What if Steam had been around in 1988?

boing
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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/04/what-if-steam-was-around-in-19.html

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Man. I remember the incredible promise of the rainbow Quantum Link graphic, and marveling at the possibilities if only my father would hook up the modem and subscribe.

A few years ago, I discovered that there’s a Quantum Link cloned service you can connect to via C64 emulator, so I did.

It was just OK.

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Try 1980.

It folded in '83, so I guess you could imagine an '88 version for some reason.

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Early DRM would be a simple quiz over the instruction book that came in the box with the game: "What is the first word on page 23, second paragraph? "

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Forgot the embed I think…

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Oh man, I remember those; god help you now if lostdocs doesn’t have a scan of the old manual.

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Nobody in 1988 was cool enough to recognize the phrase “grand theft auto?” Hasn’t that been lawspeak since… well… the auto? Before that, they probably had “grand theft horse.”

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And they probably cut the ‘e’ off the end to be cool, too.

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If you were lucky.

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I wouldn’t mind playing that Phillip Glass game

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I had a game that included a circular slide rule-type thingy where the game asked a question and you had to line up several concentric circles to get the answer. It was cute, but a pain.

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Me Too Me Too Me Too Me Too Me Too Me Too Me Too
Me Toooooooooooooooooo
Me Too Me Too Me Too Me Too Me Too Me Too Me Too
Meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee To

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Yes, the term is:

Perhaps one of the more famous examples is Monkey Island’s “Dial-a-Pirate”, because how can you forget a name like that?

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Interesting, thanks. It was a baseball game, fwiw.

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If Steam had the power over gaming in 1988 that it has today, I’m not sure video games would still be a thing by now.

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The dial-a-pirate copy protection thing didn’t work very well, I had a single piece of paper with the data copied and re-tabulated into a form that could be read much quicker. Better than Jet Set Willy’s supremely annoying tiny code chart that was sooooo easy to misread, then you got another go, then you had to reload the game from scratch - which meant rewinding the audio cassette and waiting another three minutes.

It seems nothing has changed in the world of DRM.

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