My parents never discouraged my dreams, but they never actively procured anything to make them bloom either. Early in adulthood when I gained access on my own, I resented them for "holding me back". But then, after many more decades of growing up, I understand that getting your child an expensive computer isn't always as simple as "work extra shifts" for many parents.

I've donated money and time to volunteer programs to children computing groups but they've all been shut down during COVID. The ones that are popping back up are centered around LLMs and I'm less interested in encouraging this kind of (lack of) desire to understand computers.

And if youre a high income tech worker you can do this magic yourself. The difference in the trading account is not noticable but the memory of the great feeling of helping & giving remains. 1k is a lot for most people! https://www.givedirectly.org/

Wow. This is strangely similar to my first experience. I was also 12, in 1984, and we were possibly the last people in our relatively affluent neighborhood not to already have either an IBM PC, an Apple ][ or a Commodore 64. My parents were German immigrants and extremely frugal, so I did not have high hopes walking into Computer Microsystems (RIP) on Northern Blvd. that day in Manhasset. But something about my interaction with, or reaction to, the Mac (which I had never seen before), the Lisa (which I had DEFINITELY never seen before), or the sales guy (Bruce Prevo, will never forget that name for whatever reason, RIP), must have convinced my parents to drop around $4.5K in 1984 dollars (that is $14,400 today) on a Macintosh 128k, an ImageWriter I, and an Apple 300 Baud Modem that day. The sum total of these was life-changing for me. (Not just for me... Supposedly, that sale is what clinched Bruce a free Porsche from Apple, which was the award for achieving the highest sales for some unknown period of time at the time. Bruce was SUPER charismatic!)

All I remember was being more blown away than I had ever been before or arguably since. I mean... this was so far beyond the green-on-black text-based UI's I was all too familiar with that I was just mindfucked. And I think that's what sold my folks on doing that crazy act.

A couple of years later they also started selling Amiga 500's. I was, for whatever reason, much less impressed.

Anyway, I spent much of the following summer coding in Microsoft BASIC for the Mac, which has its own backstory I only became aware of recently... tl;dr Cutthroat Microsoft tactics, as usual https://www.folklore.org/MacBasic.html

> The best matches were the ones that we only allowed grenades, bazookas, mortars and other few basic short range weapons.

The connoisseur's choice.

Me and my brother when playing Worms / Worms 2 preferred a mode without time constraints per move, and with infinite ninja rope. Apart from standard 'one shot per turn' it also allowed you to relocate to best next position, detonate some time-delayed landmines near enemy worms, and even use physics for additional damage - if you released a worm from ninja rope with some inertia/fall, not too big so you don't get damage yourself, but energetic enough to SLIDE - it could move enemy worm without ending a round! Fun to push one or two enemy soldiers into the water before your first shot!

My first real taste of programming came from trying to hack on gorilla.bas to add new features to it. Whoever created that game changed my life immeasurably.

wow gorilla.bas... that brings back memories!

> the original DOS games

"Total Wormage" was on the Amiga, which became the original Worms. It was ported to other machines after:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worms_(series)#Development

https://worms2d.info/Total_Wormage

> an expansion to the original

Not sure about DOS versions, but Worms: The Director's Cut is a heavily-expanded version of the original: more weapons, custom levels (allowing 16 colours instead of 8, IIRC), etc. Highly recommended!

You might enjoy Liero (or its modern descendent OpenLieroX) which is similar to Worms but with real-time play (and kept the pixel vibes).

Same - I always preferred the pixel art look to the smooth cartoony look!

Latest Worms Armageddon (released in 1999) patch from December 2020 still supports Windows 95 (and Windows 11).

When I asked CyberShadow why, he replied that CD-ROM case claims Win9x compatibility, that's why any new update should not break it.

> Not exactly sure what this is.

Yeah, took me a while, but it looks like an expansion pack for the 1997 Amiga-only game "Worms: The Director's Cut". It backports (demakes?) maps and audio from later games like Worms 2, Armageddon and World Party.

Hell yeah, my siblings and I did the same. Insane replay value for a single level like that.

> _endlessly_ played the same level in a worms 2 demo

I did this too with other games. One of the joys of being an adult has been tracking down full copies of the games I'd only had demos for.

Scorched Earth for me and my brother, I loved that game and it was one of the few times we ever got on.

I would not get my hopes very high, it's my favorite game to play with kids on PS3 (Worms Armageddon), but they don't seem to like it as much as me, they would rather play Sonic All Stars Racing, Rayman Legends, NHL or other games, they don't share my love for Atomic Bomberman either and it's not about old graphics, they really liked TMNT Turtles in Time or Sunset Riders on emulator

If you haven't played since childhood, this might not matter to you, but I never got on with the games from the 3rd generation (https://worms.fandom.com/wiki/Third_Generation) and beyond because the physics are different in a way I find less enjoyable. It's especially noticeable if you loved using the ninja rope in the older games.

Worms Armageddon is the one to go with from the second generation. It has received a lot of care over the years, and with the latest updates it should run perfectly on a modern computer with a big high res monitor (or without, of course). I haven't played online for quite a while, but it seems to still have an active community: https://www.tus-wa.com/

edit: but I'm looking it up now, and apparently WMD has Armageddon-like physics, so maybe that really is the obvious choice! (I don't know if they're literally the same, or just pretty similar, but I guess you probably won't care about that.)

Played a lot of Worms Armageddon when I was a kid. WMD is the best one by far and carries Armageddon's spirit. The others lost the script trying to make cooler games.

I'd say WMD is the best.

It's definitely up there on the ladder, surely... :P

Well... has it been the best so far?

Hedgewars has a mac build. It's at least in the genre... Although with these old games I feel they'd probably play fine in a VM...

same times, y'all non-rich non-poor 90s and 00s kids just went face down ass up too much, is all. FU for being good boys, I thought that was a daddy issue kind of girl thing