the dawn of a new age

[Feisar]

it was Christmas 1995, i open the package quickly in my run down house of Eastern Kentucky. Behold it was a Playstation, first of its kind, a large step in the generation of gaming. My parents could only afford one game, they got me Ridge Racer, the first ever game. To my surprise the playstation came with a Demo disc, also the first of its kind. on it had the best game to date, Wipeout. i played the demo to wipeout more than i did Ridge Racer. The demo of course doesnt work today but i can always remember those times, 7 years ago in my little house.
Wipeout is more than a game, its a genre........

[Lance]

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welcome to the wipEout forums, Feisar. oddly enough, i used to live in west-central Kentucky, namely Louisville. ridge racer was my first game too, but i only got my psx [from a pawn shop, so no demo disc] about two and a half years ago. so i'm newcomer, sorta
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[Spaceboy Gajo]

Has it been two years Lance?

Wow!

You've come a long way.

I've played since, well when it came out and I still refuse to master the technique of air brakes :wink:

spaceboy gajo

[Wamdue]

i can still remember how the interface of the first demo looked like and sounded like.. those were the days... me and some freinds used to have competitions in the wipeout demo at a store before I sold my snes and bought the psx, I always won , cause all of my freinds thought the game was too hard ;)

[Lance]

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i've been on wipeoutzone for just over a year. i started actually saving games and trying to improve on wo3, the only version i had till i got xl for the pc [i have nOt mastered the keyboard as a piloting instrument], maybe 2 or 3 months before i got here. i really should play more, and try to see just what my limits are, cos i don't think i've reached them yet. it would have been interesting to see what might have been possible if i had been a teenager when i started playing, but as i didn't start videogaming till i was about 57, i'll never know. maybe it's better this way, because instead of having to be watching the decline of my abilities already, i'm actually still improving. i'm trying to look on the bright side. :)

heh, airbrakes. at first i didn't use them at all, then when i'd got to the point where i was co-ordinated enough to use them, i overdid it, considering i did all my piloting in vector class. now that i sometimes dabble in phantom class, i find that i need to keep my fingers on the airbrake buttons pretty much all the time!
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[Wiseman]

LOL, my first game for the PSX was Battle Arena Toshiden, I didn't get Ridge Racer because I balked at the fact that it only had 1 track (even if they tried to extend it, flip it and reverse it, it's still only 1 track).

Although I enjoyed BAT immensely at the time, now that I look back at it, the gameplay was atrocious.

I do remember the demo disc I got with it, it had playable demos of Extreme Games, Jumping Flash, Wipeout and BAT. And then it had a bunch of videos on it too, I remember watching the Philosima video and thinking "Sweet!" (too bad the actual game kinda stunk).

Did anyone who got the PSX at launch remember that developers demo disc you got, you know the one with the dinosuar on it you could play around with? LOL, that was wierd.


Anyway, welcome to the forums, Feisar! :)

[Task]

@Lance: I don't think there _were_ any video games when you were a teenager...
To have started "really early", you would have had to have started, oh, perhaps 10 years ago. With the release of WO1.
Even if you had started earlier (I started almost 20 years ago with a machine that only played Pong variants) you can trust me that none of those skills carry over much. I was an expert at Jumpman and Robotron (the first needing precise control, the second requiring fast reactions) and I was total _pants_ at WOXL when I picked it up for the first time. I think the reason for this is the game and the airbrakes. The PSX controller is the first I'd ever seen with R1, R2, L1, L2 styled buttons, I wasn't used to using those fingers in those places for steering. It took me months to get the hang of it. Even if I had been playing PSX for longer, not many games actually used those buttons, few of those were racing games, and mostly they were used for shifting gears. The only thing that'll make you fast in Wipeout is practice. The only thing that'll make you practice is a desire to master the game. The only way you're gonna wanna master the game is if that's the kind of person you are. I imagine that hanging out with a collection of like-minded people would be likely to help there, too. 8 )

[Lance]

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Feisar: probably not only a genre, but a way of life

Jay: mm... possibly it's true that the skills are really so game-specific that experience in youth is not that critical, though i still wonder if conditioning in youth affects ultimate potential. i guess mainly i wonder how much better i could be if i were still young and had the reaction time and ability to concentrate that i had when i was 15. surely i have lost some of my speed, and i knOw i have a much shorter attention span than i had then, which affects how well i'm able to get in the 'zone' when i play
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[Feisar]

i still have the First Demo disc and the CASE!!!!!!!! all the videos and all the demos work on it except for wipeout :( i am going to get it repaired someday. i cry sometimes just thinking of the first Wipeout. i was so young, so free, so alive.......

[jmoid]

i had the demo disk with gare d'europa on it... many an hour i spent on that! not least because the load times were so immense :)

[AmigoJack]

was also introduced with a wo2097 demo disc for saturn. it was very impacting and sagarmatha became a part of my life.. :D

[Lance]

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jay said: ''The PSX controller is the first I'd ever seen with R1, R2, L1, L2 styled buttons, I wasn't used to using those fingers in those places for steering.''

for wipeout, i've always used only the index fingers for those four buttons, so i have to move the right index finger to put on hyperthrust or right airbrake, which makes things a bit slower and clumsier than they ought to be. i've tried using both index and middle fingers simultaneously, but my hands tired out so fast that they began to cramp and my performance deteriorated, so i went back to index fingers only. neither of my controllers is shaped so that they fit the hands correctly when i only use two fingers on the grips. even so, i should try the ''four finger method'' some more; maybe i can condition myself to use it effectively. i think i'm going to have to for phantom class
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[Feisar]

is wipeout 2097 wipeout XL?!?!?

i ask this because i was looking on ebay for 2097 and stumbled upon a rare copie of the wipeout 2097 soundtrack. the tracks on it seemed familar so i went over to cdnow.com and looked up the wipeout XL soundtrack and the tracks were EXACTLY the same!


i feel so lonely :(

[Lance]

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2097 is the PAL [european/australian] version, and xl is the ntsc [north american] version of the same game
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