A big hello to everyone on this board! Please allow me to (re)introduce myself…
I’ll never forget the night I first played Descent—Saturday, May 13th, 1995, my 17th birthday. We just unboxed a brand new Pentium/100 w 32MB of RAM, the culmination of 2 years’ savings of paper route and McDonald’s money. My friend Kevin brought over his copy—transferred ownership, really. His poor 486/33 could barely eek out 3 frames a second, and he was blown away the minute the smoothly rendered first level mine bobbed into view. “Look at that fan!” he cried as he watched it rotate with the fluidity it was meant to display. Meanwhile, I was enjoying the freedom of this new gaming experience, flying around everywhere at every angle, blasting away at those textured, polygonal baddies with increasingly awesome weapons. This was how first-person shooters were meant to be. Kevin and I logged some great flight time that night.
A week later I bought a SoundBlaster AWE32 card and supercharged my MIDI backgrounds. My brother hooked us up with the Advanced Gravis Phoenix Flight and Weapons Control System, IMO the best Descent joystick ever. 24 programmable buttons, including five atop the stick for selecting guns and five off to the left for selecting missiles. A sliding, swivelable unit with directional buttons on it made throttling, rolling, and sliding (I use the stick for turning) a fully integrated experience. It just felt so natural, like it connected my brain right to the Pyro GX.
I played it almost every night after that; thank God summer was on the way. Many of those nights were haunted by the machinations of the cloaking/teleporting level 7 bossbot (“Rong-yung-hack-heek! Rong-yung-hack-heek!”), and it felt so triumphant to finally hear that last horrible grinding before watching him spin down smoking into the lava! This, of course, was before he was castrated by the 1.4 patch. I would go on to beat the game on Rookie before taking another stab at it with Hotshot.
I know fall of ’95 was a smidge late to buy a modem, and my geek friends razzed me a little for not getting it with the system, but better late than never! I found alt.games.descent and became a somewhat frequent contributor, laughing at Zod’s posts and learning about things like extra levels I could download. I loved the “4D” ones that overlapped multiple spaces. One memorable level started you inside a huge cubic room with a cube suspended in the center, and each side had multiple doors that opened into their own hallways. There was also Pointy Nipples, which overlapped in a seemingly continuous rotary pattern. The theme-based levels and missions were incredible too, like Vampyro for D2.
Next year, Descent II arrived, and senior year ended on a busy note, so my brother got a 2-months’ jump on progress. I still found the CD’s music fitting for certain activities, and listened to it fairly often, waiting for the months when I’d get to fully immerse myself. I was not disappointed! As before with D1, I was thorough. I wasn’t satisfied until I explored every corner of the level, destroyed every hostile, drained every bot replicator, acquired every power-up, and rescued every hostage. Only then would I save the game and take on the reactor. When I got bored of the music that came with the game, a punk or metal disc made a great substitute. Unfortunately, I never did fully complete the game in single player, got to level 21, I think. I was able to access the end movie via a demo.
I attribute that in part to discovering multiplayer later that year, finally making the most of the 28.8 modem. I hooked up with Kevin and someone else locally for some modem games, and got Kali up and running (lost my reg, damnit) for Internet games. Fun as that was, it wasn’t always pretty. I still remember one opponent’s message: “Your ping time sux. Disconnect and reconnect.” Broadband was still years away for me to enjoy at home.
As those years passed, my computer underwent a slow, painful soulectomy as part after part was replaced to accommodate new OSes and primary purposes (as in Windows 95 and 98, and collegiate pursuits), and a HD crash. Play waned, too, and eventually I left it with my parents after graduation. I moved out near the end of 2000, then bought the system I’m still playing on today. Another concurrent purchase? Descent 3, of course! I was impressed with many of the graphical updates. I even had stereo shutter glasses that enhanced the 3D perception. And being out on my own and on my own schedule gave me the freedom to commit many an evening to the latest installment in my favorite game series.
Even the video clips wowed and moved me. Though it wasn’t full-screen, the D2 intro blew me away with the detail, the cinematic style, and the smoothness with which it played on my P100. The end movie made me wonder, and the D3 level 1 intro confirmed many of my suspicions. And as the orchestra swelled toward the end of the D3 intro, I saluted that brave, hardy GX that propelled me through the first two games, only to now face certain incineration.
Though I was just a little bit put off by some of the changes in D3—new ship sound effects, the loss of the classic font and certain weapons, robot designs that didn’t make much sense—I managed to beat several levels before a three-week-long, spring ’01 business trip to Germany killed my momentum.
Adult responsibilities, competing pastimes, and other time commitments may have been to blame, but I was never able to bring myself back into the game after that. Maybe I just didn’t want to tease myself with something I loved so much but couldn’t partake in with the desired regularity. Time marched on, taking me into drama productions, home ownership, marriage, and more responsibilities.
Then I got this job assignment, seated in a room with three other guys who played (and talked a lot about) World of Warcraft. For some reason, it made me wonder about the state of my favorite game series, and I did a Google search. To my delight, I found this board, among several other dedicated sites. The community, though smaller than it once had been, was still alive! There were still people playing! And the more I read the more excited I got, and so finally, almost 6 years to the date of my last time playing, I rummaged through the moving box for the CD-ROM, hauled that old joystick out of another box, and resurrected my D3 setup. I got Vortex, joined several online games this past month now, and I intend to do at least 1 or 2 nights a week. I get my ass kicked, but I still have a blast, and I can only get better with practice.
I also marvel at the real sense of community a board like this has established, the best example being the thread about [RIP]Phenomena. I never thought I could be so moved to tears by the death of and the outpouring of love for a guy I never met or even played. My prayers go out to David and his family.
We can’t take it for granted that a great gaming experience like Descent will be around forever; it is up to us to keep it going, and I’m so happy so see it remaining as strong as it is. I have so many ideas now for programming and art projects, and I can’t wait to release them here. I’ve got a Planet Descent profile up, and I’ll be all over any Milwaukee/Madison/Chicago area LAN party that springs up!
Thanks for strolling beside me down Memory Lane, and SEE YOU IN THE MINES!
Eric
Hello everyone...It's so good to be back! (CP'ed from .com)
Was always very envious of those who owned the Gravis Pheonix -
Jon the Great
- DBB Captain
- Posts: 538
- Joined: Fri Nov 28, 2003 3:01 am
- Location: California
You're very welcome, lithium. Descent brings back so many memories of my own I just had to share them here. I do miss that stick; it really fit the game like a glove. I wonder what happened to it, I can't even seem to find it on eBay.
As for the length, Jon--not to sound vain, but surely amidst a smorgasboard of jerky bites, the occasional 2-lb steak can't really hurt, right?
As for the length, Jon--not to sound vain, but surely amidst a smorgasboard of jerky bites, the occasional 2-lb steak can't really hurt, right?
