Farewell

So farewell, 3D Realms - or, rather, Apogee, as I always thought of them... The second oldest computer games I really remember playing are Commander Keen and Crystal Caves, two of the classic side-scrolling platform games Apogee brought out under the shareware model it more or less pioneered, giving away a third or so of the game and charging you for the rest. In my desk drawers I still have five of the old brightly-colored instruction / advertising sheets they used to ship out with paid copies, for Commander Keen, Crystal Caves, Duke Nukum (yes, that's how it's spelled on the original), Wolfenstein 3-D and Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure / Word Rescue (that one was double-sided). I was (and, technically, still am) the last maintainer of the official Wolfenstein 3-D FAQ - thanks to which Apogee would occasionally send me cool schwag, I still have a notepad and a copy of the original strategy guide at home - and Apogee offered me my first ever job in the tech industry, ironically doing much the same work I later wound up doing with Mandriva. (As it would have required relocation to Texas, and I was 13 at the time, I had to decline). So, not really much to say except how cool and old skool I am. :) The unfashionable type of old skool as well - while the other kids were playing with their Italian plumbers or improbably hued hedgehogs, I was saving the galaxy in a bean-powered rocket. I wonder when I should put this stuff on eBay...:|