I loved this game so much growing up, and this was a great article about it. It captured all the things I loved, and covered a lot of history I never knew.
One thing that caught my eye was the author’s complaint about no in-game exposition or tutorials at the start of the game. It seems silly in 2020, but in 1994 it was common for games to come with a reasonably lengthy manual printed on dead trees that explained all those things—or else there were printed strategy guides and magazines that talked about clever tricks. I read a borrowed copy of that book cover to cover before I even had a computer to actually run the game on. I still have a copy in my garage.
My first copy was pirated on 3.5” floppy disks from the school computer lab. Eventually I bought a copy to get the manual. Later on I bought a copy to get it on CD. Eventually I bought another copy to get the whole original collection on CD. And last year I played the reboots which got me nostalgic enough to buy the original and apocalypse on steam.
I had X-COM:enemy unknown [ufo defense] for the PlayStation, the manual for that thing was huge. It had a tutorial in it that walked you through a mission as well as told you how all the buildings worked (even the ones unlocked later in the game like the psylab).
I do miss the days where you'd get a physical manual. Nowadays you just get a slip of paper with an advertisement and a registration page. Saying that though, with live updates a lot of manuals would be out of date after a few years. I dont think the tome that is the world of warcraft manual is relevant to the modern game. Though maybe for classic.
One thing that caught my eye was the author’s complaint about no in-game exposition or tutorials at the start of the game. It seems silly in 2020, but in 1994 it was common for games to come with a reasonably lengthy manual printed on dead trees that explained all those things—or else there were printed strategy guides and magazines that talked about clever tricks. I read a borrowed copy of that book cover to cover before I even had a computer to actually run the game on. I still have a copy in my garage.
My first copy was pirated on 3.5” floppy disks from the school computer lab. Eventually I bought a copy to get the manual. Later on I bought a copy to get it on CD. Eventually I bought another copy to get the whole original collection on CD. And last year I played the reboots which got me nostalgic enough to buy the original and apocalypse on steam.
Good times. :-)