city that exists only in his mind. John has an astonishingly extensive knowledge of Scientology. Ultimately he would like to learn how to effectively use his brain. He continues to keep Wu-Tang's secret to himself.
Derrick Sanskrit is a self-professed geek in a variety of fields including typography, graphic design, comic books, music and cartoons. As a professional hipster graphic designer, his recent clients have included Hooksexup, Pitchfork and MoCCA, among others.
Amber Ahlborn - artist, writer, gamer and DigiPen survivor, she maintains a day job as a graphic artist. By night Amber moonlights as a professional Metroid Fanatic and keeps a metal suit in the closet just in case. Has lived in the state of Washington and insists that it really doesn't rain as much as everyone says it does.
Nadia Oxford is a housekeeping robot who was refurbished into a warrior when the world's need for justice was great. Now that the galaxy is at peace (give or take a conflict here or there), she works as a freelance writer for various sites and magazines. Based in Toronto, Nadia's prized possession is a certificate from the Ministry of Health declaring her tick and rabies-free.
Bob Mackey is a grad student, writer, and cyborg, who uses the powerful girl-repelling nanomachines mad science grafted onto his body to allocate time towards interests of the nerd persuasion. He believes that complaining about things on the Internet is akin to the fine art of wine tasting, but with more spitting into buckets.
Joe Keiser has a programming degree from Johns Hopkins University, a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, and a fake toy guitar built in the hollowed-out shell of a real guitar. He writes about games and technology for a variety of outlets. One day he will stop doing this. The day after that, police will find his body under a collapsed pile of (formerly neatly alphabetized) collector's edition tchotchkes.
Peter Smith is like the lead character of Irwin Shaw's The 80-Yard Run, except less athletic. He considers himself very lucky to have this job. But it's a little premature to take "jack-off of all trades" off his resume. Besides writing, travelling, and painting houses, Pete plays guitar in a rock trio called The Aye-Ayes. He calls them a 'power pop' band, but they generally sound more like Motorhead on a drinking binge.
Cole Stryker is an American freelance writer living in York, England, where he resides with his archeologist wife. He writes for a travel company by day and argues about pop culture on the internet by night. Find him writing regularly here and here.
Send tips to