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1991 was not a happy year in my house. My mother, always a bit of a tyrant, had become downright intolerable since I had become a teenager, entered junior high, and realized that being under her thumb might not be the inevitable way of the world until the end of the time. The resulting strife had sadly served to drive a wedge between me and my father, whose only flaw in my eyes was that he hadn't ditched Mom and taken my sister and I far far away years earlier. He didn't see it that way.
At any rate, one blissful weekend it happened that my mother was going out of town. This heralded 48 hours of incomprehensible freedoms like "curfew extended past 5:30 pm" and "allowed to watch television." This was heady stuff in that house. I came home after school, saw my mother and sister off, and was sitting down for dinner when my father came home from work. Along with his briefcase, he was carrying a Radio Shack bag, and in that bag was a new game for our Tandy 1000.
Freedom from Mom and a new computer game? It was like hitting the MegaMillions and the Pick Six on the same afternoon. Dad and I consumed our meals. I finished first (wolfed it down to get on with the gaming, actually) and put a disk in to begin the install. Fortunately, we had just recently added a 40MB external hard drive to the computer which until then had no hard disk at all.
The install took a long time. I mean a really long time. Dad passed along the description of the game that the salesman at Radio Shack had given him. You run an entire civilization? And research technologies? And build armies? And conquer the world? Over the entire course of history?? My excitement over the game grew in equal measure with my fear that the install might never complete. But then, finally, a blue globe appeared. A long time passed. White text appeared on the screen... "In the beginning" they said.
What felt like six months later, the final dramatic words I'd listen to Commander Spock speak in a house of my own a decade and a half later appeared on the screen- "to build a legacy that would stand the test of the time... A CIVILIZATION!" Then my precious Tandy monitor tried its best to display the spaceman ludicrously popping out of the Earth, but we'll just move on.
So Dad and I played. And played. And played. That game ended at 6 am the next morning. Remember, I was literally being put to bed at 8:00 pm ever night at this point in my life. That's rough for a kid trying to be cool in ninth grade. But for one glorious night, I got to play a game with my Dad until the sun had set and come back up again.
I'd cherish that as one of the finest memories of my life even if I hadn't gone on to spend literally thousands of hours playing Civ and each of its sequels. I bought Dad copies of Civ2 and Civ3, and we played each over the internet. The game has done more to bring us together than any other shared interest or activity I can think of. Thank you Sid, and Soren, and everyone else who has had a hand in letting me share Civilization with my Dad.
And that's what Civ means to me. I wish I could say that I'd give the prize to Dad if I win, but he beat me to the punch and had a copy the day it came out. Maybe my sister would like to play...
At any rate, one blissful weekend it happened that my mother was going out of town. This heralded 48 hours of incomprehensible freedoms like "curfew extended past 5:30 pm" and "allowed to watch television." This was heady stuff in that house. I came home after school, saw my mother and sister off, and was sitting down for dinner when my father came home from work. Along with his briefcase, he was carrying a Radio Shack bag, and in that bag was a new game for our Tandy 1000.
Freedom from Mom and a new computer game? It was like hitting the MegaMillions and the Pick Six on the same afternoon. Dad and I consumed our meals. I finished first (wolfed it down to get on with the gaming, actually) and put a disk in to begin the install. Fortunately, we had just recently added a 40MB external hard drive to the computer which until then had no hard disk at all.
The install took a long time. I mean a really long time. Dad passed along the description of the game that the salesman at Radio Shack had given him. You run an entire civilization? And research technologies? And build armies? And conquer the world? Over the entire course of history?? My excitement over the game grew in equal measure with my fear that the install might never complete. But then, finally, a blue globe appeared. A long time passed. White text appeared on the screen... "In the beginning" they said.
What felt like six months later, the final dramatic words I'd listen to Commander Spock speak in a house of my own a decade and a half later appeared on the screen- "to build a legacy that would stand the test of the time... A CIVILIZATION!" Then my precious Tandy monitor tried its best to display the spaceman ludicrously popping out of the Earth, but we'll just move on.
So Dad and I played. And played. And played. That game ended at 6 am the next morning. Remember, I was literally being put to bed at 8:00 pm ever night at this point in my life. That's rough for a kid trying to be cool in ninth grade. But for one glorious night, I got to play a game with my Dad until the sun had set and come back up again.
I'd cherish that as one of the finest memories of my life even if I hadn't gone on to spend literally thousands of hours playing Civ and each of its sequels. I bought Dad copies of Civ2 and Civ3, and we played each over the internet. The game has done more to bring us together than any other shared interest or activity I can think of. Thank you Sid, and Soren, and everyone else who has had a hand in letting me share Civilization with my Dad.
And that's what Civ means to me. I wish I could say that I'd give the prize to Dad if I win, but he beat me to the punch and had a copy the day it came out. Maybe my sister would like to play...
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