Dear old nerds, what were the old days like?

[Buzz Killington_v1legacy]

I think you were about to describe the first 10 minutes of the classic '80s horror movie, Night of the Creeps, but I could be wrong.

Oh, man. I'm so glad someone else has seen that. It's fantastic.

"The good news is your dates are here."

"What's the bad news?"

"They're dead."

(Yes, I'm another old geek.)

 

[Programmed_For_Damage]

*Lights a fire and picks up a tobacco pipe*

Gather around children and let me tell you a tale of times past, when video games came on cassette tapes and even if you bought them from a reputable store (and not used your mate's double cassette recorder to duplicate them) there was a 20% chance they'd fuck up. Picture this my friends; you'd waited months to get your hands on a game that was released in England long ago (thanks to Australia being so goddamn far away you'd be waiting a long time) and after waiting another 15 minutes for it to load the game crashes. You try again and 15 minutes later it does the same thing. Shocked and in disbelief you try again; same result. So you bike ride back to the store with your receipt and the sales clerk tells you that they'll give you another copy, but unfortunately they're all sold out so you'll have to wait another month or two for the next shipment! If it did nothing else it taught you infinite patience AND when you finally got to play the game it was awesome (or at least you convinced yourself it was).

When I was 14 my friends and I used to play the old pen and paper version of Shadowrun in our high school lunch breaks. Given I was about 6 foot at the time I was not really bullied or picked on for being a nerd. The one time a physical altercation broke out I wiped the floor with them, so I had a reputation too. Also, one day the bully of our year level came by to see what we were doing. We explained the game and suggested a character for him. A week later he was one of our group of runners. Bully problem solved! That said I don't think schools in Australia were that stratified as they seem to be in America (if your TV shows are to be believed).

I also remember when the old Livingston and Jackson, Fighting Fantasy books were king for all budding nerds. But that is a story for another day...

 

[NihilSinLulz]

I'm loving all these stories. Thanks everyone! Please add some more!

 

[prpshrt]

In the spirit of the stories of people getting picked on, I'd like to pitch in as well. Back in the mid 2000s I seemed to be the only one who enjoyed video games more than sports. I remember starting middle school and a couple of kids asked me whether I supported Arsenal or Manchester United to which I responded, "What's that". I remember getting immense amount of crap for it because I knew more about video games than the english premier league and was treated as an outcast because my caring for video games and comics far outstripped my concern for soccer. Basically became an outcast and was very much miserable. Thankfully, that's when I moved to the states and found that people didn't care much about the fact that I loved games more. Heck, I had a lot of friends who were Jocks because I played WoW (vanilla - burning crusade transition period) with them. Guess I got really lucky with the public school I got dropped into. I still don't give a flying fuck about the english premier league (irrelevant, I know but thinking back on those days rustled my jimmies).

EDIT: ooh forgot to mention how insanely excited I used to be when I got my gaming magazine cause they sometimes came with CDs with game demos on them and when croc was the most mind blowing and amazing game I'd ever played

 

[ExtraDebit]

Back in the early 90s, hardly anyone in the Caribbeans were into games. Gamers actually seek out other gamers across schools and across towns. When we do find each other, we usually becomes friends for life since there are so few of us.

There were no game shops and we had to import all our games, all the info about games we had to get out of magazines like EGM which we also had to import. Moves and finishing moves were prized knowledge since the game never tells you how to do it and there were no gamefaqs.com to look it up.

I WAS bullied through out my youth but not because of gaming or my interests, but because of my race, I'm asian. Majority of the races in caribbeans are either indians or blacks, and they love to pick on the asians since there were so few of us. Even on the streets with complete strangers, they would verbally insult and mock you.

Luckily I had games to escape to, and gamers transcended race. They don't care that you can speak a different language or the color of your skin, they only care how well you can do a dragon punch, judging solely by our skills to manipulate a game controller.

 

[MirenBainesUSMC]

Well lets see...

Dot Matrix printing. Eerrrr! Errrr! Errrr! ZZZzzzt! Zzzzzzt! " Cool! I got 5 pages done in 25 min!"

Early days of AOL and the non-existent CompuServe! " Ring Tone. EEerrrrrrrrrraaaaahh...beep. beep. beep. Kkkkhhhkkkk. " Welcome!"

Floppy disks were being weeded out for 3.5 Disks! Doom 1 was becoming the shit and playing Wolfienstien 3D was somewhat controversial at the time.

Yes there was the waning days of the old wooden Atari 2600... and then getting the Sega Genesis meant you reached the pinacle of Bad Ass....that is until the PS1 came to play. Sonic was the man and old RPG's like " Shining Force" " Shining in the Darkness" and my favorite " Sword of Vermillion" was the staple diet of dungeon crawlers, hit points, and experience farming. Later it was " Dun dun dun!" Phantasy Star II.

Magic the Gathering began --- with the old rules where if you lost, the other kid got your deck of cards. ( Wince. Ouch)

If you wanted Anime, the closest thing if you didn't have money was Robotech that came on at 6AM in the morning. Don't forget we still had live action " PHOTON " with that guy named Bodi Lee who was trapped in an alternative universe with the head bad guy called Mandar. ( If you know what I am talking about, you are probably laughing your butt off)

Spawn #1 and the rise of Image comics ( With W.I.L.D.C.A.T.S, Savage Dragon, Young Blood, Pritt, DeathBlow)

Old School Ninja turtles. The Ghost Busters.

