little. yellow. different. A weblog by Ernie Hsiung

newly digital

(Going by the meme of people writing about their early experiences with technology, I decided to throw my hat into the ring. There are two stories that come into mind, but the second one is incredibly personal and borderline disturbing. Not quite ready to write about that yet. Mental note: maybe later.)

My dad refused to get me a Nintendo.

Nintendos were on par with sodas, dessert after dinner, cable television — things that were created for no other intension than to get me off the disciplined path of academia and become a lazy Americanized slob-bastard. I remember while my parents were remodelling a house that they leased during Christmas time, a neighbor came up to him.

“Yeah, I’m getting our kid a Nintendo set. You should get your boy one.”
My dad would then look stunned, then grin, shaking his head excitedly. “No no no… he needs more homework!” He emphasizes the word “homework,” in case the neighbor confused it with any other word that could connotate anything even remotely enjoyable, and makes writing motions on an imaginary piece of paper as he saying this, like his air-math problems will spring to life and I will suddenly start doing long division.

And everyone wonders why I’m so fucked up.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the Nintendo. Dad wouldn’t get one for me, end of story. In elementary school, I always ran to Paul’s house, where we would play Kid Icarus and Super Mario Brothers, and I would rummage through his issues of Nintendo Power until it was 5pm or Paul’s dad burst through the door drunk.

My dad gave me the next best thing, I suppose. An IBM PC-XT, with a black-and-amber monitor and a Hercules graphics card.

Ernie, age 9: There’s no graphics on this computer.
Dad: Yes there is, the sales guy at the computer at the computer said so. Here’s the floppy disk — load up the program and press the Enter key when it asks to load IMAGE1.GIF. It’s a picture of a castle or something.

And that, folks, was my first ever experience with a .gif file. If my father knew he had inadvertantly opened up the door to the primary method I get gay pornography, he would have thrown the computer out the window and I would be playing with an abacus.

Since buying computer games for the IBM PC-XT were simply out of the question, I would write my own computer games in MS-BASIC out of sheer boredom. The thing is, I didn’t know enough about programming to make video games, so all the games I created were — gasp — educational.

Ernie: Mommy, look what I made on the computer!
Mom: Oh, that’s nice. What am I looking at?
Ernie: See these two aliens on the screen? They have numbers on them!! So you have to multiply them and then look what happens…

(Ernie makes rocket-blasting noises as he multiplies 8 times 6. The message U ARE NOW ON PLANIT VENUS comes up on screen.)

Ernie: And now I’m on Venus!! Just 9 more math problems to go!!
Mom: I’m going to watch my Taiwanese soap operas now.

And thus started my fascination with computers. No wonder why I had so little friends growing up.

I started out with an Apple IIE. But either way…

anyone ever play Stickybear on an old PC or Apple??

Dude, Stickybear was the fucking bomb. It was all about the Stickybear, MATH BLASTER, and the original, old school “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.” Awww yeeeah.

I had a Commodore VIC-20 and this one ‘game’ called Adventureland… where you type in and tell the computer what to do, like ‘climb down on that dry-ass well’, or ‘go left and walk straight and kill whoever you see coming at you’, blahblahblah… then the sticking ‘puter broke after 2 months… POOP!~

Hey man
I love your little dialogues. They make me laugh my ass off most of the time. I don’t know if you’re little, but you seem yellow, and you’re different in a wicked innovative way. ROCKIN MY SOCKS MAN!

Well, I think your story is precious. I loved the keyboard on the XT. I miss the keyboard on the XT.

Ah … Taiwanese soap operas … the agony …

Admit it, Ernie. You kind of wish your dad had given you an abacus. Only kind of, though.

By the way, Oregon Trail RULED!

My dad told me Nintendo was an instrument of the devil. Now I play video games all day long for a living. I think the lesson to be learned here is that whatever you deny your kids, they will end up loving out of spite.

Back in Mid School (1994-1997) we would play Oregon Trail on the computers and basically that was all we had that wasn’t too educational. (Our school had maybe 150-200 kids)I remember when we got some decent Macs and they had “Spin Doctor” on them. Which was a game where you spun a rotating wand from dot to dot. I got addicted to that game and one day I decided to stay after and play it. Time passsed and it was 4pm, in walks my mom crying. And you wonder why I’m fucked up. So I stayed home all through high school never allowed out after dusk. Ern can we get a group rate on a therapist???

My dad deleted the only game on my Performa, so all I had to play with was Norton Disk Doctor. I remember checking for disk problems every single day, over and over and over. Our computer must have been the cleanest one in town.

1st computer experience was a Casio something that hooked to a TV. Cannot remember the model number, probably will at 4am.

PC-XT came next. 40MB hard drive. Parents still have it and it was still in regular use until about 2 years ago. Believe it still works.

Typing Tutor X (X being a number I think was 3) was the closest thing to a parent acceptable game. And MoonMist, good text based game.

Ernie, cant believe you did not have any graphical games. California Games was fun but a parental no-no so it had to be played home alone and hidden in the toy chest. There were others too.

And remember, everyone, Mandarin is in Italics.0

Oh man, those were the days. Challenge of the Ancient Empires, Spellbound, Carmen Sandiego, and Outnumbered in glorious 4-bit CGA — I seriously wanted to be a real-life SuperSolver for at least six months out of my life. When I got those games running in EGA a year or two later, it was basically like bunnies and sunshine.

Anyone else here raised on educational TV, too? I still maintain Square One was a work of art in a thirty minute time slot. Same with 3-2-1 Contact (I even got back issues of their magazine, from before it started to suck) and, to a lesser extent, Bill Nye.

Your primary porn source is floppy disks with .gif files???

Where can I find out when this was posted?

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