GameBanshee Forums

1973 - before they became popular
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Ahem, the Tolkein books were popular long before you were even a gleam in your Pa's eye (grumble...young whippersnappers...grumble).

The Tolkien books were only mildly popular in Britain before they caught on in the US, around 1968, and had zero effect on American authors at that time. I know, because that was when I first began seeing the "Frodo Lives!" signs, and I was reviewing fiction on public radio. I also purchased my copy of LoTR from Dell paperbacks at that point. Oddly enough, Dell issued it without permission, and got their butts sued for doing so, but it really started the craze on the college campuses. Before then, you'd have been hard-pressed to find anyone who knew Tolkien; after that, Ballantine launched its fantasy series, and names like Dunsany (who influenced Tolkien so greatly), Lewis, Eddison, Cabell, MacDonald, etc, began showing up on American bookstore shelves.

Originally posted by fable
[and names like Dunsany (who influenced Tolkien so greatly), Lewis, Eddison, Cabell, MacDonald, etc, began showing up on American bookstore shelves. [/b]

OMG, a Lord Dunsany fan! But you left out William Hope Hodgson, whose works (including the ultra-creepy "The Boats of the Glen Carrig") are available on-line here:

http://www.creative.net/~alang/lit/horror/hodgson.sht

Enjoy.

Originally posted by free_fall
OMG, a Lord Dunsany fan! But you left out William Hope Hodgson, whose works (including the ultra-creepy "The Boats of the Glen Carrig")...

Ballantine issued The Night Land back in the late 1970s in paperback. I still treasure my copy.

I'm a woman!

I love role-playing although I didn't really get into it until I was at university.

The best PC games I ever played were Ultima Underworld I & II.
I've never really enjoyed other games quite as much as those.

Hiya UncleScratchy, very good to know that you are there. I had the Amiga not the Atari and I certainly remember loading data via a cassette player on the Electron that I had. What bliss in those days to hear the little jingle that meant the game was loaded successfully! Morrowind/Daggerfall is my all time favourite but some of those earlier games take some beating in terms of gameplay if not graphics! Glad to know you're here!

Originally posted by UncleScratchy
Well I'll be - another RPG dinosaur! Yay, JanB! Here I thought I was the only "graying" player (besides Fable ) on this forum. I would have said "mature player" but as a 52 year old guy and retired I'm still a kid at heart. I too got hooked on RPGs early on - I remember loading a dungeon crawler RPG on my first Atari (pre-8088 chip) via a tape cassette...

51 next week. Did you ever play Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves? That was an early favorite of mine on the Atari: hardly great a great CRPG, but it was fun picking up companions, buying weapons, and smashing thieves. I seem to recall it being around 1982 or so. About the same time, Chris Crawford came up with a typically unique design for a game called Excalibur, based on the Arthurian legends.

@JanB, good to meet you. Did you play the early Ultima games on the Amiga? I know Garriott wrote 'em for the unit.

Hi, good to meet you too! And yes, I absolutely loved the Ultima games until they got to 8 & 9 when I think Lord British had got fed up with his project and was more into online gaming (in my view). I still have all the games but haven't tried them on my Windows XP yet - too busy with Morrowind. Do any of you play multiplayer games?

And do you remember text adventures? I remember one called 'Wheel of Fortune'. In one of the puzzles you needed to get a coin out of a slot machine. Sometimes when you did it a tramp killed you and other times he didn't. It took me ages to realize that I had to work out whether the tramp was coming or going along the road. If he was going, I could steal the coin and if he was coming - I'd better watch out! Oh, those were the days!! But no Morrowind!

Originally posted by fable
51 next week.

Aha! Finally, we know the truth! There'll be a party for you in SYM whether you tell us the exact day or not

What does sym stand for?

Come along to Speak Your Mind and take a look at the madness we have on offer! Don't worry, they don't bite (too hard)

I have recently started playing online multiplayer games with my daughter. We both have a cable Broadband connection. My computer is fairly up to date and hers is my old one that wouldn't play Morrowind very well. It works well. So far we have completed Neverwinter Nights and have started Icewind Dale 2. No problems with Neverwinter at all but have had a problem with Icewind Dale in that we got part way through the game only to find that my server just wasn't showing up anymore even with saved games that were previously OK. Very frustrating.

Multiplayer gaming is fun but in my view could be difficult if you played with someone selfish who got all the chests first or who didn't play the game in the spirit that suited you! We are also addicted to Civ games and, when my daughter gets her copy of the add-on for Christmas, we shall play Civ 3. We may set certain rules of our own at first though (like not taking each others cities by force) in case that creates tension. Civ 3 should be good to play like this though as aggression doesn't seem to be a particularly successful tactic. Hopefully, it won't be like playing monopoly!