Computer games, a pretty big staple of my childhood if I do say so myself. Back before I had my Nintendo Wii (or just any gaming console) I had to rely on my computer to entertain my tiny little child brain. While I still use a computer to post frequently on my socials, this is just another can of worms.
So back in my hometown, we didn't have a high speed internet subscription at the time cuz my dad signed us up for a slower, landline based internet subscription known as "NetZero"
NetZero was a standard dial-up service where it would connect based off of your landline phone service. Needless to say it really wasn't the best, it was hard for me to access sites like YouTube or Webkinz and would have to resort to going to the library in order to access said sites. I was able to play SOME online flash games without it lagging, but there really wasn't much to do. What I would usually do was mess around on MS Paint and watch recordings of Cyberchase on Windows Media player, but in my pre teens, I would either go on Ebay or Fanfiction.net to entertain myself as well as making movies on a now redundant Pinnacle Studio 12. But before all my movie making, there was ONE thing that kept me entertained in my youth.
COMPUTER GAMES!
MY grandpa gifted me and my dad an old E-Machines computer when I was 5 (which is basically what I hinted at less than a sentence ago) and we still kind of use it at times, I'm currently archiving old videos from when I was 11-13 years old and saving them to our current computer. But when my dad finally set things up, my 5 year old self stumbled upon THIS!
This was an app called "E-games" where you could play free demos of mediocre to decent video games, I remember playing very frequently on this app until.....well..... I ran out of coins..... you see, while the games were technically "free" the currency to play them wasn't.... I forgot how to get currency for the app itself so I'll let my dad explain in a bit. But like anybody would, I'd be really upset when I ran out of coins. So my dad and I discovered that there were physical copies of some of the games we played on there that were not Limited to the following.
And a personal favorite that my dad is gonna discuss right about....now.
I mentioned in a previous post that there was one PC game in particular that I was hooked on, and that game was...
PLANTS VS ZOMBIES!
"brains!"
A demo version of this game came pre-loaded into the computer we got. I don't know why and I don't know how, but this one grabbed hold of my nervous system.
Basically, it's a simple "castle defense" game where plants are guarding a family's house after some sort of suburban apocalypse occurred, and packs of hungry zombies are trying to cross the lawn to eat them some brains.
Should you fail in your mission and one of the cartoon un-dead gets into the house, well...
"NOOOOOO!"
There are three different locations with a couple day or night environments for a total of five levels:
- Front Yard - Daytime
- Front Yard - Night Time
- Back Yard Pool
- Front Yard - Night Time with Fog Banks
- Roof
The demo version only lets you play so far, though, so I bought a copy of PVZ at the local WALL*MART and installed it .
Then I lost my job. 😭
There are only so many hours in the day that one can send out resumes and fill in on-line applications. When I wasn't job-hunting, I'd be zombie hunting.
Bottom line: I played every level, bought every plant and aced every bonus game. I maxed out the point counter at 999,990; it wouldn't turn over to a million.
Even now, years later and fully-employed I'll crank up the computer and play a few rounds, because I am just that pathetic!
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