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What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 10:37 am
by Mako Koiwai
http://slate.com/id/2212108
... I was a big fan of CompuServe !

Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 10:47 am
by Jeff Shyu
1996? i was already in college, and sporting a somewhat more modern connection. built out own LAN w/ retarded coax wires. shooting virtual rockets at people across the hallway in the dorms on quake.
now if we're talking 1990, i would borrow Aaron's BEST account, and log on to a BBS using my awesome 9600, and find the next cool addon for Afterdark, and/or stare at the fractal screen saver. that, or i'd ride my bike over to his house to play on his sega, because my mom would never buy a console for me.
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 11:02 am
by Pat O\'Neal
Spending $500 to $1000 a month on long-distance bills to Boston racing stock cars on Papyrus'
Hawaii online beta racing servers. The graphics (by today's standards anyway) were horrible, the physics were laughable, cheating was rampant and we had more fun than should have been legal. One of the first online racing leagues,
HAL (Hawaii Ace League) still exists today and I still stay in contact with my many friends there.
Pat.
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 11:30 am
by Michael Palero
Jeff Shyu wrote:1996? i was already in college... shooting virtual rockets at people across the hallway in the dorms on quake.
YOU HAVE LOST THE LEAD
Speaking of Quake,
http://www.QuakeLive.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; is now open to the public!
Frag your friends from work with firefox or explorer!
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 11:31 am
by Jeff Shyu
Michael Palero wrote:Jeff Shyu wrote:1996? i was already in college... shooting virtual rockets at people across the hallway in the dorms on quake.
YOU HAVE LOST THE LEAD
Speaking of Quake,
http://www.QuakeLive.com" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; is now open to the public!
Frag your friends from work with firefox or explorer!
the only time i ever lost in quake was to aaron.
pretty sure that was because aaron spent the entire day while working at the computer lab, playing.
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 1:11 pm
by Aaron Goldsmith
Jeff Shyu wrote:
the only time i ever lost in quake was to aaron.
pretty sure that was because aaron spent the entire day while working at the computer lab, playing.
Hell no.. I did that after hours.. at work.
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 3:10 pm
by Will Kalman
In 1996, I was working for the publisher of GameFan magazine. Our corp offices moved into the same building as the GameFan guys and they were going to school us "PC guys" in Quake since they were gamers extraordinaire.
The beating was so bad, some of them were on the verge of tears. }:)
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 3:20 pm
by Jeff Shyu
early quake was awesome because you had so many people who hadn't transitioned from the keyboard turning days of wolfenstien. could literally run circles around those guys.
course, i'm probably one of those "dinosaurs" now, with my inability to play FPS on a console controller.
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 3:50 pm
by Jason Uyeda
Jeff Shyu wrote:early quake was awesome because you had so many people who hadn't transitioned from the keyboard turning days of wolfenstien. could literally run circles around those guys.
course, i'm probably one of those "dinosaurs" now, with my inability to play FPS on a console controller.
Wasn't the transition really from Doom II.... Come on... The top guys didn't really have any probs transitioning, it's not like Thresh didn't adapt
In '96 I had already been working in games for 3 years after retiring from the Street Fighter scene. More importantly tho, '96 was the year the Grand Sport C4 was made which would be my first autocross car several years later...
Will, were those the GameFan offices near the 101 off Cheeseboro?
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 3:54 pm
by Jeff Shyu
i was driving a ford escort back then, when i could get it away from the parents.
aaron was driving a tracel.. at least his was a manual.
didn't get into cars until i got the 914 in.. err.. 1998?
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 4:15 pm
by Tom Berry
I was driving a red RX3-SP !
Cool car !
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 4:21 pm
by Kurt Rahn
Tom Berry wrote:I was driving a red RX3-SP !
Cool car !
That was a cool car!
I was in grad school with a one-year-old son. Drove a black 92 Civic si...loved that car.
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 4:23 pm
by Kurt Rahn
Kurt Rahn wrote:Tom Berry wrote:I was driving a red RX3-SP !
Cool car !
That was a cool car!
I was in grad school with a one-year-old son. Drove a black 92 Civic si...loved that car. And I got my Net connection from a 9600 modem through The Well.
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 4:27 pm
by Aaron Goldsmith
Jason Uyeda wrote:
Wasn't the transition really from Doom II.... Come on... The top guys didn't really have any probs transitioning, it's not like Thresh didn't adapt
In '96 I had already been working in games for 3 years after retiring from the Street Fighter scene. More importantly tho, '96 was the year the Grand Sport C4 was made which would be my first autocross car several years later...
Will, were those the GameFan offices near the 101 off Cheeseboro?
Well.. a ton of folks could still get by in Doom II, but Duke and Descent just made them fodder, so yeah.. by the time you were doing the +mlook most poeple in the scene had switched. 96 was the year I figured out I didn't want to be a games programmer like
my brother when i could just get paid a bunch of money right then for the computer knowledge i'd learned on my own. Turned out it took a lot longer for that plan to work out than I thought at the time.
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 4:35 pm
by Jeff Shyu
descent.. hahaha.. that game was awesome in the doors.
everyone else had a terrible time with the whole notion of not having an "up and down".
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 5:50 pm
by Michael Palero
Jason Uyeda wrote:
In '96 I had already been working in games for 3 years after retiring from the Street Fighter scene.
Did someone say, Street Fighter?!

