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Nostalgia For Sale

After purchasing a few games on the GOG sale last week, Steam has started up its Summer Sale to entice me into buying a few more games that I probably won’t ever play past tonight. Buying games for me is an addiction and I might need help but, for now, I think I’m just happy that I can catch up with some old favorites and catch up on some games that I have never played before.

I ended up buying Crysis and Star Wars: Dark Forces last week during the GOG sale. Dark Forces got me nostalgic for old Quake engine games so this week I ended up buying Quake 1 and Quake 2 from Steam. I was never much of a PC gamer because my dad, a photographer, always bought Macs and they weren’t meant for gaming, or at least that is what he always told me. I also picked up Abzu and Half-Life 1 during the Steam sale.

I just played about an hour of Quake 1 and it is still fun to be in those old environments. The gameplay is pretty solid and it doesn’t look terrible on my gaming rig. I tried to bump up the frame rate but it didn’t work so I started searching around the Steam forums for tips and it surprised me that people are still really into Quake. People mod that game to make it look presentable on newer PCs, some even have taken to making old mods work on new machines, and I got stuck on one topic reading about how to make the official soundtrack from Nine Inch Nails work on modern machines that don’t use CD audio.

Suffice it to say, Quake is still very much loved by people and that makes me really happy as a person who loves games. I am heartened by the fact that so many people out there are doing the work to make games like this playable for chumps like me who have no desire to put in the leg work. I wish companies would set aside funds to keep their old projects alive or, at least, allow the community to do so without fear of litigious consequences.

Abzu is gorgeous!

Even if I don’t ever play my Steam version of Quake again, I’m happy that I was transported back to junior high once more. I’m happy that I found a copy of the soundtrack and put that in for 20 minutes. I’m glad that the internet is still open enough for me to be able to recreate my past for a few minutes. It seems like with the way things are going things might not always be this easy.