Age of Empires 2... now in HD?

While eating breakfast in front of YouTube, I'm watching some random AOE vids just to see what's out there, and I see "Age of Empires II HD". I'm thinking that's cool, some dedicated fans went back and upped the graphics of a beloved old game. I've seen that a few times now, like with System Shock - fans have created a whole slew of modules and add-ons, and even a loader to manage them. But AOE2 HD is no fan work, its an official release! And its coming out on Steam this week! And its only $20! What crazy timing. Life is funny that way, but usually the butt of the joke is you.

As cool as this new development is, its not what I'm doing right now. I'm saying goodbye to old games forever, and either tossing or selling the material components. I'm also trying to close out the older stuff before it becomes inaccessible forever, like the first System Shock game that I couldn't play and had to try to experience through playthroughs.

I was going to dive straight into Planescape: Torment, but I was concerned it might be too much of a mental shift in user interface, graphics, and even standards of what is a good game (a standard which moves slowly, but noticeably over this long a time interval). I'm trying to get back into the 1990s mindset, so I can experience it the way it was meant to be. Of course that can't truly work, but I think I can meet it part way. If anything, this newly updated AOE 2 reminds me of my mission to catch up.

I wonder if I should play some Fallout (original) first, since Planescape is also an RPG. I've always meant to replay it, and if not now, then when? But then that makes me think I should go back as far as Wasteland, but that might be pushing it too far back. Its tough enough to get back into 1990s games, let alone 1980s games.

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I still don't feel quite up to Planescape, but I do feel like Age of Empires 2. I check the software archive, and it looks like I never imaged my discs. I check the retail boxes, but the discs are missing; I don't feel like digging around in the attic for them. But I do have one more box, Age of Empires 2 Gold Edition, and its heavy... and unopened! Not sure why I bought this, it must have been on sale, or maybe the "bonus maps" attracted me, but I never used it. So now I will be playing something both old and new.

Age of Empires 1, and the ROR expansion, installed and played fine (except for some minor color problems in how the sea looked), so I'm expecting no trouble running AOE 2. First, to create a disc image, so I don't have to play with the disc in the drive (which is just noisy and slow). I/O error, perhaps some old copy protection? Looks like it might be a software error with my ISO maker. A quick investigation doesn't yield an easy solution, so I'll just play from disc for a little while; at least I can make sure the discs are OK.

So, I install the two discs, and it feels like they just bundled the original and expansion in a new box. The two games don't seem to be integrated into any whole, the way the AOE 3 expansions built upon each other. Not that it probably matters much, I think AOE 2 was a much more standalone game, whereas in AOE 3 you manage each civilization over time (Home City, cards, etc.). Let's see what software versions we have, and if there are any patches. Oh that's lame, I have to re-insert disc 1 to play the original game, and I did a full install. I really need to image these discs.

Flipping through the manual - this game seems more sophisticated than AOE 3, in some ways. I don't remember that it had this much detail. I remember this main screen; and letting the background sounds of a medieval town loop for a while (I think AOE 2 Conquerors did it even better).. I create my profile, set my screen size to the max, 1280x1024. I'll start with the tutorial, why not try everything. Uh oh, graphics glitches worse than anything I saw in AOE 1. And finally I can check the About - this is version 2.0a.

Already I am remember why I loved AOE 2, its got all sorts of historical trappings. Now to check on that patch level. I don't have anything in the archive. OK, 2.0a was the last. Now about that graphics error. Set desktop background to black? Restart game, no. Open control panel, display, screen resolution - change nothing just leave it open. That works. I remember this worked for Diablo 2. I don't even want to know why. And finally, to stop the intro movies from playing, add NoStartup to the shortcut.

No, not quite done, need to find where the game is storing my screenshots. Oh, of course, they are in= "\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Age of Empires II". Strange, screenshots from the story boards are in 800x600, but in-game shots are at the 1280 level I selected; I guess the former are a fixed size. I'm already looking forward to seeing what this will look like in the HD version.

retro vs vintage

Is playing old games retro or vintage?

