Pirates, floppy disks and my reasons for unconditional love for the graphic adventures of the last century

I debut on this website, it is not that you need to know the data, but it is always good to put yourself in context, with the gender I made connect with one of the most envied and misunderstood sectors of art and technology. On more than one occasion I have been able reflect about the reasons that lead me to turn on the game console and not dedicate myself to pounding on the keys of a piano, learning yoga, signing up for dance classes or joining a futsal team.

In addition to my inability to perform the activities I have listed above, I believe that video games are the perfect escape valve for me. Creativity, challenges, fun, competition and certain doses of art have gone forging my playful character in front of a remote or keyboard. Then I will try to offer you my reasons to love the graphic adventures of the 90s. Trust me. They are not few.

The pleasure of analogue waiting

Surely you, who are on the other side of the screen, have not known the epoch where the video games were not downloaded from an app store on your mobile phone, tablet or laptop. The 90's They observed this art through huge computer equipment, not portable at all, with monitors that could be validated today as weight lifting. Also, when you decided to buy the Title

the one you wanted to play, huge cardboard boxes they lined up at the counters of department stores. Within themAs if it were a magic lamp, they waited impatiently for the player instructions, Floppy and, on many occasions, analog devices to avoid that other players could install the game without having bought it, as you can see in the bottom picture.

So once you had decided on the video game in question, you had bought it and opened it, you should arm yourself with courage and use your computer with Windows 95if you didn't have yet Windows 3.1, and spend a few hours installing the title in question. And I say hours, because surely there were incompatibilities with drivers, some disc had dirt or go you to know what setback had touched you on that occasion. Definitely, the gaming experience started long before double clicking on the graphic adventure icon.

Humor and graphics in antediluvian times

I believe that these two concepts must go together. The graphic adventures of the moment, despite the differences between different creators and studios, had a link in the ability to generate unforgettable scenes and characters through the art of placing one pixel after another. What is known today as pixel art, and who is offering us indie titles completely absorbent then it was a statement of intents. We have these means, but we know all the springs so that this idea that we have in our head goes ahead.

Ideas. I think part of charm of video games at that time is that they should not please the public in their graphic part. Nowadays we can play titles that are simple wrappers, as happens in the field of cinema, but that lack any kind of interesting content. In the 90's, the fundamental characteristic that united graphic adventures, some escaped from this cut, was the legendary humor

of which they showed and that decades later we have not seen again reflected in the art of the video game. If you want An example of it, I recommend that you click on the video that I leave on these lines.

Patience-proof disconnect

Finally, because I do not want to do a thesis on the graphic adventures of the 90s, it is impossible to ignore that these titles could not be played together with an internet connectionsimply because it did not exist, at least in most homes. And maybe you think this point is more of a disadvantage, which is it, that a advantage, but it all depends on the glass with which you look at it. It is true that not advance the development of the story that the video game brings you can test your patience, in addition to the resistance of your keyboard, mouse and screen, but also invited to bring friends, or cousins, to home and assemble a team with which to attack the screen.

The games they were only kept in the HDD, you could not chat with other players for advice, you couldn't play on cooperative mode, or perform any of the actions that we are used to today. But what can you expect from a time when we had fun ringing all the doorbell bells, telephoning strangers' houses, spinning a roulette wheel to do so, hallucinating with 8-bit soundtracks

or trying to envy him walkman that we had just received for our birthday.

I will finish this article with my must see graphic adventure list of that time. They are not the best. They are not the most original, they are not even the best known. They are simply the titles that made me enter this incredible world. I'll start by highlighting The Secret of Monkey Island, an adventure where you must get into the skin of a small-time pirate. I will continue recommending Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, one of the continuations of the mythical films and where we had to look for the lost civilization of Atlantis. If you like magic, with Simon the Sorcerer You combined that art with an original humor like none. The Legend of Kyrandia He threw us in front of an imaginary world dominated by an evil magician. Broken Sword, whose success has been around until relatively recently, invited us to tour the world and search for a mysterious serial killer. Finally, I can't forget about Where is Carmen Sandiego?, maybe a bit removed from the theme, but that kept me glued to the screen longer than my parents would have liked. Distant times, extraordinary memories.