WALLSTREET Fighter IV!
QCF+P: FOR-CLO-SURE!!
F,D,Df+P: Financial Meltdown
cB,F+P: Sonic Bloomberg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlpsvq0k4MI

Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 6:39 pm
by Steve Ekstrand
I was driving a 94 Z28 M6.... In teal. And an 87 Shelby Lancer.
I was working for an insane boss who thought we could run joint ventures in the former Soviet Union or in China with an office full of macs running all mac originated software.
He kept screaming isn't there a Russian computer somewhere with filemaker Pro or Pagemaker installed???? No, G there probably isn't.
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 7:20 pm
by Ethan West
First grade.
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 7:47 pm
by Eric Clements
Stay at home Dad, '86 Audi 5000CS Quattro Turbo
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 8:20 pm
by Will Kalman
Jason Uyeda wrote:Will, were those the GameFan offices near the 101 off Cheeseboro?
Yep
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Wed Apr 01, 2009 9:48 pm
by Greg Peng
Ah, Quake Capture the Flag started my nocturnal habit of secretly gaming well past midnight on school nights in high school, and it unfortunately carried over into college. I don't play those types of games as much now, but I still stay up way later than I should.

Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 9:19 am
by Leonard Cachola
Greg Peng wrote:Ah, Quake Capture the Flag started my nocturnal habit of secretly gaming well past midnight on school nights in high school, and it unfortunately carried over into college. I don't play those types of games as much now, but I still stay up way later than I should.

Same here. Lots of late nights lost on CTF and Deathmatch to the iD games. :gpower: Unfortunately, those late night habits still carry over years later. :unimpressed: As for 1996, I was graduating from college over the summer while being photo editor, cartoonist, and night production manager on the newspaper staff there. Once summer ended, I got my first real job - a Pre-Press gig not too far from home.
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 10:14 am
by Bob Beamesderfer
Working on the Business desk at the Times, driving '94 Miata, fixing up the house we had in Long Beach.
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 10:16 am
by Jayson Woodruff
What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Lets see
First year in collage, lived, worked and went to school on campus through the summer. My '91 Nissan pick up saw only 3000miles that year. Learned what an engineer is. My one and only 'womanizing' year, dorm life was awsome. Learned C programming language (not C++) and simple HTML (Geocities ROCKED!). Rich kid in my dorm bought a computer with a 1 GIGAbyte hard drive (what's a gigabyte?).
BTW, just the other day FSN played a 'classic' dodger game from 1995. I wasn't so upset that they called the game a 'classic', but I did get bothered that you could see a distinctive 'old' style in hair and clothes.
Jay W
Re: What Were You Doing in 1996 ?
Posted: Thu Apr 02, 2009 10:18 am
by Max Hayter
Driving around in a 92 LT1 Vette with an incredibly hot blond I was dating. I wonder if it was the Vette? :unimpressed: