The Games of my Life

Back in time, to a 1982 game I played on 1983, on my first computer, a 48K ZX Spectrum: The Hobbit.

This game… well, it has a story. A personal one. I guess I could say that this game changed my life - as much as anything can change one’s life.

So you’ll have to bear with me - or, of course, skip this post. Because this one is as much about “why I’m the way I am” as it is about the game - perhaps more. And it’s a long one.

The Hobbit is a text adventure, with some graphics, but quite limited ones - the computer it was originally written on, the Spectrum, had existed only for months, and, besides, Melbourne House (the software house) would never be known for good graphics. The only good one is the loading screen. But, at the time, they were impressive - most text adventures, for “bigger” computers, were really text-only. Also, the parser was quite advanced for the time: while other games only supported 2-word commands in the form “verb noun” (e.g. “get sword” or “kill troll”), The Hobbit supported commands such “take the short sword then viciously attack the troll with it”. You could also give instructions to NPCs, and they also had personalities of their own, they would get into fights, move around independently of you, and so on. That made the game much more unpredictable than most “standard” adventures, which could have solutions printed in magazines - not in The Hobbit, as one never knew what would really happen - “solutions” could, at most, tell you how to solve some specific puzzles.

And now, for the personal part. You see, that game was one of the half dozen or so my father got with the Spectrum, in 1983, and the only one that wasn’t a simple action game. Now, as a 9 year old Portuguese kid, I knew virtually no English at the time. Not enough to read a book in English, not enough even to read a kids’ book, and certainly not enough to play a text adventure game in English.

Nor did I have the slightest idea of who Tolkien was, what Middle Earth was… I had never read a fantasy book in my life.

So, naturally, I put the game away - “boring text stuff”, I thought. And I played the other ones to death. But, soon, I got bored with them… yet I was still fascinated with the Spectrum, and that “strange text game” continued to intrigue me. So, I tried to find something more about it. I found some translated instructions, which at least told me how I was supposed to play the game - but that didn’t teach me English, of course. I read newspaper reviews (it wouldn’t be until 3 years later that I bought my first Speccy magazine, the 3rd issue of “Your Sinclair”), which said great things about the game, and, from them, I discovered some small things. Namely, that it was based upon a book, also called “The Hobbit”.

Which, being a curious kid, I asked my father to buy. A couple of weeks later, I had a nice Portuguese edition of the book. Which I read. At nine. (I only read Lord of the Rings at 11, but that’s not a children’s book at all.)

Next year, I got English for the first time at school, and I began to learn. And I always came back to the game, and a couple other text adventure games I later got. I also became more and more curious about fantasy, Middle Earth, and Tolkien.

So, this single game made the following changes in my life:

• it got me interested in reading “bigger” books (I had only read kids’ books until then)
• it make me discover that I really loved reading
• it got me interested in fantasy (which is still my favorite genre today)
• it got me interested in Tolkien and Middle Earth (LotR is still my favorite book, along with The Silmarillion)
• it inspired me to learn English
• it got me interested in more “complex” computer games (when everyone else only enjoyed the simpler, reflex-based ones - even today, many people still think of computer / video games as “dumb, basic kids’ stuff”)
• by “making” me change my mind from my initial impression of the game, it made me shake off some common prejudices, such as “if I don’t understand it instantly, then it can’t be good” - something most people continue to believe, even as adults
• related to the above, it made me discover that there are some fascinating things out there that most people don’t know about, because of pre-conceptions and intellectual laziness - but which, with a bit of initial effort and thought, can be wonderful experiences
• it made me discover the exhilarating feeling of solving a problem, or a puzzle, by thinking - a discovery which, incidentally, would be quite useful to me, decades later, as a sysadmin

I could shorten most of the above in one way: I’m a geek mainly because of that game. It was the turning point in my life - maybe if it wasn’t for it, I would have ended up being “normal”, “average” - enjoying radio music, being obsessed with soccer (watching, not playing, of course ), TV, cars and dumb women… and not caring about fantasy, thinking, or even simply reading.

I would be just like everyone else. What a terrible, horrifying thought. Thanks, Melbourne House.