In the world of gaming, there is one power that has risen above all others. One way that has made itself seem the truest way to experience electronic entertainment. I am fresh out of fun being had make this seem like more than it is so here is a little bit of a goof instead of a proper formal introduction to the bulk of this entry. Wow, that went longer than it probably needed to. That is quite odd, as I certainly do not need to be padding to hit the word count, I actually have things to say on this subject. The subject in question is the rise of the personal computer and its impact upon the gaming world, and the introduction here instead of a ramble was meant to come to a climax with a joke of some sort about the culture of the PC Master Race subset of the gaming community but I could not think of anything that I found particularly funny.
The 1980's saw the rise of personal computers in the home and workplace, with Apple and IBM waging a sort of hardware battle to put these machines in every home. This brought about a new way to play games. Whole libraries were created for the Apple II, the Macintosh, and the greatest of all MS-DOS. Playing games on the computer offers a few different things that are not available on consoles, such as more robust control schemes using full keyboard and mouse inputs, and access to greater quantities of memory. Gaming on the computer leads to fully different experiences than those given on the console. As a general rule, especially in early days, a lot of the interaction in computer games is between the player and the computer, while a lot of especially early console games focused on a cooperative or competitive experience. Instead of providing a way to prove your superiority over a friend or family member, playing these early computer games tend to be more about solving a series of puzzles or otherwise showcasing the technical greatness of the machine.
In the last reading, you may have noticed I talked at relative length about my time playing the Oregon Trail on DOS, so I won't dive much more into that particular title. Instead, I will go farther back into my childhood, to the only reason I have any understanding of world geography: Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? This is a franchise which has had a multimedia cultural influence on me. I grew up not just playing the computer game (the one pictured here, and also a later edition), but also the board game, watching the television show, and most importantly through the musical stylings of Rockapella on the album of the same name. But this game is actually the first in the franchise. released by Broderbund in 1985. Fun fact, the game was originally released with a copy of the World Almanac and Book of Facts. In the game, the player character, a rookie in the ACME Detective Agency, must track down and apprehend criminals of the V.I.L.E. organization and their leader, the titular Carmen Sandiego. Gameplay consists mostly of menu navigation, using the graphical interface to investigate different locations, gather clues about the suspect, filing for an arrest warrant when enough information is gathered, and flying to different cities around the world. By solving enough cases and returning enough artifacts to their rightful location, the player ranks up, given more challenging cases until you eventually come face to face with Carmen herself. I went back to play this game, and honestly it is still pretty great. The only thing that doesn't fully stand up to the test of time are the actual geo-political factoids that fuel the game, making a few thing more challenging as references and hints do not hold true in the modern world.
Carmen Sandiego is one of many games that I feel would not work on consoles. These sorts of strategic games, ones for which more thought and more intricate variation of input is needed, do not work well on consoles. Consoles, and their ergonomic controllers and emphasis on graphical flashiness, are excellent for action games and sports, adventuring and immersion, but not for every style of game. Strategy games, I think are the best example of something that does not translate well to a controller. Not that it has not been tried, but it is a much smoother experience to command armies and control civilizations with the full capabilities of a computer over the specialization applied to game consoles.
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