Trip Down Digital Memory Lane

Recently, while updating my Myspace page, for some reason, entirely out of the blue, I started reminiscing about where my "Online Socializing" first started. And then nostalgia began flooding back, as if someone set off a bomb under the "Glen's Memories" dam, situated aways up the River Recollection.

I have been a gamer my entire life. And as anyone in the community knows, gamers INVENTED the concept of online socializing LONG before Myspace and Facebook and all the rest made it the all-encompassing lifestyle choice it has become today.

I'm thinking of course, along the lines of X-Band for the SNES and Sega Genesis. But I will come back to that. First, let's go back even farther.

Like I said, I have been a gamer my entire life. I happened to be born during the headiest days of electronic gaming, in the year 1980. Not the genesis of electronic gaming, by far, but a golden age for the genre none-the-less.

Gamers have always been social creatures. Back when I got my first console, an Atari 2600, alot of the games for the system were MEANT to be played with friends, and 100 percent of the games were so much funner WITH someone to experience them with.

Back then, you didn't have the option of logging into your Myspace account, blogging about this or that topic important to you, messaging your friends, and such. If you wanted to hang out, you invited your friend(s) over to play some games. And it was during those gaming hours, (often into the wee hours of the night), when everyone talked about life in general, and why Nicole down the street had to be so damn hot and yet not single. And of course, being young men, we would all brag about what we would do with said Nicole if she ever gave us 5 minutes of her hallowed existence to share, (which she never did).

And then came my first TRUE experience with online socializing. X-Band for the SNES. It was heaven. Here was a service for gamers to interact in ways that went beyond the digital beatdowns we commenced against one another in the gaming arena. It had E-Mail, ranking ladders, a point system, profiles, avatars, the works. And mind you, this was 1995. Back when the Internet itself was still, technically speaking, a bewildering new frontier and somewhat of a novelty. Oh the hours I spent playing Super Mario Kart with other X-Banders across the nation.

Then came my foray into computers. My very first online connection was through AOL 2.5. Those were the days. Get in a chat room with your friends, download the latest "Progs" to terrorize said chat room, "punting" people through the IM system.....heady stuff.

My first online gaming experiences bring back fond memories. I started out with Tribes. LOVED it. It wasn't like all the other Frag-fest online games then offered. Not only did it introduce "teamwork" in an online shooter environment, which up to that point offered pretty much nothing but "deathmatch" debauchery and mindless, shoot, kill, repeat entertainment, but it also offered something else that sticks fondly in my mind. Verticality! God how I loved my jetpack.

And then came Tribes 2, which, if you were a Tribes player, was huge when it came out. Not only did it improve on every aspect of the game, but it incorporated online socializing INTO the game itself. Forums. Chat rooms. Clan and Personal Profiles. Unfortunately, as in most other online communites, the few spoiled it for the many, and it ended up being a failed experiment of sorts. But the memories will last forever...

Then came the MMORPG's. God. Crack addicts have nothing on the addiction we gamers have with these universes. I am betting many a relationship has failed because a gamer was more emotionally involved with their online personas than they were their significant others, who soon realized competing for time and attention with these online worlds is futile when your boyfriend/girlfriend is a hardcore fan of said world.

I've played my share of course. Star Wars Universe, EVE Online, LOTRO, WoW, even all the way back to Ultima Online. But I was never an addict of MMORPG's, and most likely never will be. The fact that I no longer have an active account with any of those games just mentioned alludes to that. But for you MMORPG fanatics out there, more power to you.

Anyways, I guess my point is, for all you MySpace and Facebook people out there who seem to think that said websites invented Online Networking, think again. Us gamers, (as is almost always the case), have been eating from that pie for a LONG time now. We baked the damn thing.