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#SSI POOL OF RADIANCE CODE WHEEL MANUALS#
Large manuals full of expository text and information about the gameworld, and a code wheel. In addition to using four double-sided disks, Pool of Radiance required two With the doctor, of course, these materials involved additional fees.
#SSI POOL OF RADIANCE CODE WHEEL SOFTWARE#
In fact, the early history of home computing was almost entirely informed by a culture of software sharing and copying, as many of the computer clubs functioned essentially as game swap meets. Over the course of the 1980s and early 1990s, the industry had to educate consumers to convince them not to copy their floppies. As a barrier to piracy, a lot of the games employed off-disk copy protection in the form of manuals, maps, charts, printed graphics, and code wheels which were often creatively integrated into gameplay. Distinct from game consoles, home computers allowed full access to media production technologies such as disk creation. On each of the few times I was there, I was allowed to rifle through the boxes and play some of the games released only for IBM and Apple ][, systems far too expensive in the 1980s for my family. He must have been buying fifteen games a week for the three different computers set up in his study. Treated like a fine library, the doctor’s game collection was my projected masculine fantasy. My father brought me over there a few times, and I was instantly amazed by the bookshelves which housed games to the ceiling in nice-smelling oak with brass and silver accent lighting. Marriage and kids had not stopped this workaholic emergency room doctor from acquiring a large library full of games. On his list, but he had a whole lot of them. I’m not sure whether he actually owned all of the games that were Would then charge according to how many disks were used, not how many games Select from The List the games we would want to play. (i.e.: condoned by parents) to acquire games was to go through ‘The List’, aĭocument dozens of dot matrix computer-printed pages long. The more official procedure for our family FriendsĪnd I would sit at the back of the classroom copying and playing games and Students was viewed by teachers as an appropriate display of computer science aptitude. At this point in theĬomputers-as-pedagogical-tools debate, school computers were entirely misunderstoodīy teaching staff who had obviously never been trained to use them, so any use by Games were passed around with friendsĪt school on a nearly weekly basis. My fatherīrought Pool of Radiance (1988) home one day, copied from a physician friend at work on theīasis of the game program being the largest ever released for theĬommodore 64: four double-sided 5 ¼” floppy disks.
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Not enabled by consumption, at least not in its official capacity. Interestingly enough, my own experience with this box cover art was Pleasure derived from what is at best a skilled technical ability which readilyĮvokes a sense of perpetual nostalgia within a certain kind of game consumer and a certain kind of revulsion from most normally everyone else. With ‘heroic fantasy’ iconography fully outweigh any sense of aesthetic OfĬourse, like all infantile compulsions the negative connotations specifically associated Powerlessness and a strangely appealing masculine power trip fantasy, one whichįully grabbed hold of me as a precociously impressionable twelve-year old. Taken as a whole, these elements betray both a nerdy Metal and man-hair shine with equal precision. & Dragons tabletop fans, depicting a standard male power aestheticįound all over the best and worst of fantasy art and culture. Painting, an artist well-known to all Dungeons The beauty is perhaps less obvious: a classic Clyde Caldwell fantasy Just look at the simultaneouslyīeautiful and hideously atrocious box cover art and you’ll quickly understand I hesitated before starting this one again.