Nongamers
will probably not understand this completely, but it�s true: There are some
games that become a sort of "rite of passage" for us gamers. The older the
gamer, the fonder the memory. Now, these games are not remembered because they
are the best ever, best graphics, best sound and so on. Not at all. They are
games which are considered an iconic part of gaming history and lore because of
the sheer weight of their significance and influence, and also because of how
our minds seem to associate them strongly with a particular time or a
particular event in our lives.
This
varies from person to person, just like Soylent Green. Somebody might have a
set of gaming landmarks for themselves, which may be different from somebody
else's. There are coincidences for sure, but there are also differences.
Me, for example, just to name a few of my own: playing Pirates! on the C64.
Playing Civilization at a friend�s house on his state-of-the-art 286 VGA for a
whole summer. Playing Railroad Tycoon II at home every afternoon for weeks with
one of my friends� I was the engineer and track layer, he was in charge of the
financial side of the business. Just fun.
Another
one of these moments, for me and for a whole bunch of other crazies, was
playing Transport Tycoon Deluxe (TTDX), way back in those distant and foggy DOS
days. It wasn't a perfect game by any
stretch of the imagination, but it was a game that got most things right. It just clicked. You felt at home
immediately. The fact that it came out in 1995 and I still fire it up every now
and then today should say something.
So,
naturally, when I heard that almost ten years later we were going to have a sequel
for TTDX — also made by Chris Sawyer and not just any clown that happened to buy
the rights or something — I was ecstatic. I stripped naked, put on a pirate hat
and began to run laps around our apartment complex at 3 a.m., yelling "En Taro Adun!" with my fists
crisped in the air. Then my wife gently reminded me of the possible benefits of
divorce (benefits for her, mostly), which served to calm me down a little.
So,
Locomotion was coming and all was well. Right? That�s what I thought. Alas�
fate generally does not smile kindly on the free-spirited and nearly-divorced
types like yours truly. Read on.