There wasn't flat screens but heavy monitors and boxy computers that only came in IBM cream colors. Microsoft hadn't hit quite yet. Apple Macintosh was just ehhh.

And whom can forget that if you had that huge cell phone with a pull out antennae you were obviously a broker from Wall street?

 

[Julius Terrell]

For me I started out with an Atari 2600 when I was 5 or 6. Damn those were the days *sniff*

Me and my brothers used to play it on a 13 inch black and white tv. I can't remember how many times we dropped that tv? All I know is that it took a beating. I went to the arcades during the second half of the 80s. We had a corner store that had a small arcade that is still standing to this day(the store). There was also a tilt at the mall where I work at now.

As much as I loved video games and such my true passion was Japanese anime.

My first title was voltron that aired on TV,but I surely didn't know it was an anime series back then. I just knew that the art style was different than everything else that was on TV at the time. Fast forward a few years later I was able finally able to get my hands on quite a huge amount anime movies, because the local video store stocked up on them.

My mom used to go out on the weekends and she let me rent as many tapes as I could carry. She was out of my hair so I didn't care how long she stayed gone.

Ever since I could remember I was into sci-fi. But my primary outlet for the medium was TV. Saw all the major shows that ran during the 80s and 90s, and I'll never forget watching pilot episode for Star trek: TNG. Years later I got heavily into reading epic fantasy which I still do to this day.

Like many of the other posters have said, I was bullied mercilessly. I stood up to the bullies and got suspended a lot for it. I'm glad I did, because it would have been much had I not stood up to them.

Everything that I loved as a kid I continued to do as an adult. Now I'm just socially awkward adult who has no interest in interacting with a society that doesn't accept us.

As a kid I also noticed how awesome the bleeps and blops that I used to hear with my NES games sounded. That kickstarted my love affair with electronic music.

So essentially things haven't really changed for me since I was a kid. The only difference is that I'm an athletic nerd. When I'm not playing games and listening to weird experimental music, I'm out running 50+ miles a week.

Lastly, I collected EGM, and Next Generation religiously for about 10-15 years or so. My collection was HUGE! plus I used to run my grandmother's phone bill calling the Nintendo help line whenever I used to get stuck on a game. It was like 2.99/min. Needless to say that my grandmother was pissed!

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

As a member of generation Y, I don't think I qualify as an 'old nerd' but I can say that video games didn't get accepted by the majority of people my age until I entered the 6th grade. That was when the kids who enjoyed Pokemon, Yu-gi-oh cards and Nintendo games were beginning to be less bullied for liking gaming and nerd culture. The xbox had been out for two years at that point and PS2 was sweeping the country. Before gen 6 however I got physically bullied because I would talk about Mario and my favorite Pokemon.

Other nerdy things I liked and did? I would record on cassette tapes F-Zero music so I could listen to it on the Walkman my sister gave me. My friends on the playground used to roleplay as Pokemon trainers and final fantasy characters to pass the time...

Sweet innocent youth, I miss thee.

OH WELL

Back to not spending money needlessly and posting on the internet!

 

[Julius Terrell]

As a member of generation Y, I don't think I qualify as an 'old nerd' but I can say that video games didn't get accepted by the majority of people my age until I entered the 6th grade. That was when the kids who enjoyed Pokemon, Yu-gi-oh cards and Nintendo games were beginning to be less bullied for liking gaming and nerd culture. The xbox had been out for two years at that point and PS2 was sweeping the country. Before gen 6 however I got physically bullied because I would talk about Mario and my favorite Pokemon.

Other nerdy things I liked and did? I would record on cassette tapes F-Zero music so I could listen to it on the Walkman my sister gave me. My friends on the playground used to roleplay as Pokemon trainers and final fantasy characters to pass the time...

Sweet innocent youth, I miss thee.

OH WELL

Back to not spending money needlessly and posting on the internet!

I did that with Sonic CD. I spent hours listening to that tape. My neighbors would get annoyed at the fact that I was out all hours sing. SOOOOONNNIIICC BOOOO!!! SOOOOOOOONNNNNIIIIICCC BOOOOOOOOOM!!!

I get weird looks from people today because I always try to talk about Duel Monsters trading card game! Needless to say that the original Yu-Gi-Oh! is still one of my favorite shounen shows. I was just simply born to love this shit!!!

 

[Quoth]

Speaking from the point of view of a proper older "nerd" This nerd thing seems to be another largely US phenomenon. It didn't really exist where I grew up (UK). I was a gamer as a kid (first system was pre Atari 2600) and have been all my adult life. Kids around my way played D&D during autumn and winter nights no one was picked on because of it. I don't think I even heard the word until I was in my 20s. (That was well in to the 90s)

 

[Doclector]

What I really want to know is if any of you were around when right wing Christians were going apeshit about D&D. Was it as insane as Spoony said it was?