For a long time, it was just me being too poor to afford to keep up with the latest PC hardware, and the high price of new games. Wait a few years, and it becomes affordable. Now stay there, a year or two behind the curve, and now your gaming hobby is quite affordable.

By definition, my old hardware and software are vintage, i.e. old. Some of it is old enough to be antique, at least in tech reckoning. If I actively sought to play or make games in an older style, that would be retro. But I'm not consciously choosing old styles and techniques, just for the sake of being different. I'm choosing to spend time on it now because I've always wanted to, it just took a while to get to it.

But some old games I skipped on purpose, or didn't know about them at the time. Is that retro, for me to be interested in them? I don't think so, I consider it filling gaps in my history. This distinction is of minor importance to me, because I keep seeing references to 8-bit gaming being somehow cool, and it makes me nauseous, like anything to do with fashion. We used the tools we had at the time, to do what gaming we could. If I nostalgia for anything in the past, its because its attached to some element of lost and fading youth, not because of fetishism, and certainly not because things were better in the old days.

Anyway,  I wandered off on this tangent because I am trying to listen to the "1UP.com Retronauts" podcast. Good podcasts are hard to find, and even more so good gaming podcasts. I listened to a show about Double Dragon, which was one of my favorite arcade games. Sadly, most of the podcast was devoted to console ports, so this may not be the podcast for me. And now I see in the queue an episode about Day of the Tentacle - something vaguely familiar, that I will need to research before listening to.

So I read up on Lucasfilm Games (now called LucasArts) and its like discovering an old room in my house that I never knew was there. I completely missed out on Maniac Mansion, and its successor, Day of the Tentacle. I don't think I missed it, but more avoided it. I played almost everything Infocom ever made, and I think I was about done with text parser games. I remember as they began to decline they started experimenting with graphics, and I dismissed it as an act of desperation.

Games like The Secret of Monkey Island didn't help, as it made attaching graphics to adventure games seem even more stupid. Of course, more and better graphics in games was inevitable, but I didn't get the impression there was adequate attention to story and atmosphere, or at least gameplay. I think this is why my gaming went into such dormancy during the 90s. It was a time of transition, from the experimental days of the 70s and 80s, to the commodity nature of gaming now. A lot of accepted standards and conventions weren't quite set yet, and there were a lot of evolutionary dead ends. But I can see that I missed a lot of good stuff too.

By the way, I think cultural decades don't begin and end necessarily where the calender does. What I refer to as 90s gaming actually started in the late 80s, and ended in the late 90s, probably with Half-Life. Thinking about that some more... I think Wasteland (1988) was one of the last such games of the 80s. Fallout (1997) and Fallout 2 (1998) were good games, but they belong to the quirky UI and pre-3d graphics of the 90s. Fallout 3 (2008) is what a standard 2000s game looks like. Its too soon to think of what a standard 2010s game is going to look like.

I missed out on Loom (1990), which used music in the UI. I think I actually tried one of the Indiana Jones off a demo disc (from a gaming magazine?), but it made no good impression. I still don't know what Sam & Max is. And of course I missed Grim Fandango (1998). Like System Shock, its often near the top of the list of all-time best games, and like System Shock, I will probably not be able to play it. And that was pretty much the end of Lucasfilm Games, and adventure games, for me at least.

I see an explosion of to-do items from here. I should see if I can find and play Grim Fandango, or more realistically, find a video playthrough. I should see what other adventure games I missed and add them to my list (I already bought Syberia on Steam). There's a lot more to say about the various ages of gaming, and what we thought about gaming at the time. For now, though, I have read at least the Wiki entries, and can listen to that podcast.

{days later}

I listened to the podcast and it was more and less then I expected. They got the original creators of the game on, and it was an interesting fun time, but I didn't really learn much about the game. Sometimes you don't get what you expected, but you still get something good anyway.