first encounter

...with william gibson's neuromancer.

it was the late eighties, i can't be any more certain than that. at that time, i was hanging out at a little "computer store" in b.f. homes paranaque that sold (nudge nudge, wink wink) computer games. this was also the near the opening of the p.c. age, but at this time it was already the p.c.-xt that was becoming the must-have. 8 or 16 megahertz, as i recall (and where are we now? gigahertz). the 5 1/4" floppy was still the medium of choice (360Kb capacity), the 3.5" microfloppy at 1.2Mb still rather rare.

at that time, the games were still very much MS-DOS based, and one of them in particular caught my fancy. oh, there were the lord british ultima things, and the leisure suit / space quest stuff, but this game was different.

the game was neuromancer, and it was published by interplay.

i'd always been interested in computers ever since i saw the texas instruments ti-99/4a way back in '83 (third year high school), and i'd used a commodore 64 while working as an encoder for a pastor at a local church; but their games were more reflex-based (and my reflexes in that regard suck. hehehe).

this game was different. it was more cerebral, in a way (although it did have its arcade-like moments - especially when dealing with a.i.'s). kinda like a mystery (though no dead bodies), with a computer hacker as a protagonist. this concept clicked with me and while the graphics were clunky (EGA resolution at best), the challenge of upgrading "your" hacking skills while uncovering the mystery both inside and outside the "matrix" certainly gelled with my nerdish and science fiction inclinations.

all i can say in hindsight is that it certainly took a good chunk of my time getting to the end of the game...

funny side note: computers in those times had a "turbo" button. this was one of those games where activating that function actually sped up gameplay. not fun when dealing with a.i.'s out to "flatline" you.

they never did a sequel, though.

for me, the sequel to the story was to happen many years later - i found the novel on which the game was based on.

and that's another story.